This is Episode #1 of the new Off The Pole Podcast, featuring pole icon – Jenyne Butterfly!
She is a multi-disciplined artist who has won national titles in the US, as well as competed, performed and taught workshops all over the world. She currently lives in Las Vegas and performs in the Cirque du Soleil’s show, “MJ One”.
Really hope you guys enjoy the 1st episode in the podcast series – you can subscribe to our pole podcast on iTunes to keep updated with all the latest episodes and it would mean the world to me if you could leave a review!
Hit play above or read the transcript below. You can also check out the video version at the Off The Pole Youtube channel.
Sarah: Welcome, Jenyne. Thank you so much for doing my podcast.
Jenyne: Thank you for having me.
Sarah: I appreciate you taking some time for us. I’ve already done a bit of an intro on you, and I know that everyone in the pole industry already knows who you are unless they’ve been living under a rock for the past 10 years! I wonder if we could jump in and give you a bit of time to maybe explain a typical training week or a typical week in the life of Jenyne?
Jenyne: Okay. Everything changed when I went to the Cirque du Soleil show. The journey to get here was a lot different than being here, and it’s usually like that when you have a goal to achieve and you’re trying to reach deep into your possibilities of becoming the best that you can be. When you’re trying to grow and get better, and stronger, and more flexible, then it takes a lot more work than just maintaining. Right now, I’m just maintaining by doing the show. It’s 10 shows a week.
Sarah: Wow…
Jenyne: My two days off are Wednesday, Thursday, so Friday is my Monday, and that’s when I head into work. For me, it’s a lot better than the dancers and everyone else in the show who has a lot more rehearsals because they’re in a lot of group numbers, but since I’m a solo act, then I really only have one to two scheduled rehearsals a week, and then everything else is just on my own. Not having a rehearsal day, I go in at 5:00 pm, and then I’m out of there at midnight, so it’s a long evening, a lot of hours there, even though most of that isn’t actually physical activity. It’s a lot of makeup and in-between cues and different things like that, but if I have a rehearsal day, I’ll go in two to three hours earlier.
The days that I’m working, I have to prep food every single day, and I’m not a morning person anymore because I’m getting out of there at midnight, and then I’m not able to go to sleep until two, sometimes three. Our house is usually asleep until noon, and then we get up and I really only have enough time to kind of prepare for the workday. My weekends get really full with getting things done, just domestic things, like normal life stuff.
Jenyne: I try to spend some quality time with my son. I did, not too long ago, add every Saturday morning I teach at a new studio here called Aerial Athletica that is being run by Yukari. She is a pole artist that is performing in another Cirque du Soleil show here.
Sarah: So she understands the schedule quite a lot.
Jenyne: She understands the schedule, and she has a lot of company meetings and activities at the studio that she is really forgiving knowing that not every instructor can usually make it to those because just adding the Saturday class and keeping that consistent for me has been difficult. If I have a minor injury or something that I’m dealing with and I’m not in the show that night, I can’t teach class. I can’t do anything outside of the show if I’m not doing the show, but it’s fun. I’ve never had such a normal schedule where everything happens same time, same day, just week after week.
