Rising to the challenge

Israel’s first pole-dance show will take place in Jerusalem.

By ELIANA RUDEE
Israel’s first pole-dance show (photo credit: MAYA ILTUS)
Israel’s first pole-dance show
(photo credit: MAYA ILTUS)
Pole dancing, The Wizard of Oz and Jerusalem – possibly the most unexpected combination of terms to describe a groundbreaking new show to hit the Israeli stage this week.
On December 4 and 5 at Jerusalem’s Beit Masie Theater, award-winning female and male pole dancers from Israel’s leading studios will perform a feminist reimagining of The Wizard of Oz. The script was developed by artistic director Na’ama Shahar and producer Ella Stahl, both dancers at the JPole studio in downtown Jerusalem.
The storyline begins when Dorothy completes her army service and embarks on an adventure to find herself.
Along the way, she meets other female characters, each challenged with a damaging norm that women experience in today’s society: a scarecrow who has low self-esteem; a tin woman who, at the expense of friendships, is nasty toward others in order to succeed in her career; a lioness who must choose between raising a family and maintaining her personal freedom; and a witch whose active sex life contradicts society’s perception of a “good” woman.
In dealing with such relevant issues, the script is able to maintain a lightness that is often witty, artistic and poignant.
According to Stahl, each character’s trials and tribulations mirror her own path to finding herself after the army. A Jerusalem-raised computer scientist and cognitive studies student at the Hebrew University, Stahl says that she would not be in a male-dominated field if it weren’t for the empowerment that pole dancing brings to her life.
Watching Stahl perform on the pole, there is no doubt that she can do anything she sets her mind to.
She recalls that when she first started pole dancing, she was asked to raise her legs above her head.
“I stood there and I thought, ‘This is not physically possible’; and now I’m teaching the girls to do that,” she smiles.
She reasons that if she can defy gravity by lifting her legs four meters in the air using just a pole and her own body, she can rise to any challenge, whether it’s dealing with a bad break-up, producing a show or completing a degree in computer science.
Challenging the laws of gravity is not the only barrier Stahl seeks to break. Along with the term “pole dancing” come various stereotypes that she hopes to prove wrong.
The first response from people who don’t know about pole dancing is always “Are you a stripper?” Stahl explains. When she first called the studio to inquire about classes, she was so embarrassed that she couldn’t even articulate the words “pole dancing.”
Pole dancing is an artistic and intense athletic training that involves scaling a vertical pole, performing gravity-defying movements, spinning and inverting, using one’s own body as grip.
Watching the women at JPole rehearse after their class, it is obvious that the practice involves the kind of strength, flexibility and stamina required of gymnastics or acrobats.
Pole dancers are not skinny, they are strong, says Stahl. They do not need help doing physical tasks, are independent and can defend themselves if necessary.
This female strength and independence fostered by pole dancing are precisely why Stahl believes that pole dancing “freaks people out.”
“It’s not the near-nudity thing, it’s the strong thing that scares them,” she says.
In the JPole studio, a quote from the Lubavitcher Rebbe hangs next to a calendar photo of a pole dancer in ballet garb. A blonde woman in short spandex comments that her parents, who are haredi, may not approve of her exercise.
She lets out a labored laugh as she grips the bar with both hands and reaches to her right, attempting to hoist her legs above her body as she drips with sweat. Less than 20 minutes later, she leaves the studio in a modest top and a long skirt.
The owner and manager of JPole, Ayelet Finkelstein, says that many kinds of women come to the studio for pole dancing classes. Muslim women, haredi women, secular women, even nuns come to practice pole at her studio.
Finkelstein, who was raised in the national-religious movement in the Orthodox settlement of Beit El, says that her ultimate goal is to strip a w a y socially constructed categories of gender, race and religion and make women feel united through beauty, strength and health.
To strip down stereotypes and social constructs is also the goal of the upcoming pole performance, which Finkelstein believes will prove that Jerusalem is more than politics and religion.
“Jerusalem is cultural; there’s a lot happening here. There are young people, there are beautiful people, happy people...People actually live normal lives here,” she says.
“Jerusalem is dying if we don’t do the things that happen in the world. This is what’s happening in the world,” she asserts.
The performance takes place on December 4 and 5 at 8 p.m. at Beit Masie Theater, 18 Mesilat Yesharim Street, Nahlaot. Info and registration: 072-329-0778. NIS 90/100


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