Why PoleMovebook exists
We're still in the early days of seeing what pole dance can become.
The more people who find their way into pole, the more innovators we get—more new styles, new tricks, new combinations of pole alongside other art forms. The ceiling for what pole dance can be is nowhere near reached, and I want to see how much more rad it can get during my lifetime.
So PoleMovebook exists to make pole knowledge as accessible as possible. Remove the barriers for beginners. Make discovery more easy at all levels. Because if more people have the foundation and the vocabulary to learn moves, understand transitions, and see what's possible, then they can reach their peak artistry, and pole as a whole can too.
Everything here was built (with love!) by fellow pole dancers, with no ads, no paywalls, no gatekeeping. Just knowledge freely available so the next generation of pole dancers can build on what came before and take this art form somewhere we haven't even imagined yet.
What PoleMovebook is
At its core, PoleMovebook is an online pole move dictionary. But the dictionary itself is just the foundation for all the incredible tools and features that PoleMovebook has to offer.
500+ moves (and growing) with names, images, difficulty levels, and transitions—the database behind all the other cool tools here.
See tricks and transitions in action to help you better visualize how moves weave together.
Seen a move but have absolutely no idea what it's called? Describe what you know—the number of hands on the pole, inverted or upright, whether a hand is grabbing a foot (it really helps!)—and it'll pull back all matching moves.
Builds combos from moves matching your input conditions. Great for warm-ups, choreography, or a fun game to play at pole jams.
Log the moves you know and save the ones you're working toward. You can use your account to limit the Combo Generator to only moves you know, to visualize your progress in the Skilltree, or to make your profile public and share your progress with your pole pals and instructors. Accounts also enable you to vote in the Community Difficulty rating on each move, which are used to toggle difficulties on the site and give dancers a more nuanced view of a trick's difficulty.
And the coolest account feature of all: the Move Recommender at the bottom of your profile looks at all the moves you have and suggests new tricks that would be right be up your alley.
Who maintains PoleMovebook
@poleywhirl here! I'm the database architect, web designer, illustrator, photographer, social media marketer (I should be fired from this one), dancer, and professional combo-watcher behind PoleMovebook.
As a diehard Spreadsheet Girlie, when I first started pole in 2014 I started maintaining a spreadsheet of every move I'd ever encountered along with their alternate names, contact points, and entries/exits. There were a lot fewer moves back then, but 3 years and 300 moves into that messy spreadsheet, I realized that the personal database I’d created had the potential to make pole a more accessible sport to beginners and to help dancers at all levels discover new moves. The more accessible our sport is, the more vibrant it becomes, so I wanted to turn my personal database into a resource available to everyone.
Today, PoleMovebook supports over 10,000 users every month. I'm so incredibly proud of what this project has become, even if the number of hours I've spent on it spiralled FAR past my wildest dreams. My favorite thing in the world is when someone reaches out to tell me how PoleMovebook has helped them. I've spent hundreds of hours doing drawings, thousands writing code, and a truly unfathomable number hunting down move names. I pay for hosting and server costs myself (which increase with more users!) and will continue to do so to keep this information accessible. Hearing about the impact this work has made on dancers worldwide means the world to me, and is the reason I do what I do.
Why it's free (and why it's staying that way)
PoleMovebook has been free and independent since 2021. No ads, no investors, no paywalls—just a tiny volunteer team of pole dancers and content-submitters who thought the community deserved something really good and decided to make it exist. It runs entirely on community donations from the people who use it.
If it's been useful to you, consider supporting it—even a small amount makes a real difference in making this project sustainable. And if financial support isn't doable, sharing the site with a dancer who needs it also helps support PoleMovebook's mission of enabling innovation.
How to support PoleMovebook
PoleMovebook is a labor of love, but it isn't free to run. The site hosting, database transactions, and feature dependencies all carry monthly costs.
The site relies on a broad base of community support to support running costs as PoleMovebook grows. Rather than charging a subscription fee that might lock people out, the site depends on small, voluntary contributions from the people who use it.
- If you use PoleMovebook regularly, consider a membership or contribution to the tip jar. It makes the project more sustainable and acts as a direct vote to keep this resource online and free for the next person who finds it.
- If you’re a student or instructor who has found inspiration here, sharing PoleMovebook with other dancers who need it costs nothing and matters more than you’d think!