Sergia Louise Anderson

Sergia Louise Anderson is a 2013 U.S. National Pole Champion who integrated concert dance, theatre training and partner-dance technique into pole performance, choreography and studio pedagogy. Her career spans classical ballet, contemporary modern dance, and salsa competition before she became one of pole dance's most visible competitor-educators.

Anderson began in classical ballet, jazz, contemporary dance and theatre, supported by scholarships from the New York City Dance Alliance and Tremaine Dance Conventions that led to study at the Ailey School. There she trained in Martha Graham technique and classical ballet. At seventeen, she worked professionally as a dancer and choreographer with Interweave Dance Company in Boulder, Colorado, then taught for five years. Her formal theatre education continued at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she earned a BFA in Drama and studied through the Stella Adler Studio, Experimental Theatre Wing and Collaborative Arts Project 21.

In 2007, Anderson shifted particular attention to salsa, Latin hustle and partner dance, competing in Theater Arts, Latin Hustle, Cabaret and salsa settings. She encountered pole dance after more than a decade working in acting and dance, beginning at age twenty-eight and soon entering competition. She won the U.S. Pole Dance Federation's 2012 amateur championship before taking the 2013 U.S. National Pole Championship.

In 2011, before the national title, Anderson founded The Vertitude in Los Angeles. The studio framed pole as both an apparatus-based athletic practice and an expressive dance form, with technique, choreography and sensual traditions taught as related but distinguishable approaches. After the 2013 championship, Anderson toured internationally as a guest instructor, eventually teaching in more than thirty-three countries. That work turned competition visibility into a pedagogy emphasizing movement quality, choreography and body appreciation rather than competition results alone. In 2017 she opened a second Vertitude location in Santa Rosa, her hometown. By 2022, the International Pole Industry Association was presenting her as a pole champion, studio owner and entrepreneur in industry webinars.