Martial Arts, Pole Mayhem & Managing MS – Meet Caroline Cazcapstar

(Photo: Sniper Shots Photography)

Like a modern-day Wonder Woman, only with blonde hair and way more sass, Caroline Cazcapstar is a force to be reckoned with. Once a bronze medalist for Australia in Taekwondo, Caroline made the switch from her black belt kicks to pole dancing hair flicks almost 10 years ago. Throughout Caroline’s pole dancing journey, not only has she dazzled us on Australia’s national pole competition stages, but her determination to pole dance after being diagnosed with MS in 2017 has continued to leave the pole community in awe.  

We chat about her fun pole shows, living and pole dancing with MS and of course, her beloved American bully pups. Let’s meet Caroline Cazcapstar – a fiercely focused pole dancer whose positive vibes shine brighter than the glitter she leaves onstage. 

Bronze medals for a bronzed babe 

Many people don’t realise that Caroline was once a pro in the martial art of Taekwondo. She had a black belt and competed on a national scale. 

“Alot of people don't know that I did competitive and professional Taekwondo, competing for Australia for 12 years before my pole career!” she says. “It's not just like doing pretty spins – it’s getting kicked and if you don't move, you'll be kicked. It's really full on!” Caroline laughs.  

Working full-time, training 5 days a week, sometimes twice a day in the morning and again at night after work, Taekwondo took up most of Caroline’s time and energy. The peak of her Taekwondo career was winning a bronze medal at the Commonwealth games, however sadly Caroline’s mum passed away only months before.  

“I lost my mum to a car accident and that was same year that I won the bronze medal for the Commonwealth games. I really used that hurt and that loss as motivation to push, and she would have wanted me to do that. She would've wanted me to finish it and go out there and smash it. So, I did!” she tells me with a proud smile. 

Caroline says that Taekwondo gave her many things like close friendships she still has to this day, as well as an understanding of what it really means to push your body to the max. However, eventually trying to maintain a life outside of Taekwondo became a lot to juggle. “I had reached a level where I was either absolutely smashing everyone or I couldn't handle coming second. There was no in-between for me,” she explains. “So, I think that really made the decision and the fact that I was working full-time, I was engaged, I was trying to plan a wedding, and you know, Taekwondo doesn't pay the bills! So, I had to focus on other areas of my life to feel fulfilled.” 

Caroline left the sport, and after a dabbling in women’s acrobatics as part of a trio and winning more medals in national comps, she moved on to discover the wild world of pole dancing. Caroline attended a hen’s party at a pole studio, and not long after her own wedding a few months later, enrolled in pole classes. 

“I just loved it, because learning new tricks was the creative achievement that I was missing from Taekwondo,” she reflects. “When you're sparring and you're fighting, there's like this freedom and creative achievement element to it. You needed to think quick and react to whatever your opponent was throwing at you. So, the different drills and types of skills that I had learned with Taekwondo really kind of transferred to pole. And this sense of ‘we're learning a new combo and I couldn't do that last week, but now I can do it’.” 

Caroline tells me pole also gave her a new sense of confidence and freedom in being a woman and being comfortable with her body. “I think it was just about embracing who you were and what your body could do and being comfortable with who you are, you know? It was probably my biggest transformation.” 

(Photo: Vertigo Photography)

Teaching pole & building a shoe empire 

Not long after starting pole dancing and excelling at it (naturally!), Caroline started teaching and sharing her passion with baby polers. She tells me one of her favourite things to do is teach beginner pole dance classes, as she gets to see them go through their very own transformations. 

"I think teaching Beginners and a Pole Moves [dance] class are probably my favorite things to do,” she tells me. “Because you see the women walk in that have never done pole before and they're so shy and really unsure of themselves. Then once they get to know what pole is all about, they're like, ‘oh she's a real person!’ teaching us. It's not what other people perceive that it is. It's about self-discovery and ‘oh, I feel comfortable wearing shorts now’ or ‘I couldn't do move last week'. I always make that really clear in my classes that it's about having fun and everybody's different so if you can't get something this time round, it'll happen. You've just got to keep chipping away at it. It's really nice to watch that progression,” she says with a smile. 

