After School’s “First Love”: A Pole Dancer’s Review

After School’s hot new video was brought to my attention several times from friends all over the internet, for one simple reason: in the MV, all the girls dance and play around with a pole. And I’ve been a pole dance student for almost a year now.

Pictures of the girls training, covered in bruises all over, also made the news on several websites, and while there were people shocked at the degree of damage on the team’s legs, I sat back in my chair, smiled affectionately and thought: “Oh, sweethearts, welcome to my world. All in a day’s work  for a pole dancer”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RjXXSsVNncQ

But let’s get to the video itself: the song was captivating, and the performance also was really good, considering their training probably went from zero to choreography worthy skills in a short amount of time.

Another thing that made me smile a lot were the stockings and the conveniently placed fake tattoos to cover up and mask the worst bruises, the ones that simple make-up will not win against.

Getting a bit more technical, it wasn’t very surprising that most of the moves were either beginner level or done the beginner’s way –for example hanging back from the pole with a bent leg to ensure stability, or doing the cradle spin with one leg still tucked to the pole, or doing what my teacher calls the “angel” spin starting with both arms already on the pole and only dipping the legs sideways. Still, as I said: long way to go, for a short period of training, so it was really impressive anyway, especially considering how painful to learn some movements are, since sometimes it’s moves the body isn’t even supposed to make.

The only thing that had me perplexed was the high heels throughout the video, it was probably a natural thing for the audience and it’s understandable from an entertainer’s point of view, but a true pole dancer will always prefer to dance barefoot –and in fact there were a couple barefoot scenes in the video– because bare feet a sort of mark for the real acrobatic pole dance.

Aside from that minor detail, though, it was exciting and inspiring to see a pole performance in a K-pop video, it made me feel a little closer to Korea and also proud of the girls’ tasteful and fascinating performance.

Cheers to After School and all K-pop fans who also love to pole!