The day I took a chance on a dream.. And succeeded.

So four months ago I took a giant leap of faith and entered myself into an amateur pole competition miles away from home. “Why the heck not?” I thought. Newly single, I was all too excited to throw myself into a whole new experience. My pole mates and I agreed that entering an international pole competition would be a really cool life milestone, even if I didn’t win.

Four months flew by and I finally landed in Sydney on a chilly winter’s day last week, alone for the first time in a foreign land. No one was going to hold my hand here so I figured my way around all the pole studios and competition venue, and worked out my own training routine in Sydney. I nearly killed myself walking from my hostel to Pole Dance Academy Redfern.. It was freezing cold that day and I had misjudged the walking distance on the map. (I soon learnt that roads that look seemingly short in the map are, in fact, not, in Sydney streets. The tiny island of Singapore has pampered me.)

Anyway, competition day arrived. I turned up at the venue, a nightclub in Oxford Street,  two and a half hours before show time and looked at my stage for the first time. There were two spinning poles (yay! I mentally altered my routine to include a second pole), and the ground was a little uneven and probably stained with alcohol thanks to events from night before. Ummm, all righty. I’d have to work with that, then. All good.

Pretty decent stage if you ask me! I was just happy to be given 2 poles and relatively more floor space. Huzzah!

I didn’t get a chance to rehearse my routine in full, because of the shortage of time, and it turned out that the hair and makeup lady couldn’t make it at the last minute. Oh well. I worked with the limited styling knowledge I had, and the end result turned out to be pretty decent! So it looks like I’ll be doing my own stage hair and makeup for all future competitions/performances. Unless I decide to come in as a crazy character and need help looking like an alien or something.

So fast forward to show time and it was finally my turn. I didn’t feel much jitters because this was a crowd of total strangers to me, and I had nothing to lose. The music began and I was off. Everything was going smoothly until… I misjudged the distance of the pole and toppled over from a badly attempted handstand. Crap.

In my head, it was over. I wanted to try and get up into the handstand again but something told me it wasn’t gonna happen and the seconds were already ticking by. FINE. I flashed the audience a million dollar grin and finally made use of the #1 performance tip that every girl at our studio swears by: keep calm and body roll. And body roll like a fiend I did. The crowd went wild. I finished my performance (a little despondently, though), blew the audience a kiss and strutted off the stage like I’d done nothing wrong at all.

(Edit: Just included performance video, watch it!)

I watched the rest of the competition, although I was pretty darn sure I had blown my one and only chance to impress the judges. Good lesson to learn, no doubt, but it was a painful one.

The rest of the night was fun, tongue-in-cheek and totally wild. Aussie pole dancers are really a different species altogether, tastefully and unapologetically raunchy! It’s true: ‘pole fitness’ and ‘Olympic pole’ would not approve of this, but who cares? This is what real pole dancing is all about. Yawns to sporting pole! Get a chin up bar.

So the competition finally came to an end with the announcement of results. I stood at the back, listening to Shimmy as she announced the winners, and was TOTALLY SHOCKED when she called out “Miss Folly!” for second place. Say what? How? I was in a daze as I pushed through the crowd to get on the stage, suddenly engulfed by hugs from the organisers and presented with a sash. My first sash!!! People were screaming congratulations into my ears, saying how much I deserved the position, and all I could think was: Geez, I guess no one really cared about that misstep.

I won’t really know for sure what went on in the judges’ heads that night, but I do know for a fact that showmanship put me in the top 3. My instructor Vivienne always said, “No one knows your routine but you. So even if you make a mistake, don’t show it. Just look at the audience and pretend that you meant to do it!”

So thank goodness for all the X-Factor classes I took with my instructors – these classes trained me into a decent amateur performer.

Surrounding myself with, and getting advice from former champions really helped too. Speaking to the likes of Porsche (MPD Australia 2013), Naoko (MPD SEA 2012 amongst many others haha) and even my former BJJ instructor (who’s got world championship wins under his, er, black belt) helped me to understand what I could work on, and even motivated me. It’s always good to surround yourself with people you want to be like, right?

It’s amazing and totally ironic how I decided to give an international competition a shot for the first time, and ended up getting Second Place as a result. Perhaps this is true proof that when you put yourself out there, something’s bound to wait for you at the end of the journey. And it’s gonna be something unimaginably good. (:

So here I am in my sash, shamelessly posing on my flight back home to Singapore. Gotta be glad that no one was sitting in my row!

Now, then. Time to give my poor, overtrained body a well-deserved rest! And get back to BJJ classes, I miss the sport like crazy!