What do heavy metal and pole dancing have in common?

Not a whole lot, actually. That is until Calgary metalhead and amateur dancer Monika Deviat decided to fuse the two together.

“Pole Junkies dances at Snatch [Rock Bar] right now. Fridays and Saturdays from 10 to 12. We perform. They have poles on the bars. We just kind of dance and advertise for ourselves, and so I’ve been doing that. And I book all my shifts around metal shows, and sometimes I’ll go to a metal show afterward. And I thought, ‘Why do I have to go from one to another?’”

The gears a grinding, Deviat approached her instructor Alena Downs, who also owns the Calgary-based dance school, with an idea for a show featuring local metal bands and pole dancers on the same stage.

“She thought it was a great idea. It’s definitely a good promotion for her. It’s a whole different audience for her. She’s never done something like this.”

Getting some of the other girls on board was another thing.

“I’m taking them out of their comfort zone,” she laughed, adding, “To the best of my knowledge, there aren’t really any metalhead pole dancers.”

Except for Deviat. She first got interested in pole dancing as a form of exercise last September.

“I found that I couldn’t really keep myself going to the gym. I wasn’t very interested in it. It wasn’t a very good environment. But with pole dancing, you learn some crazy tricks, which everyone seems to think are very cool, and you learn some routines.”

According to Deviat, it’s just like any other dance class, or even gymnastics, given the physicality and flexibility required for some of the moves, like how to sit on a pole, “which leads to many other tricks.”

“We also learn stretching exercises, inverts, we learn holds.”

One of the moves she’s learning now is called “Superman.” Imagine Deviat holding herself perpendicular to the pole, facing the ground.

“One arm is behind, holding the pole, and the other grip is between the legs.”

This and other moves can be witnessed at Snatch on July 26 in between Alberta metal acts We Found the Body, Divinity and Sacred Ally.

And not only is this a first for Deviat’s instructor and the other dancers who will performing that night, but it’s a first for Snatch. The venue does host live music, but rarely as heavy as this.

“I had sent them the bands that I wanted to bring in and I expected them to check out their MySpace pages, check out the links, but I guess no one did. Eventually, someone said something about it. They asked, ‘How heavy is this?’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s metal. It’s heavy.’”

She assured them the event would bring in a crowd and – if all goes according to plan – they might just let her do it again.

Aside from convincing Snatch after the fact, she had to find a PA system.

“Thankfully, Sacred Ally has their own, which is one of th reasons I picked them. They’re great, too, and they have a good draw, but it’s handy that they also were going to be helpful,” she smiled.

“I also had to figure out exactly how many bands I could get there, and then I had to figure out how many girls I could have dancing. There’s also the logistics of getting bands on stage, off stage, poles on stage, offstage and then band again.”

As the show draws nearer, Deviat is busying herself with spreading the word and picking out songs for the rest of her dance troupe to choose from “because not many of them are familiar with the musical style.”

“I’m giving them a variety, and I’m trying to pick some songs from local bands that are danceable,” she says.

When it comes to choreography though, each dancer will build her own routine.

“We’ve been building our own routines and learning how to put our own together, and most of us are in level six and doing intermediate routines,” she explains. “It’s a group routine showing off some of our more advanced tricks, so you’ll probably see that that night.

“Some great metal and some really cool pole dancing. I mean, it’s pretty self-explanatory: metal and pole dancing.”