View Full Version : My first rant: Non-strippers learning to strip
ViolaStrings
06-02-2009, 12:41 PM
^ I think I might actually agree with you :::checks weather report for Hell:::
Kylea2
06-02-2009, 09:04 PM
I know that you are right in theory. BUT, what makes you think that you really have the right to teach exotic dance if you have never been an exotic dancer? Just curious
I have to agree with this. If you are trained in pole dancing but you've never been a stripper, and you start teaching classes you better only be teaching pole classes. If you've trained in dance, but you've never actually stripped than you are a dance instructor not a striptease instructor. I guess what irritates me is the students that come into classes and look down on real dancers. I mean isn't that like going to dentistry school and doing nothing but complaining about how dirty and nasty dentistry is? Why would I want to teach someone who thinks like that? Also, just because you dance for your boyfriend/husband a few times a year doesn't mean that you know enough to teach striptease to women who are using this to make their living. The more you do it the more you know. When you have been around the block long enough that you can start telling your student what percentage of men like certain moves, how to deal with wardrobe malfunctions, how to arouse him without ever even touching him... then I think you should be allowed to teach others for professional purposes. Otherwise if you haven't done it professionally I would hope you are only teaching dancers that are there just for fun.
On a side note, I went and took classes this past weekend at another pole dance school. I first saw them online a year ago. I ran into them at a city event recently and inquired about their instructors backgrounds, which they refused to give details about. Then I called and asked over the phone and got pretty much the same answer. So I went and took the intro class, which had all the other students feeling awkward and a few kept saying how graceful I was. Then one of the owners came out and pointed out that I was a professional... that the people in the office could tell by watching me. I didn't tell them that, and didn't give them the right to inform the other students either. Most of the students were very interested and kept asking me questions about it, however a few were obviously put off by it. I could tell just from watching that the class instructor had zero professional experience, all of her dancing was NOT striptease style at all, and wasn't even able to correctly instruct the students about posture. Later on I had a phone call from the second owner, who basically said that their studio experience is very different from the club experience and they require all students to start at the first level. This made me laugh since she doesn't know anything about my background and made it sound over the phone that she was unappreciative that I came to the teaser course even though they state on their website that the teaser course is required. She also still refused to give me the names of who any of their instructors have trained with.
The gist of what I think of this whole thing is that the housewife/civilian types need to stick to teaching their own type. They should state on their website who they trained with and that they don't have any experience on a professional level. Personally I don't see a lot of reason to go learn striptease from civilians - the moves tend to lack much luster and half the time the true professionals are looked down on. Really though to be honest, I don't even see the point of a "civilian" learning from another "civilian". I mean if you just want to watch the moves and not be authentic there are tons of DVDs on the market for that.
Now pole, I do consider a different matter, but even then I think that instructors should be open to stating how they learned and who they have trained under.
Jezzebelle
06-03-2009, 03:39 AM
I learned via club work. Bit I dont teach that style, its too over the top and freaks most women out. I teach a very sanitized........um.........tame version of it and save the authentic stuff for my Showgirl workshops. Those workshops come with a warning that they are uber hot and that if you are easily offended you may not want to attend.
I think the majority of pole schools teach ` civilian style` whether they learned authentically or not. Oh, apart from X- Polesitions, I think they teach whats close to the real stuff (amazing instructors).
So anyway, usualy the case is, if you want to learn how to rock it like a stripper ,dont expect to a pole class. As its entirely different. Its like going to Boxercise class and expecting to learn how to be a Boxer.
Winged Dinghy
06-03-2009, 09:39 AM
So anyway, usualy the case is, if you want to learn how to rock it like a stripper ,dont expect to a pole class. As its entirely different. Its like going to Boxercise class and expecting to learn how to be a Boxer.
This is a really great analogy. I might quote you on that.
Fenriswolf
06-04-2009, 01:17 AM
Meh, I find this forum amusing, and at times educational. I try to avoid this section as I have fuck all to contribute but do if I think it's worth saying.
I'm not offended, I just find it a curious overreaction. Oh and comments about it being sad to hang out on the internet to make friends is the most overused insult ever... really? Hardly. ;)
castleoutsider
06-04-2009, 01:45 AM
hmm I don't look down on professional exotic dancers. If I did, then I wouldn't be here. And like I said a while back, most teachers have been or still do dance. Alot of the gals in the USPDF competition still dance at the club =)
For me I guess Id be flattered that non dancers would come onto a forum because they are envious and want to learn a thing or two. Same as wanting to take a pole dancing class.
