By Audrey Van Buskirk

The Portland Tribune Oct 18, 2005

Call me Cayenne.

Establishing an alter ego isn’t something normally done at an exercise class, but you’re not typically encouraged to “smack your booty,” either (I did once attend a yoga class where the teacher instructed: “Breathe through your anus”).

Lori Midrano’s taut, trim figure is a good advertisement for Core Essence Studios, which the Pilates teacher and divorced mother of two teenaged children opened in August. You probably could bounce a quarter off several parts of her anatomy.

Her Southeast Portland studio offers Pilates, but it’s the pole dancing classes, the city’s first, that set it apart (though with the prevalence of strip clubs here, one could argue that plenty of people were getting the workout already).

Midrano says she heard about pole dancing a few years ago (it’s been been featured on “Oprah”), bought some books and tapes, and eventually became so enamored that she had a pole installed in her dining room.

“The S Factor: Strip Workouts for Every Woman” by actress Sheila Kelley is the bible, so to speak, of the stripper workout. Carmen Electra, who’s produced several DVDs (“Fit to Strip”), is its messiah.

Proponents claim the program works all parts of the body and offers the added benefit of getting women in touch with their sensuality, their inner Raven or Bambi.

I hadn’t ever perused any of the stripper workout canon, and I’d never had much appreciation for the skills needed to be a stripper. On the other hand, most strippers I’ve seen have been in pretty good shape.

It hadn’t occurred to me to be nervous about the class until I read this Anais Nin quote on the Core Essence home page:

“And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to blossom in front of a bunch of strangers.

My most recent “women’s empowerment” experience involved a women’s spa in Tacoma where your naked body is scrubbed nearly skinless under lights bright enough for brain surgery. The idea is that customers will feel inspired by seeing other women moving contentedly in just their skins through a series of soothing pools and hot rooms; I developed a rash that left me looking like Ukrainian President Viktor Yush-chenko after dioxin poisoning.

So I was skeptical that pole dancing would make me feel more womanly. While I’m not as hard-core about it as some people, I generally don’t think of stripping as a job that raises women up.

But the studio, on the lower industrial east side, is extremely comfortable and loftlike, with a high ceiling and wooden floors. There are no mirrors. The women, of surprisingly mixed ages and body types, wear tank tops and yoga pants.

A golden pole shines in one corner of the room.

Midrano’s friendly manner puts me at ease, and then she hands me a list of stage names. It helps, she says; women feel more comfortable having a new identity. I worry I’ll feel like an idiot, but I can understand that there probably aren’t a lot of women giving lap dances who call themselves Audrey.

Midrano goes by Gazelle, which is what an old boyfriend used to call her. There’s a Pandora, an India and an Azur.

After contemplating the possibilities: Blaze? Montana? Onyx? (I’m not entirely sure I know how to pronounce that one) I settle on Cayenne because, well, I like spicy food.
First stretch, then strut

The dancers straggle in, and Lori/Gazelle greets each enthusiastically.

She’s a true evangelist for the experience, with that excellent ability of a teacher to focus on an individual without losing sight of the class. And she really makes you feel like you’re beautiful and powerful, even if you trip on the way to getting your yoga mat.

The first hour of the class involves mostly moves I’m familiar with from yoga and Pilates mat classes, with the added element of being encouraged occasionally to feel the texture of our clothing or run our fingers through our hair.

The lights are low, and the music is loud. It’s strangely thrilling when Gazelle occasionally compliments Cayenne on excellent extension or something (not push-ups).

There’s a languorous quality to the class. It’s physically hard, but it’s gentle and relaxing, too, like something else typically done under dim lighting that involves taking your clothes off.

Once we’re deemed sufficiently stretched out, it’s time for the pole. Midrano says women are usually fascinated and/or repelled by it. There’s the allure of the unknown and the naughty.

I feel more concerned with crashing to the floor in a heap, especially once she shows us the tricks that look, basically, impossible.

If you’ve ever tried to use monkey bars as an adult and hung painfully unmoving as children flung themselves across like they were running toward an ice cream cone, you’ll get an idea of the challenge.

It’s hard to hold your body weight, let alone gracefully arc around the pole with one arm outstretched, knee cocked, hair flying, as you perform the move called the fireman, for example, gently spinning and fluttering to the floor.
Before the fall.

Midrano teaches the two-hour classes in eight-week series. This class, thankfully, is early in the session, so I’m not shockingly worse than the other students, except for Pandora, who has been a real dancer and after class puts her body through a series of contortions worthy of “Zumanity,” Cirque du Soleil’s “adult” performance.

I don’t think I could do a chin-up if there was a fire under my feet, but another student assures me that the momentum helps.

And it does. You grab the pole with one arm and walk around it suggestively a few times before doing the trick: leaping up to get some height, wrapping a leg around and spinning. For a brief moment I get it, and it does feel like flying.

Then I plop onto the floor.

But Midrano is instantly there, cheering “Good job, Cayenne” and demonstrating the sexy way to get up.

It’s all about your confidence and how you carry yourself.

I’m a person who tripped walking across the stage to get my high school diploma, flinging a shoe into the forehead of a fellow graduate’s father. I don’t think of myself as graceful.

But Midrano explains how to get up looking like you think you’re doing it sexily, even if you’re not sure how or if your arm is still attached.

After practicing more tricks, which are fun in a childlike way (“It’s a women’s playground,” Midrano says), we work on a little routine that involves a slouchy walk, sliding down a wall and ultimately slithering across the floor like cats toward a red velvet chair.

Ultimately, maybe I didn’t “blossom.” But I could climb a pole, and I walked out feeling stretched out and stripped down. I just couldn’t lift my arms for days.