Caroline teaches at Pole Divas in Richmond VIC, and along with beginner’s pole, she teaches Pole Moves (a dance-based class), some advanced pole classes, and also takes group stretch privates which came about through lockdown in 2020. 

“It's really nice to support each other and we're still achieving the same as if we were doing one-on-one [coaching],” Caroline tells me. “So we've continued with group privates and it's been amazing. It's really nice to know that everything that I'm teaching them is really helping them achieve their flexibility goals.” 

Back in the day, Caroline Cazcapstar also owned a well-known custom pole heels business, which went by the name of ‘Bling it Heels’. Taking our pole heels from plain to insanely awesome, Caroline would personally customize all orders and was one of the very first people to offer “shoe blinging” to pole dancers worldwide.   

“That was so fun! I think Bling it Heels was like the first tailor-made pole heels – it was totally original. It was 2014 when it started and it was pretty amazing to where it ended up with sending my shoes all over the world – Brazil, London, America, all throughout Europe. It was really quite amazing that it had that reach but I don't think people understood how time consuming it was to make individual personalized heels,” Caroline says. After giving it a “red-hot go”, Caroline tells me it was time to call it quits. 

“I thought ‘okay it's time. It's been incredible, I've met some really amazing people and I've supported the industry where I can’, but it just became too much. Then I was diagnosed [with MS], so I just couldn't keep up anymore.” 

Smashing onto the comp scene 

With a competitive nature, it was inevitable that Caroline would one day step out onto the pole competition stage as she tells me grinning, “I just want to dance, put myself out there, get all dolled up, wear heels and show people what I can do!” After entering her studio’s inhouse competition (and winning of course!) Caroline applied for various state and national pole comps across Australia. She was accepted into her very first Miss Pole Dance VIC competition with her best friend in 2013, performing a doubles show with a ‘pink panther’ theme. In 2014, Caroline stepped onto the stage as a solo performer dancing to a Steel Panther song. 

After seeing them at a live show and being inspired with their extravagant confetti gun, Caroline was inspired! “They had the gun and they were like, literally spraying people with confetti. I was like, ‘that's so fucking cool!’. I think that's where props really made their way into my routines from that first ever solo and I just loved it!” she says giggling. “So, 2014 was a great intro year and I loved being on stage, and then in 2015 – I was hungry, you know?!” 

2015 was a huge year for Caroline as she cemented her place on the Aussie pole competition scene, with a win at the Sexy’s Back competition in Sydney. At the time, Caroline was teaching at Arena Pole Studio in Melbourne and worked with one of Australia’s most captivating pole dancers – Fontaine.  

“[Fontaine] helped me put that routine together, and I'll forever be grateful for everything that I've learned from her. I honestly wasn't expecting to win that [competition],” Caroline says. “So, it was really cool – I can't remember ever being that happy before! I think that gave me the confidence to really go out there for Miss Pole Dance VIC and do something completely wild, which was my Dexter show.” 

Wild is one way to describe Caroline’s Dexter show at Miss Pole Dance VIC 2015. Chainsaws, fake blood, a bad-ass costume and kick-ass Muse song – this show had it all! 

"I came fourth that year at Miss Pole Dance VIC, so it was a massive compliment to know that I was nowhere near the top 10 the previous year, to then make it to top four I think that was really quite amazing,” she reflects. 

(Caroline pictured backstage after performing in the opening show of Miss Pole Dance Australia in 2018)

Most recently, Caroline competed at the very first Exotic Generation competition held here in Australia in March 2019. Bouncing her ideas around with her good friend Gracie, together they landed on a song and show. “I love Gracie to bits. She really helped me kind of see and envision what I kind of had up in my head, and helped me express that [onstage].” 

