Thems the Squeaks

This week’s updates:

The next Flight Club Pole Showcase has been set! It’ll be January 12 (a Saturday) at the same beautiful venue we used for the July one. We’ve opened registration for performers and have already gotten quite a few responses, from polers all over (New York, Maryland, Ohio). If you think you would be interested, SIGN UP! There’s no harm in it, and there’s nothing like putting together a performance and taking the stage to grow yourself as a pole dancer. More info and signup is available here.

I’ll be performing and teaching workshops this weekend in Memphis, TN at the grand opening party for Euphoria Studio! Then in October I’ll be performing and teaching at XPose in Annapolis, MD. If you’d like to sign up, come out, hang, or get a hug, take a look at my schedule to get the links you need.

I think most of you guys probably know (especially the ones who have taken my drops workshop!) that I looooove drops. They make sense in my brain, and I’ve never been scared of them. Well, that’s not true– there are some that freak me out, but those are pretty few and far between.

So at any rate, I was messing around the other day and came up with a drop that I hadn’t seen done before. I took a video of it and posted it on my Facebook page (if we aren’t friends already, my page is here). So this is the video that I put up (and click here if you’re reading this from email subscriptions and can’t see the embedded video below):

After I posted it, there were a few comments that went something like:

“OUCH!”
“Sounds like it hurts”
“Drops are so painful!”

And it got me to thinking. I know the squeak sound can be a little off-putting to some. But I did the drop, I didn’t feel any pain whatsoever. I didn’t lose any skin, and I’m certainly not a ball of raw gross oozing pus. So what does the squeak really mean, and why does it happen?

And my lovely and faithful friend, Google, sent the following information my way:

When you start to push one surface over another then frictional forces come into play and restrict the movement.

But if the pushing force is increased to reach the threshold point where it can over come the frictional force, it is then that the two surfaces slide over one another.

If one of the objects is elastic, as skin is, it will respond to increasing force by distorting.

When a fingertip is stuck on glass by friction, the skin is initially pulled out of shape by by the force attempting to move it, and then springs back closer to its normal shape once sliding starts.

But due to the change in shape, the effect of friction increases and the movement of the finger momentarily stops while the skin is pulled into a distorted shape once more. A steady pull will create hundreds of distortions per second, setting up audible sound waves

So, this is just like the physics behind how some people can make a glass “sing” by running their finger along the rim. We can’t see it, but the pressure and stickage of our skin on a surface (like the pole), and then the release of the skin as the skin is slid, creates little tiny disruptions in the air around us– which we interpret as sound waves. Pretty cool! And yet another example of how pole dancing keeps me learning every day!

And by the way– drops aren’t any more or less painful then any other pole move. Especially if you are using pressure at the right points of contact, rather than just friction to stop yourself. So next time you see an awesome drop, instead of hearing the “SQUEEEEEEEEEEEAK” and wincing inside, maybe instead you’ll think, “BADASS!”