I know that's why I'm here. I troll all the time =)
I wish to be as comfortable with my self,
and even learn to be more feminine~
and of course the pole tricks, and the music ^^
Winged Dinghy
06-05-2009, 07:32 AM
I'm not offended, I just find it a curious overreaction. Oh and comments about it being sad to hang out on the internet to make friends is the most overused insult ever... really? Hardly. ;)
It's not an overreaction, though I understand how non-strippers might see it that way. Thing is, we encounter so much judgment, stereotyping, and harassment in real life because of our profession, so when we come on SW, it's a time to relax and gain support. SW is one of the few places populated with other strippers who just "get it." When we log on to see SW posters defending the drunken, power-tripping skanks who harass us at work, is it any wonder that we get cagey?
holly07
06-06-2009, 02:14 AM
It takes a certain type of woman to be a profitable exotic dancer. Let the housewives and college girls have their kicks with stripper classes, most still won't have the guts to take to the stage. In some ways all the publicity and talk about stripping, kills the negative stigma that we've been branded with forever. Plus, it all comes down to the men and they love variety. If their wife gives him a lapdance, great, but she is still the same woman he's been screwing for years and they crave the spice of multiple, unknown, women. A men's club provides this and allows them to indulge in their appetite in a safe, acceptable environment
night653
06-06-2009, 10:10 AM
To each their own but Cosmo has always been a magazine I will not buy because its all about how you should put your man first and do this to please him and sex tips and that to please him and honestly its the same recycled crap over and over again. Sorry if that offends anyone just my opinion and it does piss me off that everyone wants to dance now even Kendra wilkinson endorsing her own pole... I watched a video she couldnt dance very well sure she is in shape but you shouldnt be endorsing a product not inless you believe in it and have used it longer then a year not just hey i can put my famous face on this and it will make me money. I dont know if it will hurt money but I know most men are already bored with one woman even if she is just a girlfriend or wife and even if they would dance everynight that isnt going to stop him from coming to the club sure the mystery might be took away but I dont think it will be they are the people their boyfriends/husbands see without makeup on, sick, nagging them etc and we are the people who know how to sell a fantasy and give them a good time I say most these women will dance for there husbands but still tell them what a jackass they have been the last week unlike us. Sorry for spelling.
Elvia
06-06-2009, 11:27 AM
“what makes you think that you really have the right to teach exotic dance if you have never been an exotic dancer? Just curious”
I don’t teach exotic dance. I teach Vertical Fitness. I don’t teach the girls to touch themselves, hump the air or wave their business in other people’s faces. If they want to do that, that’s fine, more power to them. But they won’t learn it from me because as I have already stated, I’ve never worked a stage and I would lose a lot of students if I started making them practice in platforms or start throwing in raunchy moves.
This right here illustrates what really gets my goat about this issue. I have no problem with non-dancers learning to pole dance. But so many people in the "vertical fitness" world seem to have an attitude about real exotic dance. I myself enjoy taking pole dancing lessons. But I have visited certain local pole dancing studio's sites and was really interested in one...until they went on a tangent about how they don't teach exotic dance moves because they want to "elevate" pole dancing and "take the raunchiness out of it." They think they can just take OUR art form, claim it for themselves, and then belittle us in the same breath. I realize you don't think you're doing this, but when you reduce the rest of my job to "touching [myself], humping the air, and waiving [my] business in people's faces" it shows that you don't really understand what it is that we do. And it's pretty rude. If you're going to take a piece of it for yourself, at least have some respect for the people who invented it, and the rest of their job.
I had another experience in a store that sold stripper wear. I was fairly new to dancing (less than a year) and was chatting with a sales girl about taking pole dancing classes. I know she didn't mean to be offensive, but she said that was a good idea, and that I would probably mainly be taking classes with housewives and such and wouldn't that be a relief because I wouldn't have to learn with "questionable or skanky girls." Uh...like my co-workers?? Or myself?? This is why the mainstreaming of pole dancing pisses us off.
Incidentally, there's an interesting article in the recent issue of Spread about this. It's about an area in rural Canada where pole dancing studios are taking off and popping up left and right...at the same time the community is up in arms about actual strip clubs, and has shut down all but one of them.
Kylea2
06-06-2009, 08:02 PM
I learned via club work. Bit I dont teach that style, its too over the top and freaks most women out. I teach a very sanitized........um.........tame version of it and save the authentic stuff for my Showgirl workshops. Those workshops come with a warning that they are uber hot and that if you are easily offended you may not want to attend.
