It all began when I was living in Springfield — a city in southwest Missouri, USA. I was working as a cook in a health food store when one of my coworkers told me about a dance studio that she'd visited…

You could argue that pole dancing is just another aspect of our ascension culture: always climbing, reaching, going up up up. But pole is also a descending art — it beckons us inward and down, into the sensual and primal sensations of the body…