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Virginia Marshall can do anything except pick herself up from the floor.

At least, that’s what she declares one morning in June after completing a dizzying, gravity-defying four-minute routine.

The grandmother of six can haul herself to the top of an 11-foot pole — her static, or sometimes spinning, partner. She can slide down, skin screeching against metal, until suddenly she stops, mere inches from the studio’s springy wood surface. She can launch herself from the ground toward the pole, catching it with only her knees.

But when Marshall is done, she sprawls on the floor, her chest heaving.

“You cannot rise gracefully at 67,” she says drily. “You just can’t.”

Tanya Christopher, her coach and the owner of Amorous Dance Pole and Fitness

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