The power of a woman is in her hips.
In the way she moves in them, in what its movements say about her. A woman’s hips, that round, gentle slope of a curve that defines a woman’s body…there’s power there–power to seduce, power to give life.
There is no other time when you feel this power most when you are warming up for a pole dancing class at Polecats Manila. When you have your legs spread wide apart on the floor, and if you can imagine it, you – well, you and the 15 or so odd women in the room—are told to rotate your hips across the four spots: front, back, side to side.
If you’ve done a similar action during other workouts (hell, even if it weren’t for other workouts), you know that it never fails to give you a sense of awakening.
You suddenly feel your body lighting up to the sensations that are tingling throughout the rest of your body. Heat rises in your body and you slowly transformed into a being who’s alive in every sensorial possible way, from the tips of your scale to tips of your toes. Open to senses.
Judging from the giggling that was mixed in with the perky “oh’s!” (almost like an oops!), the others in the room feel the same tingling.
And in the Pole dancing class at Polecats, this is only the beginning.
Visual artist Christina Dy founded Pole Cats in 2009 with her friends. It was Christina’s unproverbial way of mending a proverbial broken heart. Since then, Christina and her co-founder friends have been developing the art form by collaborating with musicians, photographers and filmmakers. They’ve been quick to recruit other “kittens” (Polecats slang for “students”) eager to discover the power of their hips, their bodies and the movements it is capable of.
A year later, they were joined by their first ever tomcat, Job Bautista.
The ethos of Polecats is best summarized by their objective to encourage their students, “no matter size, height, or history to bloom into their own brand of beauty.”
The women—or, rather, the kittens—who come to a Polecats class certainly come in different shapes, sizes and get-ups. Some came in corporate attire, others came in casual clothes, it didn’t matter. Before the start of the class, each kitten had stripped into brief tops, skimpy shorts (bare skin rather than legs encased in say, jogging pants is better on the pole), and for the more experienced kittens, heels.
The first thing you do after the warm up is to walk around the pole where your hips again play a pivotal role. They need to jut out every so slightly. The sublte moment cannot be defined as an action, but merely as a suggestion.
Then you go around your pole. Your hips need to work together with your arms. Your arms will hoist you to the pole and your hips will move the rest of your body to go into a spin.
It is here where you most probably will get an appreciation for pole dancing as not just an art, but also as an athletic sport. It takes physical strength to lift your entire body by the arms and move in a swift fluid motion around the pole. You will also begin to be grateful that professional grade poles, the stability of which are carefully checked by PoleCats internationally certified instructors before each class.
The session ends after a series of movements that start with walking around your pole, spinning around it and ending with a kitten’s favorite pose—you sit down on the floor with your back against the pole and look at yourself in the mirror. You will most likely feel sweaty, flushed and out of breath.
And oh, so goddamn beautiful.
Yes, the power of a woman lies in her hips.
You feel that power when you pole dance.
When in Manila…
