India’s New Fitness Obsession: Pole Dancing

With gyms closed in India during the pandemic, people looked to new forms of exercise at home. Many also looked for a new routine as life grew monotonous. Some Indians who had picked up pole dancing abroad tried to continue it by learning through online classes and posting videos of themselves that soon started attracting the interest of fitness enthusiasts nationwide.

Bhinderwala, 33, is India’s pioneering pole dancer. She took to the sport in 2016 when she was visiting her sister in Perth, Australia, and signed up for a course in pole dancing. She continued after returning home and eventually started teaching in Mumbai. Bhinderwala has been profiled in the Netflix series “The Creative Indians.” She has taught thousands of students and runs her own studio in Mumbai called Pole Burnt.

“I did not have any formal background or training in dance or sports, and it was pole dancing which introduced me to movement,” she told OZY. The best part about pole dancing, she says, is its versatility. Each person can treat it as it suits them — as a workout, a sport or as dance. “It builds body confidence and makes you understand that it’s not just about body shape but what your body is capable of,” she said.

Anusha Swamy, 31, a choreographer based in Chennai, a southern Indian city better known for its traditional forms of dance and music, started classical dancing when she was six. As a film choreographer, she has since been exposed to other styles. It was on a holiday to Australia that she, too, signed up for a pole dancing workshop to see “what she could or could not do with her body,” she told OZY.

Swamy loved it and, on returning to India, installed a pole at home. (Available in various heights and weighing around 44 pounds, poles are designed for easy home installation.) She began practicing — just as the pandemic was starting.

“Since I was anyway stuck at home, I improved my skills slowly and found that it gave me confidence and better control of my body and mind,” she said.

For many people in India’s patriarchal society, pole dancing is associated with sleazy bars. And because bare skin is necessary for generating enough friction to grip the pole, the sport can attract attention to athletes’ bodies, rather than to their skills.

“I knew that, culturally, many Indians were not comfortable with wearing skimpy clothes to practice,” Swamy said. So she worked with a group of friends to create a silicon-coated pole that allows people to gain better grip even while wearing more clothes than pole dancing typically allows. She started using the new pole last year in her workshops. It “made many women more comfortable, as they could wear the clothes they wanted,” she said. “Our workshops attracted a good mix of men, women and even kids!”

Indeed, Bhinderwala too has found a growing interest in pole dancing among Indian men. Having run classes with both women and men, she has observed a difference: “Though men are stronger generally and can muscle up, compared to women, in my classes the women far outperformed men as far as technique goes.”

Suraj Das, 31, a New Delhi advertising professional who took to pole dancing, says that although pole dancing is viewed as a feminine preserve, he finds it a graceful art that develops core strength and flexibility.

Still, Bhinderwala keeps most of her classes restricted to women, “as it affords them a safer space where they can perform without inhibitions,” she said.