There was a palpable buzz in the air at Tokyo Dome City on Dec. 9 as some 2,000 people — many dressed in their finery as if for the opera — awaited the first competitor's appearance at the 2010 International Pole Championship.
Where once pole dancing had a sleazy image due to its association with stripping, in recent years it has been reinvented as a fitness activity and a performing art that combines acrobatics and gymnastics executed on one or two shiny steel poles.
Ania Przeplasko, founder of the International Pole Dance Fitness Association that organized the Tokyo Dome City event, said she first saw pole dancing in 1998 when her job as a fashion designer took her to Osaka.