" title="Andrea James Lui"> Andrea James Lui

I was recently in Vancouver to visit my mucho-prego sister and ended up experiencing a series of revolutionizing events. I love Vancouver, not just because of the rock climbing in Squamish or the fact that my sister just gave birth to the first grandchild in our family, but because she lives so close to Tantra Fitness!

I went to a couple of open practices and a tricks class at Tantra last summer, while I was in town for my sister’s wedding, and although it was amazing to try the Russian splits – which I still hold is the scariest pole move ever – it was nothing compared to the few weeks of training I had this summer.

I was eager to get into Tantra so that I could continue shooting videos for my Tricksy Tuesdays on YouTube. I had consulted their online schedule and planned out my 3 weeks of training, but for the first day I had hoped to pole, there was nothing on the schedule but “TGIFF”. There was no clear description of what that was, but it was only $5 to drop in, so I thought: I’ll just show up and maybe they’ll let me jump on a pole!

It turns out, TGIFF is a full blown party – they had a plethora of snacks, wine & cocktails, free manicures, and a dozen pole & circus performances. I recognized Tammy Morris (owner of Tantra Fitness and organizer of the Canadian Pole Fitness Championships) from Tantra’s website, so I introduced myself with reference to a series of emails we had exchanged, which included one she had just sent inviting me to compete in the Ontario Pole Fitness Championships. She was immediately enthusiastic that I had qualified and encouraged me to train at Tantra as there were only 3 1/2 weeks until the Ontario competition.

I was lucky enough to see Ricky Pang perform that night and remembered him from that tricks class with the Russian splits the summer prior. Back then we had both been training for less than a year, so I was jaw-droppedly-awestruck when I saw how strong and powerful his performance was that night.

When I came back for an open practice session, ready to start choreographing my competition routine, I was ecstatic to see Ricky there, as well as the current Canadian Pole Fitness Champion 2012, Veronica Solimano, AND the first-ever Miss Pole Dance Canada 2010, Crystal Lai. It was a veritable who’s who of Canadian Pole.

I asked Crystal for some comp tips and received my first KEY piece of information: TRANSITIONS NEED WORK. The next pivotal event was when Veronica overheard me inquiring about additional practice times and invited me to train with her & the other BC Pole competitors. We connected on good ol’ Facey and she sent me her entire training schedule!

Tantra had a complete roster of competitors: Rebekah for amateur, Leah for semi-pro, Vanessa for pro, Ricky for men, Veronica & Diana for doubles… and although it was extremely nerve-wracking to be urgently choreographing a routine for my first competition, surrounded by a brand new group of people, while my sister could go into labour any day, I immediately felt welcomed and supported by the whole Tantra team.

They urged me to join in performing our routines for each other and Tammy even organized an afternoon to give all of us feedback, during which she dropped the next nugget of knowledge on me: TOO MANY TRICKS = NOTHING MEMORABLE. The most flattering part of this feedback was that Tammy compared my routine to how Veronica used to choreograph: it was so jam-packing with non-stop tricks that by the end, you couldn’t recall anything that had just happened. She suggested cutting out some tricks and prolonging others, so that there’s time to digest and appreciate what’s happening.

By the end of my visit to Vancouver, I had a newborn nephew and time for one more training session – a private with Crystal. She helped me streamline my choreography, smoothing out transitions, and removing & replacing a few tricks – but the overwhelming and final piece of wisdom with which I left Vancouver was this: WHAT’S YOUR STORY? It was a page straight out of theatre school. The questions Crystal asked me had nothing to do with the difficulty of my tricks or the elaborateness of my acrobatics. She asked: What’s your theme? Who’s your character? Tell me a story… and bring a teddy bear. So I did:

Thanks to Stef for this video!