Along with two stunning human props, Caroline stepped out onto the stage that night to deliver a show oozing with sexy flow and synchronicity. Mesmerizing the audience, and clearly the judges, Caroline placed second in the Exotic Flow category.  

“Bella, Shay & I are all great friends. We get along really well, so training together was just such a blast and I had no expectations,” says Caroline. “I was like, ‘I'm just going to do me, I'm just going to be me and I'm just going to dance!’ But I was really second guessing myself, like there's no way I'm going to place! I really was not expecting the response that I got, so that was really nice!”

Being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) 

In 2017, at the peak of her pole career, Caroline was diagnosed with Mutiple Sclerosis (MS). MS Australia explains MS as ‘a condition of the central nervous system, interfering with nerve impulses within the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. It is characterised by ‘sclerosis’ a Greek word meaning scars. These scars occur within the central nervous system and depending on where they develop, manifest into various symptoms.’ 

At the time of her sudden diagnosis, Caroline had been training for Miss Pole Dance Australia.  

“I've never been so ready for a comp in my whole entire life. I was ready to just rock it. I was so fit,” Caroline tells me. Two weeks before the comp, she was teaching her usual Sunday classes and stayed back to take a workshop with Chilli Rox. That morning, Caroline woke up with a “little fuzzy spot” partly blocking her vision in one eye and not thinking anything of it, assumed she was tired. 

"I woke up on the Monday and my eye was worse again. I ended up going to the doctors and the GP was like ‘I'm going to see if I can get you into see a specialist ASAP!’. Luckily that same afternoon I saw an eye specialist and he said ‘you need to go and get an MRI, you've got optic neuritis’. And I was like, ‘what the fuck does that mean?!’” Caroline remembers.  

After discovering it meant inflammation of the eye, she went home to “rest” her eye. “I went home and I put an eye patch on my eye. My husband got home and he's like, ‘what are you doing?!’ I was like, ‘I've got optic neuritis! I need to rest my eye!’ so I had an eye patch on, which is where ‘Pirate Caz’ came from!” she says with a chuckle. 

By the next night as Caroline waited for her MRI appointment, she couldn’t see colour out of her left eye at all. While her eye was the first major symptom she had encountered, in hindsight Caroline says she had also been getting other symptoms such as ‘electric shock sensations’ down her spine and the back of her legs. Thinking it was overtraining, Caroline was keen to push through those 2 weeks leading up to the comp. The day of her MRI, she drove herself to the appointment.  

“Having to get an MRI and not knowing what the hell was going on was pretty scary,” Caroline recalls. “By the time I got home after the MRI, the radiologist had called my specialist and said ‘she needs to go straight to emergency’. The specialist called my husband who had beaten me home, and I got home and burst into tears, because I just couldn't believe what was happening. We got to the emergency department and at this point no one had mentioned anything about MS! The triage nurse was like ‘okay, so we're here to treat you for MS’ and I was like ‘WHAT?!’ and had another meltdown in the emergency department.” 

From there, Caroline spent 3 weeks in hospital for treatment. She started with a steroid treatment for her eye which didn’t work so they sent her home on weekend leave, at which point she was still hopeful she would be onstage at Miss Pole in 2 weeks. "I still had in my mind it's okay. I'm going to have the steroids, walk out of here, fly to Sydney and I'm going to be on that stage,” she says. 

Returning to the hospital the following week, Caroline was treated with a plasma exchange, and unexpectedly had an allergic reaction to the donor plasma, going into anaphylactic shock during the treatment, which almost killed her. Caroline tells me it was an extremely terrifying experience. She was sent to the intensive care unit, and at this point she realised she wouldn’t be competing. 

Watching the comp livestream from hospital was bittersweet. “I needed to support my friends that were competing, but I can't tell you how hard that was. It was after visitor hours so my husband had gone home. I was by myself watching Miss Pole Dance Australia on my phone, in the hospital bed, with one eye and tubes all over me. It was so fucking devastating.” 