I think the majority of pole schools teach ` civilian style` whether they learned authentically or not. Oh, apart from X- Polesitions, I think they teach whats close to the real stuff (amazing instructors).
So anyway, usualy the case is, if you want to learn how to rock it like a stripper ,dont expect to a pole class. As its entirely different. Its like going to Boxercise class and expecting to learn how to be a Boxer.
I don't teach a civilian version in my classes. I teach them everything, but if I teach something that isn't allowed in the clubs or that is only seen in "dirtier clubs" I specify that. I have noticed that most of these civilian women want to feel sexy, but part of that is getting their partner to see them sexually again, and sometimes that involves using the more risque moves. For the girls that are actually dancers or are going to become dancers I would rather show them the moves and tell them that they are illegal in the area before they find them on there own and then get reprimanded by management for using them.
Jezzebelle
06-07-2009, 01:53 AM
Totally Kylea, I agree. Thats what my workshops are for, to bring back home for him. The main pole classes though, I find they do for themselves.
I would ADORE to teach only authentic, but I dont think it would sell well where I live *le sigh*
Kylea2
06-07-2009, 08:16 PM
^^^ You won't know until you try! ;-) I was teaching at a studio in a very upscale and conservative neighborhood and my classes were a hit. The only problem we had was the insurance agency in the same complex as us that thought a pole dancing school wasn't appropriate in the neighborhood and tried to get the owner to remove us - which didn't work.
castleoutsider
06-08-2009, 02:33 AM
yea wed have a better location if people here werent so uptight like that. our current location were kinda hidden but i just say hey~ were their best kept secret ^.~:D
Jezzebelle
06-08-2009, 02:35 AM
^^^ You won't know until you try! ;-) .
Hmmmmm *rubs chin*
Its soo tempting
ViolaStrings
06-08-2009, 12:09 PM
^^^ You won't know until you try! ;-) I was teaching at a studio in a very upscale and conservative neighborhood and my classes were a hit. The only problem we had was the insurance agency in the same complex as us that thought a pole dancing school wasn't appropriate in the neighborhood and tried to get the owner to remove us - which didn't work.
What, like it was an abortion clinic or something?
Kylea2
06-08-2009, 03:38 PM
^^^ Pretty much that is how they treated it. You know the saying... ignorance breeds bliss. The insurance company made a big fuss about it, we ended up in the newspaper and that ended up bringing in more students. The fact is that there isn't anything illegal about it so there was nothing the insurance agency could really do.
Sorry girls to bring this up again but I had to say something...
In Europe just in the last 2 years pole dancing is becoming more popular in gyms.
I am a stripper and I have been a gymnast and I did some Belly dance when it was still snobbed also.Now after 6 years also for belly dance is different.
I don't see anything wrong for non dancers wannabe to train pole dace as gymnastic, beside all the train it in circus too, and that's where it comes from.
Stripping can be fine without pole, and we have demonstration with Burlesque which is just a re-do of the original striptease.
We should make a difference between exotic dance and pole gym.Even pole can be part of exotic dance shows, like it could be with other aerial arts.
In show, everything is allowed.
Most people that want to learn pole dance they don't want to be on any kind of stage, some want.
The downhill of stripping business started with lapdances I agree on that.
I started stripping because I liked to perform different shows, and when I started I had already dancing experience,but no stripper off-stage experience, I always hated and I will still hate to do lapdances,I did for the past years just because it was the way to still dance on stage (in europe in many places we are paid for stage shows).Soon I am gonna quit stripping fulltime, I will do it sporadically, I am gonna teach to whoever wants to learn but I will divide exotic dance and pole gym.
That will be a way to dedicate more time to the performance, which now days in clubs is awful and no one of the costumers notices.
About why some pole dance teacher refuses to teach to professionals I got a few points:
-if she has never been a stripper before, she is maybe afraid you can dance better or in a way that would make her fell unconfortable.
-she doesn't like the fact that strippers can CONTROL men, and believe me this goes on the nerves of many women,because they don't have the courage to do it or they see us mean to do it!So refusing to teach her skills she hopes to prevent that we could use it for our main aims.
As we can see the best pole dancers that are famous now, you can see clear they were ex-strippers and beside being great pole gymnasts are also great exotic dancers like jenyne butterfly,jamilla deville and fawnia mondey.
They can transfmit more from the stage than other civilian dancers, that's a fact.
Even that a pro dancer of other disciplines if she studies exotic dance she could teach striptease but most of them won't do it.
I am gonna start teaching refusing to get certificated in my country by people that never been strippers and snob strippers.
