It’s a busy and fast-moving world out there; it feels like there is always somewhere to go and that there’s always something that has to get done. Often, we look around and wonder if life will slow down enough for us to take a breath. When Electra Productions co-founder Jane Bull decided that it was time for life to take a different direction, she did not take a vacation. Bull discovered pole art.
“I think specifically with dance, it’s hard because we train in high school as if we are going to a professional ballet company, or a professional modern dance company,” says Bull. “Then we reach that turning point when we graduate [and have to decide] whether we are going to go into the professional world and leave the dance world behind.”
Bull then went to law school and worked in Vancouver; one day, she tried a pole-dancing class and, she says, it completely blew her mind.
“I did not expect it to be what it was,” she says. “It filled that piece of me that had been missing since I had left dance.”
Bull says she then saw an opportunity after fusing her own style of contemporary dance with ballet and pole dancing.
“I moved back to Victoria in 2015,” she says, “and I found there was no real pole-dancing community here. After competing and instructing while I was in Vancouver, I decided to make it my mission to form a pole community here. I had just re-connected with Linley [Faulkner, co-founder of Electra], and we both saw an opportunity together.”
Bull says that there has been a trend of moving pole-dancing out of the strip clubs and into the studios and competitions since the late ’90s.
“What I noticed was that there were these people with amazing talent and artistry, but that there was no real place to perform just for the sake of performing,” says Bull, “for the sake of pole art as art.”
Bull says she knew that there was something that the pole community itself needed—the opportunity to perform as an art. She also wanted audiences to be able to see what these dancers could do. So, in 2018, the two formed Electra Productions.
“Our mandate has four key pillars,” she says. “The main one is to promote pole as a performance art. Another main one is to promote local island talent, with high-quality performance-art shows for local audiences; [the third is] trying to move pole into a similar genre as ballet, theatre productions, and contemporary dance. The last thing is to start stimulating the discussion around the stigma that still purveys pole dancing and the pole world.”
Bull says there are certain things every woman feels when she tries pole dancing; one of the most important ones is the celebration of female fortitude and physical and emotional strength.
“There is a high and heavy focus in North American culture on our female bodies and what we are supposed to look like,” says Bull. “We are generally encouraged to stay small. Then, when we start pole dancing, there is focus that is away from stereotypes. The focus is on building your physical strength in order to complete a certain trick. Our bodies start to change; we do get stronger, with more muscle mass. Pole studios are a place women get to celebrate the strength that each other are building.”
Bull says there is something magical that happens when a person finds out what their body is able to do.
“Once you realize that you can climb up a pole,” she says, “with the women all around you lifting themselves as well, no matter what their body type, or how old they are, it is that moment that you realize you can do anything.”
Eclipse Pole Art and Aerial Theatre
7 pm Saturday, November 24
$35, Metro Studio Theatre
poleart.ca