Pole dancing with Girl vs Girl
Christina Dy is upside-down, in a kind of arabesque, except one of her legs is wrapped tightly around a steel pole, the only thing keeping her from falling.
As if this weren’t unusual enough, there is another girl slightly above her, on the same pole. Still, she can answer my questions — albeit between grunts and the occasional exhalation of breath.
Dy and Mirell Macalinao are Girl VS Girl, a pole dancing duo that performs at Capone’s every Wednesday this month at 10 p.m.
What Girl VS Girl does is the aforementioned two girls on one pole, which changes things for a pole dancer. There’s not as much space, so one has to be exact in their positioning and movement. But these two have been at it for a while. Dy started in 2007 at Movement dance studio, where she met Macalinao. They became fast friends with their mutual love for the pole and the workout they got from it. Class after class, it got to the point where they would attend classes they weren’t signed up for, just so they could practice some more.“It’s funny. I consider Mirell a good friend but I almost never see her in any other context besides pole. I don’t think we’ve ever just hung out or eaten at a restaurant. Whenever we meet, we practice. Even when we see each other online, we talk about pole, what we want to do next, what might be interesting,” Dy says, in between breaths.Some of these positions I’m seeing were conceived in the virtual realm of the Internet, where they would chat online and describe new positions to one another, new figures to try.They came up with Girl VS Girl to challenge themselves to become better.
Still, they’re not satisfied, as they tell me they’ve been adding more and more figures and positions to their repertoire, with names like “Diamond,” “Dolphin” and “Trapeze.”As if the limited space weren’t enough, they’re considering performances in blindfolds, or ones where they can’t touch the floor and must move to new positions while on the pole.They’ve even started another group called Polecats, with more members and a more traditional presentation of what one imagines when one hears the term “pole dancing.”
“Girl VS Girl is more acrobatic. Since we can’t move as much, it’s more about the figures and the positions themselves, while Polecats is more about dance and movement,” they explain, unfurling into finales that boggle the mind.
“The most important thing is that it’s fun,” Dy concludes. “If it stops being fun, that’s when we stop doing it.”
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For bookings, email christinady@gmail.com
