If you’re wondering whether Siân Docksey can hang upside down by her thighs, while wearing six-inch heels, and also hold a hand mic, and tell great jokes, while literally rotating, let us save you some time: yes, she can. Oh yes, she can.
‘Pole Yourself Together!’ is a stand-up show, and also a pole dancing show. That’s a brilliant elevator pitch, of course, and there’s nothing wrong with a gimmick, but what Docksey has created is far more than that. The dancing isn’t a filler for a lack of comedic material, and the comedy isn’t there to stop her from having to dance. Both are a part of this show, and both are equally crucial.
It would be easy for a untalented dancer to make some lazy comedy out of pole dancing. It would also be crap. Docksey can make pole dancing funny precisely because she is a very good dancer indeed. She has to know how to do it right before she can do it wrong. She’s like Les Dawson in that sense, and in that sense only.
Her ability to switch in a blink from physical spectacular to farcical slapstick, from hot to hokey, is honestly breathtaking. She’s provocatively sexy and incredibly funny, often at the same time. This isn’t a high status show, though. Docksey’s vulnerability is sincere, and we’re invited on a journey with her as she explores it. There’s not a moment of laziness – either physically or artistically. Docksey won’t allow herself any easy outs or hack premises. Even when she introduces such moments of sincerity, she punctures them by pointing out the style of show that she is almost parodying.
Docksey exposes so much of herself in ‘Pole Yourself Together!’ – not like that, stop sniggering at the back – and her ability to do so whilst maintaining absolute control of both the story and the sentiment of the show takes real skill. ‘Pole Yourself Together!’ is about mental health, about loving (and hating) oneself, about sex and sexuality, about strength and weakness and, yes, also about pole dancing. That Docksey performs some of it suspended six feet in the air wearing a giant rubber parrot mask is almost incidental.
‘Pole Yourself Together‘ runs until Mon 28 Aug 203 at Pleasance Dome – 10Dome at 19:10