With abs like Olympians and skin like hide, pole dancers are besieging the Edinburgh fringe. We meet four high-flying, physics-defying acts tackling everything from New York\u2019s underbelly to neurodiversity<\/p>\n
If you tell someone in Edinburgh you\u2019re going to see a pole dancing show, they might direct you towards the so-called Pubic Triangle, where the city\u2019s strip clubs are. But there\u2019s more to pole dance than that \u2013 and it\u2019s popping up in theatre shows across the fringe this year. Not only do these acts show off amazing physical feats, they also tell stories that range from one woman\u2019s HIV diagnosis, to the relationship between a neurodivergent mother and son.<\/p>\n
Since the boom of the 1990s, when Zoe Ball famously had a pole in her living room, pole has been taught at dance studios, has become a competition sport \u2013 there\u2019s a campaign to get it into the Olympics \u2013 and made its way from cabaret stages to theatres. It\u2019s an impressive and fiendishly difficult art.<\/p>\n
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