Pole Dance Fitness World International Ultimate Champion Official World Championship Cup

After winning The Ultimate Champion title in IPC 2012 in Hong Kong, Oona Kivelä commented that there are so many world championships in pole dancing that it will soon be like boxing. Oona talked me through the different world championships that currently exist and also shared some ideas with me on how the division might better serve the pole dancing community.

The Official World Pole Sport & Fitness Championships

The Official World Pole Sport & Fitness Championships have been held annually since 2009 (in Jamaica), when Felix Cane took the title, Jenyne Butterfly placed second and Alesia Vazmitsel was third. According to the event website, 2010 (Zürich) and 2011 (Budapest) competitor bios and results are coming soon. No rush, guys! (The results can be found here.)

The website also says, in CAPS and in bold: WORLD POLE SPORT FITNESS IS STRICTLY A SPORT FITNESS EVENT. The organisers are also vocal about making pole dancing an Olympic sport in the future. However, looking at the winning performances it seems that an entertaining, even nightclubby style is favoured. The choreographies are long, 5-6 minutes, and many contestants were high heels and use props. This genre is very popular around the world and perhaps pole dancing enthusiast want to see the same style in competitions that they do at home or at their local pole studio. But high heels and the Olympics, why don’t I see the connection?

Oona attended this event in 2010 but was cut in the semifinals. In her Pole Spin Magazine close-up Oona tells us that according to the judges she should have smiled more. She never got any official judging scores, though. Oona, naturally, went barefoot. There are both “sport” and “fitness” in the name of the event, after all. I would have kept my Jimmy Choo’s for the after party, too.

Pole World Cup

Pole World Cup was organised for the first time in Rio de Janeiro in 2011. The organizer was the Brazilian Pole Dance Federation FBPOLE. The winner was our very own Oona Kivelä, followed by Rafaela Montanaro and Anastasia Skukhtorova.

 

I couldn't find a proper logo for the competition. The site was in Portuguese, though...

Ideally, world cup competitions should be held around the world and the contestants of the ultimate world championship would be from the various cups. The Brazilian world cup could definitely be one of them. In addition there should be one in Europe and maybe one in Australia.

International Pole Championship

IPC, organised by the International Pole Dance Fitness Association IPDFA, has been held four times since 2008. The locations have been Manila, Tokyo twice and now Hong Kong in 2012, all in Asia. In my opinion, IPC is closest to what World Championships should be, image-wise. But even they make one bad mistake and that is ignoring the potential of social media. After the competition, the results should be online immediately, and videos of the performances the following day at the latest. IPDFA doesn’t seem to be able to do it themselves, nor do they allow anyone else to do it. Poleranking would have videos of all the performances in Hong Kong 2012, but IPDFA banned Poleranking from publishing them. I’ve seen them, and there were some amazing performances there… Maybe the rest of the world will get to see them soon.

Whether pole dancing should try to make it to the Olympics is another discussion altogether. I think it’s quite early for that discussion as the pole dancing community can’t even seem to agree on World Championships. Moreover, at this stage the discussion should be about getting pole dancing to the World Games. It might not be a bad option to never “make it” to the Olympics and stay in the World Games instead.

If we absolutely cannot agree on this World Championships issue and end up having five different world champions each year, like boxing, can we at least agree that there will never be separate weight classes in pole dancing?

Please come to Poleranking to discuss this topic!