"Polar Vortex" is a series of small gouache drawings, which depict pole dancing. I address here the idea of pole dancing as a form of healthy exercise. It is within this obvious cultural shift that lies at the crux of my interest. Consciously I am trying to sympathetically depict my female forms as struggling and striving. Unconsciously I am probing my own role as a heterosexual male, the essential driving force behind the emergence of pole dancing as a phenomenon.