Pole play is now working with:

Dry Hands The non-sticky gripping solution for hot, humid, or rainy conditions. Available to try at Pole Play Dance Studio.

Phenomenon Events & Productions Specializing in Weddings, Parties, Dances, Videography and Photography. They did our promo video too! Check them out at:

Scarlet Noir Photography For anyone interested in presenting their new moves for the camera, Kristy can get you some amazing shots for very reasonable rates. If you're interested, please inquire at Pole Play or visit her web site at www.scarletnoirphotographic.com

The following are some of the articles/interviews written about Pole Play Dance Studio since we opened:

For this teacher,a different classroom
by Jane Kwiatkowski
Peopletalk - The Buffalo News, April 1st, 2011

Chelsea (Green) Celotto has worked at a chocolate shop. She waitressed. She taught gymnastics. She was even a schoolteacher for six years before realizing that she wanted to work for herself.

In 2005, she opened a dance studio on Hertel Avenue. Pole Play is not your ordinary dance studio. It features lessons in pole dancing and other fitness-oriented dance (and is not about stripping). It draws women from ages 17 to 64, and a few men, too.

Born and raised in Kenmore, Celotto is fit and having much more than fun at age 40. She's in a burlesque troupe called Eye Candy, plus she go-go dances with a rockabilly band called Kickstart Rumble.

People Talk: Describe your fitness level.

Chelsea Celotto: High, being a gymnast for over 20 years. And then I coached gymnastics for eight years, but dance is my forte.

PT: How does that help you in other walks of life?

CC: The way you carry yourself -- your posture, your poise, your grace and elegance -- it really comes across. People notice your confidence. It's a huge boost.

PT: Tell me about your career in Las Vegas.

CC: Well, I was a first-grade teacher for a year. I was going through a divorce, on my own for the first time. It was an expensive move across country, so I would teach all day and dance at night on the strip for a few hours. I could go in for three hours and make a couple hundred dollars. It paid my rent.

PT: Why Las Vegas?

CC: I tried for 10 years to get a teaching job in Buffalo. It's so political I couldn't even get interviews after subbing for years. This was in the 1990s. And I'd been in Vegas before and loved it.

PT: What led to pole dancing?

CC: I danced exotically for 10 years, one in Vegas and nine in Buffalo. I never danced in a strip club, but I danced for an entertainment company. We'd have multiple stag parties booked, and we'd go with a bodyguard. I made enough money to buy a house.

PT: It's a tough business.

CC: I think a lot of girls who get into it don't keep a level head. They get into bad relationships with men. They get into drugs. I banked all my money and bought a house, but I was also a little bit older than the girls I was dancing with -- and smarter.

PT: You wanted to break the Las Vegas stereotype.

CC: It's hard to break because [strippers] reinforce it. I hate to bash strippers; I danced for 10 years, but I really have nothing nice to say about them. They're a whole different breed of people. I never felt like I fit the mold. I was way too classy to be categorized as that. I was too smart. I have a master's degree in education. I can make it through a sentence without a four-letter word. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't do drugs.

PT: So what about pole dancing?

CC: I always wanted to open my own business -- a little tea room or an antique shop -- but I couldn't really nail down an idea. I was watching the "Oprah Show," and Sheila Kelly from "L.A. Law" was on, and she had a part in a movie as a stripper. I couldn't believe the transformation her body went through training for the role, and she had opened a pole dance studio on the West Coast.

So I bought a pole, put it in my living room, took about three months to learn all my tricks I needed to develop a beginner, intermediate and advanced lesson plan. I quit my job and just started doing it.

PT: Going from school teaching to pole dancing is a huge leap.

CC: My teaching background is half the reason I am successful. I'm teaching different content, but I'm still teaching. I still need to reach out to the struggling student, recognize them in a group, and revise my lesson plan to make it easier for that student. And I need to challenge the advanced students, same as in a classroom.

PT: Do you have any male students?

CC: Yes, not straight men -- yet. Pole dancing is actually becoming quite popular with men. There are competitions all over the United States where the men compete separately from the women.

PT: Dancing aside, what do you do?

CC: I like to go to estate sales. I'm very involved in animal rights. I dog rescue for Pixie Mamas. I help with fostering, adoptions, home visits. I have a dog at home that I want to get certified as a therapy dog because I want to take him to Roswell.

I've been passionate about animals since I was little. I've been a vegetarian since I was little. I worked for Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen as an intern. There are so many unwanted animals.

PT: Do you have any children?

CC: No. I don't want any. I made that decision a long time ago. I like to travel. I've been to Greece, Australia, all over the United States.

POLE PEOPLE Town of Tonawanda woman opens area's first pole-dancing studio
By Stacey Shepard
Tonawanda News, January 13th, 2006

When Chelsea Green asked to put a strippers' pole in the living room of her husband gaver her a look.

But it wasn't a suggestive, raised eyebrow.

"He thought I was nuts," said Green, a 35-year-old Kenmore West graduate and former gymnast.

Never mind that her better half, a fireman, wasn't thrilled with the idea, or that the shin brass post seemed out of place amidst the antiques in the room. Green wanted to get in shape and dancing around a pole - yes, like a stripper - was how she planned to do it.

