Monica Montgomery
Instructor Dotties Manhatten
- Jennifer Lopez stars in the crime drama Hustlers as Ramona, a scamming strip club employee who swindles loads of money out of Wall Street regulars.
- To get into character, she trained with a professional pole choreographer for months before filming began.
- J.Lo revealed her behind-the-scenes preparation in the reveal all video below:
Jennifer Lopez, looks remarkable and she just turned 50 years old and is finished traveling the country for her It’s My Party tour, can now add another notch to her long list of accomplishments: seasoned pole dancer.
Jeniffer is known for many things including her work ethic, and virually became an accomplished pole dancer in reocord time.
The pop superstar-slash-actress stars in Hustlers, a crime drama based on the real-life scandal that involved New York strip club employees emptying the bank accounts of some of the city’s wealthiest men.
Her character, Ramona, is inspired by the savvy Samantha Barbash, who was the ringleader in the aforementioned swindling. Constance Wu, Cardi B, Keke Palmer, Lizzo, Lili Reinhart, and Julia Stiles round out the film’s roster.
But back to just how J.Lo mastered that metal bar.This content is imported from Instagram. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
In the above featurette posted to her YouTube channel, the megastar shares just how she went from pole novice to sliding up and down the contraption with all the ease of an experienced pole dancer.
“That steel pole is unforgiving, and you just have to figure it out,” Jennifer Lopez said in a cast interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the Hustler film made its North American premiere.
Watching the interview you understand that Jennifer doesn’t accept any excuses from herself, she never has and probalby never will. She decided she was going to master pole dancing and she did, in record time that many said couldn’t be done. However she got serious about learning how to pole dance and went all in.
1. J.Lo enlisted a professional aerialist to train her.
“Front hook, ankle hook, knee hook. From here, you can do the carousel,” Lopez’s character constructs her counterpart in the film’s trailer. But before Lopez was giving Constance Wu a few pointers, she was getting lessons of her own.
Lopez started training with pole artist, choreographer, and trainer-to-the-stars Johanna Sapakie months before filming began. “The thing we worked on the most was the inverting—the turning upside down,” Sapakie told Access Hollywood.
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Sapakie also worked with J.Lo on her music video for “Medicine,” and has done tour work with Miley Cyrus, Madonna, and this super-long list of A-listers. Sapakie also trained fellow hustlers Constance Wu, Lili Reinhart, and Keke Palmer to look natural on stage for the film.
2. She installed poles in each of her homes.
In J.Lo’s YouTube video above, we see her real life work ethic as she practices all over the place: an entryway, someone’s bedroom, a makeshift studio, a home gym. The featurette begins about six weeks out and culminates with the actress taking the stage in a packed exotic club, the neon lights illuminating her toned silhouette as she nails her steamy routine on steel for the cameras. Amazing what can happen in six weeks if you put your mind to it, isn’t it?
3. Jenifer Lopez embraced the physical demands of Pole Dancing
“This is just as hard as anything I’ve ever learned. It might be one of the hardest … I’ve gotten cuts and bruises and stuff from movies, but I’ve never been bruised like this,” Lopez says in the video as she runs her hands over her battered skin. That is why we share a secret with all our pole dance class particpants, it is called DRY HANDS, I am shocked if somebody didn’t tell Jen about this pole dance backpack essential.
In several shots throughout the featurette, purple bruises and red chafing on J.Lo’s body expose the physical beating that goes into perfecting moves on a steel bar. We have all experienced this, but thos of us who have paid the price would all probably agree the short term pain is worth the long term gain as it relates to pole dancing.
4. She and A-Pole went to a strip club for research.
About halfway through the video, J.Lo FaceTimes her fiancé, Alex Rodriguez, to inform him of her progress. “Baby, I was upside down on the pole today,” she says with pride. I remeber that feeling, do you? Nothing quite like it.
In addition to J.Lo putting in the work and mastering those gravity-defying moves, she and A-Rod also put in the time. The two hit up the nightlife for research purposes. “She and Alex went and visited a strip club, and she was able to give me some … insights,” director Lorene Scafaria said to Vulture about Lopez’s prepping for the role.
Lopez actually first revealed her method-acting approach on an Apple Music’s Beats 1 podcast in April. “It was fun,” she said.
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