[Ned Oliver | Richmond Times]

Melvin Sanchez has worked as a dancer and gymnast for most of his life.

But about five years ago, on a break from a rehearsal with Dogtown Dance Theatre in Manchester, he found his calling when, on a lark, he jumped onto a light pole and started doing tricks.

A friend watched, stunned, and insisted he sign up for a pole dancing class.

“I went and I just fell in love with it from the very beginning,” he said.

Now 41, Sanchez won two national titles and competed in two international competitions organized by the Pole Sports and Arts World Federation, most recently last month in Lichtenstein.

In videos of his winning performance, he dances dramatically around the pole before leaping on, wrapping his arms around and spinning.

Pole sports is a relatively new field that, yes, is distinct from the pole-related performances that more typically take place in dark clubs.

Sanchez, who describes himself as a pole athlete, said it took him a little while to get over what he initially perceived as a stigma surrounding his new-found pursuit.

“People just think you’re twirling around on a pole, stripping,” he said. “That’s what everybody thinks at the very beginning.”

And when he installed a pole at the gym where he instructs gymnastic in Ashland, people wondered. “Everybody said, ‘What is this pole doing here?’”

Sanchez said he doesn’t worry about it anymore.

Pole sports combines elements of dance with gymnastics. At competitions, the athletes are judged both subjectively on the beauty of their performance and on their ability to perform required moves; for instance, the ability to hold a perfect split on the pole for two seconds.

Sanchez won his first national title in 2015 and again in 2016. At his first competition in worlds in 2016, he came in fourth.

Late last year, as he rehearsed in Ashland ahead of the 2017 world championships in Lichtenstein, he said his goal was to improve the artistic elements of his performance.