While pole dancing and strip teases were once purely for his pleasure, women are reclaiming the dirty dance as the newest way to stay in shape. The movement, which has taken off in Los Angeles and New York, has been led by celebrities such as Carmen Electra of "Baywatch" and "Teri Hatcher of "Desperate Housewives," and has been featured on "Oprah" several times as well as "The View."

Thanks to Green, the trend has made its way to the Buffalo area.

Seven months after "remodeling" the living room and teaching herself the seductive swagger from DVDs and books, Green quit her day job as a kindergarten teacher in Buffalo to teach women to become more fit and confident.

"Some people give you a look like, 'You do what?" she said of her new job. "But I tell them we wear sweatpants and sneakers and honestly work out. We're not just dancing around naked up here."

Pole Play, on Hertel Avenue, opened Sept. 19, Business is already busling, mainly due to the publicity the fitness craze has received.

"I didn't know that I'd be able to hold my weight off the ground and swing around the pole. The fact that I was able to do it amazed me," said Alexdria Hassan, a 20-year-old student at the University at Buffalo who takes classes at Pole Play. "It looks really complicated when you first see Chelsea do it, but hwen she breaks it down it's just a couple little steps and you can do it."

Amherst resident Julie Knapp has worked with a personal trainer and went to the gym for exercise in the past. But when she learned about Pole Play, she decided to change her routine.

"It's just a good time, it's not hurting anybody and it's something to do," the 27 year-old said. "Being all women, it's a nice, comfortable setting to be in. You don't have to get all dolled up to go there."

Most of Green's clients range in age from early 20's to mid 50's. Classes are offered for a viriety of levels. Green holds workshops once a month for those who want to try a class before signing on.

The studio also offers individual lessons and can be booked for parties.

Women take pole-dancing workout for a spin
By Anne Neville
Weekend Life - The Buffalo News, October 9th, 2005

It's all the rage in England, growing in New York City, and popular in California and, of course, Las Vegas.

Now pole dancing - as exercise, not entertainment - has come to Buffalo.

Chelsea Green, a 35-year-old Kenmore native with a master's degree in education, has opened "Pole Play" on Hertel Avenue near North Park Avenue to offer a challenging new type of workout. Pole dancing is the gravity-defying, sometimes suggestive maneuvering on metal poles that's practiced by strippers, but has developed into a fitness workout where the clothing stays on.

Green has lived in Hollywood and Las Vegas, where she danced professionally, but she taught herself to pole dance with just books, DVDs and a pole. After returning to this area in 1997, she quit her teaching job last summer to open Pole Play.

Her furst challenge, she knows, is overcoming the seedy, sleazy connotation pole dancing may have among some women.

"Everybody thinks it's dirty and what we're doing up here is crazy," she said. "I'm trying to get the word out that it is a fitness activity and not only strippers can do this, but everyday women can do it."

Green said the pole-dancing work-out "combines stretching, strength training and fat-burning cardiovascular exercise," and can be modified to be appropriate for any fitness level, age , body shape or size.

Strutting and spinning
Alexandria Hassan, 20, an Itaca native and a senior at the University at Buffalo, says she enrolled in the beginner class because "I wanted to get in shape and there's been a lot of good things said about it. It's supposed to increase your self-esteem, and I figured it would be a really good workout."

Although she says she's "always been athletic," and plays sports, "I've never , ever taken dance," says Hassan. But in Green's class, "I was amazed at what I was capable of. I was surprised I could hold myself up on the pole duing the moves where we had our feet off the ground. I didn't know I could move like that."

The Williamsville Continuing Education Department listed Pole Play workshops in its autumn brochure, but Green said when she called the Ken-Ton district, "They said, 'Absolutely not!; I said, 'I see your'e offering belly dancing, why won't you offer pole dancing?' but they just turned me down."

In her classes, Green starts students off with a variety of moves around the pole, form strutting ("Posture is important!") To spinning and even crawling on the mat under floor-to-ceiling brass-finished poles.

Advanced "tricks," as Green calls them, include the "fireman," in which the dancer grabs the pole with her hands, then hooks her bent legs around it and spins gracefully to the floor.

Some moves reseble those of belly dancers, with hip rolls, body waves and moves emphasizing the abdomen. But others are un-mistakably rooted in strip-club moves, as when Green grabs the pole, hoists herself upside-down and does a split in the air.

'A few neat tricks'
The studio is fitted with 6 poles, and Green says she can teach classes up up to 10 women at a time. Workout attire is recommended - Green taught the hourlong workshop wearing pink velour pants and a black T-shirt that read, "Have pole, will travel."

"Women have different reasons for doing this, wheater you want to stay in shape and it's a different alternative workout and something fun, or whether you want to boost your confidence, or wheather you just want to learn a few neat tricks," said Green.

Pole Play also offers Striptease Workout classes, in which participants peel off the sweats they wear over shorts and a tank top. The moves in that class, Green said, are "a lot like pilates. I've been doing it at home, and I just can't believe how sore I am the next day just from moving slowly and stretching and holding the moves, and at the same time it's very sensual."

Hassan, who also took the striptease class said the next day, "My abs today hurt really bad. But it's a lot of fun."