Tantra Fitness is getting publicity across Canada and even abroad after a widely circulated news story about children and teens taking pole fitness classes.

Tantra started out with a Vancouver studio about six years ago and has had one in Langley for about two years.

Within those six years, three children have taken part in pole classes alongside their moms in the Vancouver location, and teens have taken classes in both studios.

Tantra's willingness to talk about allowing children into the studio for what owner Tammy Morris calls pole fitness and not pole dancing classes has garnered a strong reaction. She said she's had mostly positive feedback - but not all.

"I've had a couple hate emails already," Morris said a few days after a story was first published.

A Fox News interview Tuesday morning was harsh.

"I think it's been blown out of proportion," she told the Langley Advance.

She said it's frustrating that people only consider pole workouts to be sexual.

"It's very much a core fitness class," she said.

Morris said she has never targeted children and teens as clients. Her client base is women, 25-45, so the names chosen for the classes (Bellylicious, Sexy Flexy, Pussycat Dawls, and Promiscuous Girls) are tongue-in-cheek adult concepts.

The three children were only ever allowed into Pole 101 classes - only with their moms - and never in any of the classes with saucy names.

And the other participants in the class were given a vote as to whether or not to allow the children to participate.

Morris noted that any young person must have a waiver signed by a parent or guardian to get into the pole fitness classes, and parents are allowed to stay and watch.

"We take that eroticism out of it," she said of any class where children or teens are present.

Seven-year-old Kennedy Benko is a natural born climber, drawn to monkey bars and any playground equipment. Kennedy started beside her mom in Pole 101 when she was five, said her mom Randi Moscovitch-Benko.

Randi wanted an intense fitness workout for herself, and has found both mother and daughter have gained a dramatic amount of upper body and core strength.

Randi said that's helped Kennedy in her other sports, noting she can do one-footed push-ups in tae kwon do.

The Kitsilano mom said she's never had concerns about her daughter doing pole fitness because she and Morris have never allowed Kennedy's classes to be sexualized.

"What people need to understand is kids don't think like adults do," she said, adding "to me it's another form of exercise."

Morris said exercising on a vertical pole takes a great deal of strength and technique. She also teaches at the University of B.C., where men are evening the playing field.

"We actually have lots of men who take the classes," she noted.

Morris said Chinese pole, as it's also called, has a long history. She points to the winner of last year's Miss Pole Dance Canada contest, which the studio hosted in Vancouver, as an example of the talent required for pole fitness. Top spots went to Cirque de Soleil performers.

Morris, a former exotic dance champion, said she's worked hard to separate the art of stripping from the art of pole dancing, with the focus of the latter being fitness and technique.

She acknowledges that the activity is steeped in sexual connotation, but nonetheless thinks any moral panic around its instruction to young people is misplaced.

"Children have no [erotic] association with the pole whatsoever," said Morris, arguing that kids would see the same apparatus at a firehall, playground or circus. "Unless you teach someone how to grind and make reference to taking off your clothing, there's nothing wrong with it."

A new mom herself, Morris is testing the waters with the introduction of a mommy and me pole fitness class in the fall.

The public feedback has been swift with people posting mostly negative comments about the concept of children pole dancing.

"I thought it was a fun idea when my wife went to a pole dancing class for a stagette party. Involving a kid in pole dancing is abusive. Pole dancing is a sexualized activity regardless of what some practitioners might say," said a Vancouver Province post by George Stevens.

Someone identified only as marisasano wrote: "I guess the problem isn't that the girls (and it's only girls, right?) don't realize that they're stripping with their clothes on. It's that everyone else knows it."

An anonymous post added, "There's nothing abusive about wanting your children to become physically active. It's ignorance like yours that make change so hard."

hcolpitts@langleyadvance.com