Dance for a Difference 

Fast forward a few months to February of 2018. Caroline had started pole dancing and teaching again, as she learned to navigate her way through life with MS. In Sydney, a charity pole showcase was being held by Chilli Rox and Dallas Dee, to raise money for SpinalCure Australia. They contacted Caroline to invite her to perform as part of the event. 

"My God, if there was anyone that was there for me throughout that whole period, it was Chilli! She was amazing – just an absolute goddess! She's like ‘we've got Dance for a Difference coming up. If you're well enough, we'd love for you be able to perform and at least you'll have the opportunity to take your routine to the Enmore stage’,” remembers Caroline. “I think that just really gave me the motivation to get up there and do it. Even though it wasn't Miss Pole Dance Australia, the fact that I was able to get up on the Enmore stage was part of the healing process.” 

The night of the event was very emotional for Caroline. “Sitting side stage before walking on, I was trying not to cry. Just being in that moment, realizing that I was going to be able to do it [after] what I'd been through...was surreal,” Caroline says. “When the performance was done and I received a standing ovation, it was just so raw to express that emotion. To share those few minutes with so many people that had seen what had happened in the lead up, was really magical. I'm so grateful to Chilli and Dallas who gave me that opportunity.” 

(Photo left: Vertigo Photography, Photo right: The Black Light Sydney)

Pole Dancing with MS 

For Caroline, MS was her “awakening”. Her diagnosis presented her with the opportunity to look at how she had been living her life and make changes to better her health. 

“I thought, obviously everything in my life at this time has gotten me to this point. This is my awakening. This is my wake-up call. I have to change basically everything – the way that I've looked at life and how I've managed my life, because if I don't, I'm going to end up a miserable lump,” she tells me. 

Caroline started to learn more about the human body, even completing a personal training qualification in 2018. Committing to her own research into MS like one would commit to a brass-monkey flip, Caroline armed herself with new knowledge so that she could take this chronic illness by the balls. 

“Knowledge is power – 100%,” Caroline says. “And I think my way of dealing with my diagnosis was to arm myself with as much knowledge as I possibly could, to give me the best chance of living a fairly normal life, for the rest of my life.”  

A holistic approach wasn’t enough at this point for Caroline to manage MS, due to the severity of the different lesions on her brain and spine.  

“The problem is that with relapsing-remitting MS, you have a relapse and you go into remission, but you still have scar tissue from that relapse,” she explains. “That's why I still have issues with my balance and with my eye being numb. That's why I'm fatigued all the time, because my body and my brain have gone through hell and back. It's about making sure that I don't have another relapse and that I don't have any more lesions develop in my brain and on my spinal cord.” 

Caroline discovered that MS is not actually hereditary, and it was a mixture of past illness and environmental factors which led her diagnosis. 

“Even though I was really fit and what I thought was healthy, I was actually pretty unhealthy. Like my eating habits – I had way too much protein and dairy products, which is also another thing that contributes to MS for people that don't know. MS is caused by environmental factors – stress, diet, low Vitamin D. The other precursor is having the Epstein virus when you were little (glandular fever) which is what I had. So basically, it was a perfect storm,” she says. 

(Caroline now knows to soak up that Vitamin D!)

Since being diagnosed, MS has made a big impact on Caroline’s pole dance training. While she can still compete professionally, the constant physical and mental exhaustion makes it difficult. 

“When normal people fatigue, they might be able to have a good night's sleep or a couple of days rest and they'll bounce back. It's not like that for me, I'm constantly exhausted,” she explains. “So, I have to really manage to not overwhelm myself with taking on too much. I quit full-time work because I just couldn't do it anymore. Training wise, I have to be smart about how I train. I need to really listen to my body and realize when I'm done, because if I push and am too exhausted to do it, that's when injuries happen. 

