Coming from a classical/modern dance background, dancing barefoot doesn’t feel unfamiliar to me at all. It’s your connection to the ground, the place you use to push off, through, feel the weight shift, toes spreading for balance. Your bare feet become your sensors and your support. Then, once I started to pole dancing I tried adding a pair of 6-inch heels for no other reason that it looked cool and sexy. Holy crap! It was a bit more challenging than I thought. I wanted to spare my instructor the pathetic “drunk walk” trying to keep my balance around the pole so I asked her, what to do? “Go home and clean your house”, she said. Ok, I thought, but my house is already pretty spotless (yes, I’m a neat freak). She quickly added, “Do things you normally do in your heels to get comfortable in them and before you know it, they will feel like slippers.” She was right, after scrubbing floors, swiffering, vacuuming, scrubbing the bathtub for a few days in my clear heels I was a pro. My boyfriend was in heaven for a week: a girlfriend who served dinner in a pair of clear heels. It didn’t take long until I swung around the pole in my platforms feeling sexy and cool. Ever since, I’ve grown to love wearing heels whenever pole dancing. But just because I’m a heel fan doesn’t mean that everyone is. Some people have emailed the USPDF to ask why they make the competitors wear minimum 5-inch heels in the compulsory round. I asked the founders, and this is what I got: “USPDF adds on elements such as movement criteria and costume requirement in order to challenge to the competitors. And it is the challenge that makes competition. If there were no guidelines, rules or regulations it wouldn’t be a competition. They’re also not trying to deny the origin of pole dance having roots in exotic dance clubs where high heels are common. And most dance styles keep one or more elements of its original idea although the idea might have shifted throughout time from being functional to technical, or simply aesthetic. Just like ballet kept the tutus, and hip hop the sneakers, and belly dancers bare bellies, USPDF insists on keeping the high heels.” Although I never questioned it before, but I think it’s a great idea of the USPDF to include the heels! I never thought about heels actually having a significant history in today’s pole dancing, which I’m happy to embrace (in all different colors and heights). So therefore, I’m going to go home and proudly hang my first pair of platform heel next to my pointe shoes on the wall as a reminder of my first pair of “pole dance shoes.”