Neurodivergence and Pole

Todays blog is a 2 parter. It started out as an interview with Neuro Divergent Polers “Gothic City Sirens”, discussing all things Pole, Horror and Autism, and in the course of the interview I got rather excited and slightly giddy - messaging my research partner in crime late at night with exclamation marks and expletives…

“there’s some really important stuff coming out of this which needs researching more. I think we are on to something”

So before I get stuck in to what we uncovered, as with all good qualitative researchers, I will identify myself and my place in this particular area of my research as it sits quite closely to my heart.

I am married to the worlds geekiest horror geek and self confessed horror snob. Lover of Italian and Hammer Horror, who dabbles in a little Rob Zombie and Rob Carpenters Halloween. I, on the other hand, was raised on Stephen King, Twin Peaks and Hammer by my Horror obsessed grandmother who I am sure would have divorced my grandfather like a shot if Bella Lugosi became available. We are both squarely one foot in grunge and goth music camps and have a little shrine in our home dedicated to “Uncle” Al Jorgensen. (A metaphorical one currently but this is subject to change of course) and can identify all too deeply with the philosophy of “every day is Halloween”.

The tragic death of Sophie Lancaster and the near fatal attack in her boyfriend in Bacup Lancashire 2007, was the “potential inevitable” that we navigated every day of our teenage lives throughout the 1990’s - being let out of “the back door” of our night clubs for “our safety” because of baying “skin heads” who were waiting for the club to close so they could go “goth bashing” (which I am sure was not helped by the media coverage of the columbine Massacre and general belief that we are all devil worshipping weirdos. Which of course we all are not. Some, maybe. But not all.) We were the weirdo’s, the freaks, the moshers. And as devastating and horrific as that event was, it took that attack to draw awareness to the inequalities we had faced as a sub culture for so many years before.

In the mid 2000’s things started integrating more. “My” music was becoming integrated into more mainstream settings. I was rocking up to dance classes and hearing Nirvana, Metallica and Korn. Everyone suddenly knew who Nine Inch Nails were, and my once highly coveted Band T shirts started appearing in shops like River Island and New Look. Cross overs between film scores and rock artists meant that the reach of ‘my’ music was extending further than before. But the connection and the relationship with the genre didn’t cross over. The life saving licks and lyrics; the heart wrenchingly familiar narrative of loneliness, loss, not fitting in - non of this carried through and we were left with some (really rather very beautiful) poster boys and radio friendly edits that were consumed by mass media in the same nonchalant fashion as their pop music counter parts.

So, in a Pole world of glitter, feathers and thongs you can see why I would instantly be drawn to Gothic City Sirens. The name alone has my attention. Where is Gothic City and can I move there? I first met them at a wonderful pole competition called Heir To The Chrome run by the super duper Pammie Cameron. As if I wasn’t already hooked on their name and aesthetic they then went on to openly disclose to the team that they are both on the Autistic Spectrum. I watched their performance with interest and intrigue - my academic and limited personal experience of autism in the family, how on earth will they both manage being on a live stage in front of people? How will they communicate to the audience? More importantly what music will they chose and what nods to horror will they channel! Sooooo many questions.

Thankfully I was able to catch up with them after the competition to ask all these questions and more as part of my research into the power of Pole on peoples mental health. They were able to reflect on the recent competition experience and how inclusive Pole really can be. devastatingly for me, call out Pantomime faces and “stage presence” (which I do exceptionally well in Pole routines” and devastatingly for my husband - only include one hammer horror film on their top 10 list!

Gothic City Sirens (she/her) are a doubles Pole act, shared an egg in utero, are Pole dance instructors and Film Crew on Indie Horror films, and when they are not busy teaching they are writing for When in Chrome magazine. Their “day job” is writing horror fiction and true crime articles and they have had work published in the UK, America and Australia “horror is pretty much our life!” They proclaim. Currently, they are working on their own Indie Horror Film which is due to start filming in the Autumn.

Pole Procrastination

When I caught up with them, they had mostly been watching the Commonwealth Games. As successful competitors themselves with a string of Pole comps ahead of them, you’d think having six weeks between Heir To The Chrome and London would mean plenty of time for perfecting their routine “in reality, we’ve been sat on the settee, watching the Commonwealth Games, feeling really inspired, then waiting for the two week countdown to start panicking and preparing” they tell me. “The disadvantage of being ND is getting so overwhelmed with coming up with a routine that we procrastinate to the point where we finish the routine three days before the comp. For Yorkshire Pole Championships, our first full run through was the rehearsal on comp day. Each time we say we’ll be more prepared, but we can’t do it.”

And they are not alone in their procrastination. Many people with Neuro Divergence struggle with procrastination. However, it can be argued that many people with Neuro Divergence are blessed with procrastination. It is unfair to assume that planning and scheduling to Neuro Typical standards is the expected goal for ND’s. With their brains being hard wired entirely different, to expect the same processing and functioning speeds as NT’s would be unfair. In recreational pole (and in the fitness industry in general) we tend to promote motivational behavioural activation with clients. Get it done now, don’t put it off till later, you can create your own destiny. But what if we changed that language and rhetoric? What if we valued procrastination as an invaluable space to gather inspiration, collect our thoughts, develop our mind set. For Gothic City Sirens their procrastination brings inspiration for their elaborate Horror themes. Combining their 2 special interests together into one hobby - which ND brains tend to adore.

Pole Passion

It’s a long standing misconception that all people with autism have special gifts or talents (we call this Savant and it is a separate diagnosis which can present co-morbid with ASD), however what we do know about ND brains is that they like to have a special interest, and that with this special interest can come a complete dedication and fascination sometimes to obsessional proportions. We aren’t sure why this is, some say it is a coping strategy the brain finds solace in. For Gothic City Sirens, their specialist interests have changed over the years from horse riding and now lie in Horror and Pole, and their lives are dedicated to learning everything there is to know about both.