“I think it's about training smarter, not harder. It's about accepting the fact that I may not be able to achieve what others can possibly achieve. It's disheartening some of the time because my brain is like, yes, we can do this! And then you go to do it, and you just physically can't. But I have always had sport in my life, it's been there for me since I was little and I don't think I would be the person that I am today without it. I don't think I would be as happy if I didn't get to do what I love, so I'll be dancing till the day I'm dead!” Caroline says laughing. 

Rather than use MS to make excuses for how she lives her life, Caroline uses MS is her motivation to inspire others into achieving their own goals. 

“I just love being able to prove to everyone that even someone with a disability can still do stuff! It doesn’t have to define you and it doesn't have to stop you! If you 100% want to do this and you put your mind to it, you can definitely do this,” says Caroline. “I feel like I have that responsibility of showing people, and inspiring and motivating others to be the best versions of themselves. Because without people to tell you that you can do things, then you would you just give up! So, explaining to beautiful girls that are really unsure of themselves, who haven't really discovered who they are yet, giving them that permission to be free and happy in their own skin, and that confidence to achieve – just knowing that I can do that for other people is so rewarding.” 

(Photo: Lux Shooter)

What’s to come in 2021? 

After the wild year that was 2020, Caroline is ready to put on her 8-inch Pleasers and take to the stage once again. Not having a pole at home during the extended COVID19 Melbourne lockdown, plus injuring herself during this time, she is now more focused than ever on her comeback from iso and injury, to that stage shred! 

“I did what I could, but I think the hardest thing for me over lockdown was probably seeing everybody else that did have a pole at home and how lucky they were to still able to do what they loved,” she tells me. “Then feeling deflated because I'm like, it's going to take me twice as long to get back to where I feel like I'm at a professional level, because of being deconditioned from lockdown AND having injuries AND having MS. Like, it's not simple!”  

Caroline is using the Dance Filthy competition in Sydney as her drive to get back to her sassy, showgirl self. “We were lucky that the competitors who made it last year, went straight through this year, so I'm using Dance Filthy as my motivation to get back on track! My goal is to just really focus on getting back to a level where I feel like I'm myself again.” 

When Caroline isn’t in the pole studio training or teaching, you will find her spending time with her husband, exploring and camping. She loves vegan donuts and hanging out at Petbarn, a job she picked up in the last year.  

“I got a job at Petbarn and it was like a gift sent from the universe,” says Caroline with a huge grin. "It's like my favorite thing to do. I've only got like two shifts a week, but that's enough. I love my job at Petbarn, it's amazing and I get to help doggos all day!” 

When she gets home, Caroline is greeted by two of her own very special pups, Hugo and Murray the American Bullys. Handsome Hugo played a big role in helping Caroline through her diagnosis with MS. 

"I feel like I had a broken heart for a long time after my diagnosis. It was like the changing of the guards, this massive awakening where people disappeared from my life that I think were not meant to be in [it] and other people appeared,” Caroline reflects. “Getting Hugo – I just can't even – he totally healed me in so many different ways! Having a purpose, having something that you care for that loves you back unconditionally; it’s the best feeling. And Murray's an absolute sweetheart. I thought Hugo was a sweetheart, but Murray's an angel compared to Hugo! Hugo's a rat-bag and Murray's an angel baby!” chuckles Caroline.  

And if Hugo could talk, what would he say? “He'd say 'Mum, put on some pants!” Caroline says bursting into a laugh. 

(Photo: Sniper Shots Photography - Hugo pictured left & Murray pictured right)

Caroline Cazcapstar’s story is truly inspirational. Her positive outlook, drive and motivation towards her pole training and living her best life is hard to beat. MS entered Caroline’s life like a heel stack onstage –unexpected and unwelcome. Yet like a true professional, Caroline improvised and kept dancing her way through life, using her diagnosis to fuel her focus and help other poler dancers, as she continues take on the world with passion and a perfectly executed spready. 

You can follow Caroline’s journey on Instagram at @caroline_cazcapstar or take one of her classes at Pole Divas Richmond. Did you love this incredible story?! Drop a comment below!