Fly high with Sky Sirens

Let us take you into a magical pink space, where girls turn into sirens.

Pole dancing and burlesque are not new in the world of fitness and exercise. Widely enjoyed by the public, pole dancing has increased significantly in popularity over the past few years, with petitions currently circulating to make it an Olympic sport. But in the Sky Sirens Surry Hills studio dancing is taken to a whole new level, with cheekiness and glamour being part of the dress code from the red lips of the teachers, to the pink and leopard wallpapers. Here, at Sky Sirens, the students discover their inner diva.

Once a week students strip down and defy gravity, prejudice and barriers. Learning tricks on the pole, dancing in sky high heels or flying up high in lycra helps them gain not only strength, but confidence. “We focus not on how your body looks, but rather on what it can actually do,” says the owner, Katia Schwartz, a dancer, aerialist, and former magician’s assistant. She realises pole dancing – especially the first steps; wearing minimal clothes for the first time (so you don´t stick to the pole) and using muscles you never knew existed, can be a bit intimidating.

After receiving feedback that the webpage was full of only “beautifully crafted females”, Katia created a project called ‘We are Sirens’, where students of different body types, genders and ethnicities can share their story. For some students pole dancing is still considered to be a taboo sport in their family, others are proof that self love and body positivity should exist for all.

“I do have a very high respect to where pole dancing came from,” Katia continues, however she admits that the stigma attached to pole dancing was an issue for her to overcome. “Some of the landlords didn’t want a pole dancing studio at their premises, just because of the stigma attached to it.”

Stigma or not, let’s have a sneak peak…