New studio in Helsinki: Vertical Club

I've used the expression "spoiled rotten" several times referring to the three pole dancing studios that we have in this town of only 500 000 inhabitants. Well, it would seem that next month there will be four studios and I will have to think of new idioms to describe so many cool classes, so little time. Vertical Club will open in August and feature wonderfully tall 3,6 meter poles! The founders Laura Gröhn and Vilja Eskelinen will bring some of the best teachers from Rock the Pole with them. Laura, who is a member of the New York -based AERA aerial dance company, will bring an entirely new sport to Finland: Aerial Yoga. As a yoga enthusiast (I've done Hatha, Asthanga, Iyengar and Bikram - even though you would never believe it if...

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Off the Pole for 30 days - what has happened to me?

From the middle of June till the middle of July I was busy travelling both for work and for leisure, both in Finland and abroad. And by busy I mean just that - I didn't stay long in one place and had fully booked days. I knew I couldn't attend any pole classes during that time so I put my Pole4Fit membership on hold for a month. I didn't think it would be a big deal as I stayed active, for example by exploring new places on foot (walking over 20 kilometres in Kyoto was one of my favourite days during this busy month). I got back home on Monday and greeted my beloved Fitpole enthusiastically, but the love was no longer mutual. I only had strength for a 40-minute session but it was enough to show me all those tricks I no longer could do,...

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Let's go outside!

It hasn't been the sunniest summer in Finland so far but today we were lucky. Pole4Fit kindly lent us their stage which we carried to the nearest park - 300 meters from the studio. This is what summer in the city should look like! Thank you girls for organizing this, it was great meeting new faces from other studios! Let's do this again soon, please? ...

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PoleArt 2012 list of participants is published

I can't believe the list of participants PoleArt published - it reads like a Who's Who of pole dancing! Female Competitive Category Anastasia Skukhtorova, Russia Laurence Hilsum, France Maria Luz Escalante, Argentina Natalia Egorova, Russia Natasha Wang, USA Oona Kivelä, Finland Phoenix Kazree, USA Polina Volchek, USA Rafaela Montanaro, Brazil Tracey Simmonds, South Africa Male Competative Category Evgeny Greshilov, Russia Patryk Rybarski, Poland Saulo Sarmiento, France Steven Retchless, USA Wilson Alexander Meija, Colombia Showcase Ekaterina Romanova, Russia Intellego Pole Company, Sweden Michelle Stanek, USA Pole Dance Theatre "TRASH" Guest Performance Jenyne Butterfly, USA I'm so proud...

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Workshop with Henriikka Roo

Gosh, how can I have forgotten to write about the workshop with Henriikka Roo that I attended almost six weeks ago! I know I always go on and on about Oona Kivelä (and I won't make any promises not to as PoleArt draws nearer). When I attended Henriikka Rinne's workshop at Studio Move in Tampere on May 26 (day after Tampere Open Showcase - see, we didn't partyall night) I specifically thought how nice it will be to blog about another Finn for a change - and then I go and forget to do so! It's not that the Advanced Workshop we attended wasn't great, oh no, we even did completely new stuff (to me, that is), I just can't remember what it was anymore... Help me out here, if you read this and you attended as well! Does...

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