Tag: Pole Club

Canada

For 8 months in 2010, Kitty Neptune taught a group of 4 students how to pole dance. Her students, an unlikely bunch to be so taken with the pole, were speedy studies. They took on the challenge of learning a craft that is part acrobatics and part exhibitionism with dazzling results. The Pole Club had their first “Class Recital” in front of 150 of their friends. The crowd went wild and an annual event was born. Pole Club now operates as more of a collective. Each student, having found their own style and strength, strives to learn “new tricks” from each other. As well as surfing online for what the champions are doing and spurring each other on to try more difficult moves. The Pole Club is Kitty Neptune, Charissa Wilcox, Axle Blows, Shanna Miller, and Shane MacKinnon.

© The Pole Club, 2011. Photo Henry Chan.

ARTISTS
Alicia Grant (Toronto)
Cassils (Montréal / USA)
Dana Michel (Montréal)
Dominic Johnson (UK)
MC Coble (USA / Sweden)
The Pole Club (Toronto)

Curated by Jess Dobkin and FADO Performance Art Centre

Commitment Issues presents the work of five artists and one collective who use their bodies as primary source material to investigate qualities and dimensions of commitment—to ideas, to performance, to audience and to the artists themselves. Through play, risk, intimacy and sexuality, these artists transcend fixed social, psychological, physical and spiritual notions of commitment.

Further confounding the interplay of fixed notions of commitment, the venue for Commitment Issues is Oasis Aqualounge, home to Toronto’s preeminent swinger’s club. Performance sites will include the outdoor heated swimming pool, steam room, hot tub and locker room. Audiences are invited to stay late and enjoy all of Oasis Aqualounge’s amenities which also include a sauna, two bars and multiple lounges. Locker and towel service provided. Bring your bathing suit or birthday suit. Admission restricted to patrons 19+ years of age.

PROGRAM & EVENTS

Performances
November 16, 2011 @ 7:00pm to 10:00pm
Oasis Aqualounge, 231 Mutual Street, Toronto

Processing: Artists Panel & Reception
November 17, 2011 @ 7:30pm
Studio Theatre, Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse, 4 Glen Morris Street

The panel is co-sponsored by the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama at the University of Toronto and the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto.

© Dominic Johnson, Transmission, 2011. Photo Henry Chan.