“Our Autism means we are of course, obsessed with pole, we watch it on Instagram a lot, remember all the names of the moves, and have done many instructor courses and studied a lot of physiology courses just so we can be good at it.”

Being an ND welcoming studio will bring some of the most dedicated polers you could ever wish for. Tenacious and determined.

Pictorial Pole

The structured style of learning Pole has potential to appeal to ND brains more than other forms of exercise. The pictorial and manualised approach to learning Pole has potential to support ND students more than other forms of exercise which rely largely on auditory learning whilst instructors bark orders at you, no matter how well informed those orders might be.

As studios we can support our ND clients with the use of pictures and manuals (such as The Pole Bible) around the room, where clients can go to check in during the session or work through in their independent practise. Add to this a list of top Instagram pages to follow such as The Pole physio or Polestructions who beautifully break down movements and combos for you to follow, and even go as far as to point out what an average student would look like in comparison to a potentially misleading Instagram universe.

With this in mind it is worth recognising that what we put into the Cyber Pole Universe should be realistic and accurate, for example not portraying certain moves as simpler than they are for example intermediate poses or combos with a “beginners” hashtag.

 Hiding behind pole

Gothic City Siren’s acts are Gothic Horror masterpieces with a nod to the macabre yet grandiose history of Hammer Horror. Limited only by time and budget, their props and set are made by hand and cleverly used as a way to manage their social anxieties. In their Heir To The Chrome routine, they start on stage inside home made coffins.

   “We love Hammer Horror! Our coffins would have been epic if we’d had a bigger budget! As it was, we built them using a timber skeleton frame and our bedsheets. Which reminds us, we need to buy new bedsheets. We always have a surplus of wood from making animal enclosures. We had to shorten them as they didn’t fit in our small van and had to leave out making lids to kick off as they had to be portable. They were going to be sturdy enough for us to do acro on top of them, but that would’ve been expensive. We also wanted to set up a graveyard scene with all of our fake headstones but that would have taken a little while to set up. A smoke machine would have been cool! And would’ve hidden our flexed feet from the judges. Something to think about. We’d planned to make an elaborate gothic mirror for our Bad Habits routine but we never got round to it. We plan to do a Jekyll and Hyde routine, but we need to find scientific equipment. Without time and budget constraints, our stage set would resemble a Tim Burton or Guillermo Del Toro”

Whilst they tell me that they hate being the centre of attention, and being on stage is absolutely terrifying. Gothic City Sirens feel like competition pole is a natural step for them. “Being writers, we love the creativity side of it. We think BIG! We love the process of coming up with ideas, themes, sets, etc. And we really want trophies.”

Gothic City Sirens go on to tell me how they use their themes and performance style as a way of hiding or ‘masking’ their anxieties.

“The bit [at the end of competitions] where everyone is on stage at the end is awful. We try to hide behind others. Being on stage is terrifying, however having our coffins means that we get to hide and to calm ourselves as the performance starts. All our routines need to start with us in coffins! We might make them a permanent feature, whether the routine calls for it or not.”

As the interview progressed we learned that literally hiding from emotions on stage  was just the tip of the masking ice-berg.

The audience - connection paradigm

We reflected together on the idea that bringing Horror to Pole has enabled their ND Brains to engage in performance on stage in a way that other dance styles cannot.

“Quite possibly! We hadn’t thought of it that way. Horror is such a huge part of our life that it felt natural to bring it to pole, but that makes sense. We can’t do the fun, sparkly pop routines that others can, because those involve a lot of audience interaction and facial expressions, whereas horror is less cheesy smiles and more dark and brooding. If we tried cheesy smiles, we’d look like Pennywise! We also can’t do the lyrical emotional pieces, because we don’t feel those emotions so wouldn’t be able to portray them convincingly, or do the required facial expressions. We wouldn’t look pained, or grief-stricken, we’d just look annoyed :D What we CAN do is weird and creepy.”

Connection with an audience is a huge part of performance on stage and makes the judging criteria for most Pole competitions. “Audience connection” is a broad and sweeping term which in theatre can range from breaking the third wall and interacting with the audience to giving a performance that resonates with those who watch it. Of course what we connect with differs hugely from person to person, and a range of factors play into this from music chosen, costume, theme and how far the performer goes with that third wall.

When I studied theatre at undergrad level there was an entire semester dedicated to not breaking the third wall. Don’t look at the audience, imagine they are not there. Whereas in musical theatre class it was the opposite. Find someone and sing to them, crack a joke in the direction of the audience to encourage a response. Stylistically we can engage and “relate” in so many ways without singing towards or making eye contact with the audience. Some of my most intimate experiences as an audience member have been passive participation. That is, the performer has had an experience on the stage irrespective of whether I am there or not, and my witnessing that experience has been almost voyeuristic, uncomfortably close with the boundaries of consenting blurred.

Is Gothic City Sirens’ ND preventing a “connection” or are we judging “connection in too restricted a sense? As an appreciator of fine Horror I was able to connect with them - yet their feedback suggests the judging panel didn’t (or couldn’t) feel it.

Perhaps it is time to reconsider what we connect with ourselves and how we connect to others before we can assess someone else’s connection on stage? Are our performance connections so formulaic that we feel uncomfortable when presented with a new way of connecting? Is the audience-connection paradigm that Gothic City Sirens experienced on stage, a direct translation of the communication barriers they faced growing up as undiagnosed Autistic Kids in the 90’s?

In part 2 Gothic City Sirens tell me how that felt for them growing up, the barriers they faced (and over came) and we present some interesting thoughts about how Pole dancing may have played a part in managing their co-morbid mental health and autism.