Watch Me

Words by Loïc Magliano
Images by Marie Marchandise

Closing my eyes, broken loops of lightning are still writing on my lids. These are now my memories of the stage, washing over my mind like a pink velvety canvas. In the dark, I treasure these already-sensory souvenirs. The cold touch of the pole on my fingertips, the sharp crack of the wooden floor after I take off. Seconds in, seconds out. What just happened? How can a performance keep on living? How can you preserve the ecstasy of the experience?

The more I breathe in, the more the weight of the emotions slows my pace as I walk backstage. After exhaling deeply as I remove my makeup, the creeping electricity tingling my muscles soon turns into fine grains of salt dissolving into air. As a sardonic kid would triumphantly jump when facing a gigantic wave, I collect my thoughts while opening the club's door. And then, I face it. 

Another gigantic billboard of another gigantic popstar: the distorted, mediocre reflection of a figure who should be ours. Like catching the perfume of your own friends on someone who was never invited.

But who am I to blame, actually? Aren't we all fed this way, enjoying the fruitiest juice of someone else's labor, only the label is now changed? Something they find more "polished," as they call it, after their grand theft of our creativity.

I can't help but snigger at this monument of hypocrisy, which I will surely meet again as I scroll online, hear in conversations, or see well framed in good old television households.

I let out my contempt, find my car in the parking lot, and move on.

 The jingle of my keys echoes so well the myriad of flashes I have with pole dancing. Small trinkets, each of them keeping safe the grandeur, the spectacle, the fall (many), the stress, the feathers, the strength, the flamboyance. 

What's more than recollecting is meeting. In the great ballet that meshes the craft of pole dance, you can never miss a step when you chance upon respect.

 I take a look at my phone, listen to a voicemail that touches my heart like a soft and tender love letter, and am already planning the next show inside my head.

I sink into my car seat, face bathing in the rays of sunshine. I smile, and I say out loud: "How on Earth am I actually here?" There are responses I still don't know how to articulate as clearly as when my movements shift. The intelligence of my senses does.

Who am I really? Watch me.

 Do I miss my chère motherland in Los Angeles? How would I miss something I have never known, the gaze of a country that simultaneously despises what is mainstream and what it pushes to the margins? I lost myself in the postcards France sells to tourists. Cancan, burlesque, cabaret, oui oui, quel cirque. The artiste maudit card is their favorite to play when they sit down for chess with fellow imperialists. I am the living proof that, while building, or at least trying to, an architecture of culture, you will only be barely saluted when the political agenda favors you. France feels like a bittersweet nostalgic tattoo. In every corner, I am sure you will find treasures, but gems without support are only twinkling bits of light scattered in a void.

 Why the United States? There isn't a direct translation of "pole dance" in French. We keep it in English. I guess I wanted to grasp the original fabric of my work with my bare hands and be part of it. I find it convenient to once again be in a position of being despised by a greater external sanitized gaze while feeling it pick my pockets for their randomly elected protégé.

If I am such an outrage, why are you dressing like me, moving like me, doing the exact same thing as me? An emotion is said to last only 90 seconds, yet the bitterness remains because I instinctively feel the danger widely circling me. I try to crush negative thoughts until I come to grips with them once again. Because if it isn't me who will suffer, someone else will.

 I listen to the voicemail once again. I know that from one performer to another, we don't need to be saved. We just need to grow bigger. The irony of pole dancing is that it seems like a simple addition of 1+1, you and the pole, yet there is an everlasting shining constellation guiding you. Holding your hands through tensions.

 I referred to this discipline as my work. It isn't. It's my expression, and how we, sex workers, performers, dancers, artists, introduce ourselves, wordlessly, intuitively. What matters isn't surviving harmful contradictions or freeing yourself from societal paradoxes. Just as in a performance, what matters is how you honor the other. Pole dancing finds its depth in every individual. Driven by fluidity, it is a brilliance that is channeled and preserved when we reach out to another.

 I will never know if we can paint our own fresco to strike back at the industries stealing from us. The bigger picture, I suppose, doesn't make sense. What does make sense are the artists who paint it, and the process: how we keep on coloring, again and again, spinning.

Loïc Magliano is an established creative entrepreneur who keeps adding hyphens to his extensive career with aerial arts, as a performer and teacher. The eight‑time medalist has chosen Los Angeles as his playground for the past year, where he continues to build and nurture a community of fellow pole dancers.

Marie Marchandise is a PR driven by curiosity and a strong interest in how she contributes to the ongoing narratives of her clients. Through strategic, editorial‑led campaigns, she creates connections between artists, brands, designers, and cultural spaces, translating creative identities into clear positioning and meaningful visibility.