I will get certificed if I need with international associations that don't snob strippers,just because pole dance is gonna be in the olympics and I want to prepare the students that wish to be there to be able to.
It is terrible also what is happening with the Burlesque performances in Italy, the dancers are ex-models (here it is ok) that don 't know how to dance mostly and men managers build up their coreographies!!!It didn't start like that in USA,their ideas are confused, I am more angry for this than civilians wanted to learn pole dance for fun :)
Kylea2
05-21-2011, 05:07 PM
As we can see the best pole dancers that are famous now, you can see clear they were ex-strippers and beside being great pole gymnasts are also great exotic dancers like jenyne butterfly,jamilla deville and fawnia mondey.
They can transfmit more from the stage than other civilian dancers, that's a fact.
Even that a pro dancer of other disciplines if she studies exotic dance she could teach striptease but most of them won't do it.
I am gonna start teaching refusing to get certificated in my country by people that never been strippers and snob strippers.
I will get certificed if I need with international associations that don't snob strippers,just because pole dance is gonna be in the olympics and I want to prepare the students that wish to be there to be able to.
Kudos to you on this. I think it's idiotic that a group of people would want to take part of a history while trashing or ignoring the second part of the history. One of the reasons that I was such a popular instructor at the studio I taught at was that I always talked to the students about the history of what I was teaching them. While many pole studios want to hire instructors without professional striptease experience or they don't want ex-strippers as instructors/students, the majority of students actually do appreciate learning the history. I don't feel like teaching that history takes away from any sort of "secret information" either. I've never taught students who had no interest in being professionals the types of things taught by Strip & Grow Rich or learned in Hustle Hut... & that is where the true power of our profession comes into play.
Also OP, Fawnia does provide certification & as you already seem to be aware she was a professional stripper. As a matter of fact I worked with her just a few years ago at a club outside of Las Vegas.
Jay12
05-21-2011, 06:41 PM
The pole is for strippers!! the pole is for strippers only!
EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pole dancing as an Olympic sport? No way!!!!!!!!!!
Kylea2
05-22-2011, 05:47 PM
^^^ Care to share why?
I've posted my opinions on this at:
http://kyleakilleen.com/blog/2010/03/03/pole-dancing-in-the-olympics/#comments
tempest666
05-23-2011, 12:45 AM
to me its kinda like when Prometheus stole the fire of the gods from Mt. Olympus -_-
sananeko
05-23-2011, 06:02 AM
I thought they were learning to dance around a pole.. not to work with the pole.
I been to one of these classes and all it was a girl in heels barely touching the pole and dancing like a drunk girl.. I asked what level class do I need to get join to get to dancing on the pole.. She looked at me and said we are learning class and working out.. We're not strippers..
castleoutsider
05-24-2011, 08:39 AM
I thought they were learning to dance around a pole.. not to work with the pole.
I been to one of these classes and all it was a girl in heels barely touching the pole and dancing like a drunk girl.. I asked what level class do I need to get join to get to dancing on the pole.. She looked at me and said we are learning class and working out.. We're not strippers..
Depends on where you go.
At our studio were not strippers either but what you choose to do with it is your business. But we are including the sexy with the tricks =) Transitions, floorwork, spins all are included in beginners.
We don't turn dancers away either, if they want to learn we will teach them,
they just have to come in ~
some owners of the pole studios have been strippers, even some of the champs as well. To me i'm not for the Olympics really because like a lot have said, it will take away the sexy element to pole, and thats why i'm in it =)
GlitterBexie
05-24-2011, 10:12 AM
I did a few pole lessons before i started to dance in the club, it gave me the confidence to actually go to the club and audition, knowing that id be able to do a few spins and tricks and not look like a complete muppet on the pole, it didnt teach me how to give a lapdance, it didnt teach me how to hustle customers, it didnt teach me how to take my clothes off in a slow sexy way and the art of strip tease. i think its two separate things; to be a pole dancer and to be a stripper.
Im all for women who go to pole fitness classes, its fun and it is a good work out :-) but for the vast majority of women who go to pole classes, they will never ever strip, they are doing it to get a bit of fun out of life and cause it seems cheeky. I had a pole in my room at home and im planninfgon getting one in my new house (its too heavy to carry cross country on a train!) but im also planning on going back to dancing, ive been out a year (due to a madly controlling douche of a bf, and im only just getting my confidence and body back) I will go to the pole studio to do a bit of practice before i actually go back so i remember some pole routines so i look good and i look proffesional. But in terms of giving a lapdance, its automatic.
I think as many women, housewifes, whatever can go do pole dance classes, have their own pole, it wont take away from us, on the night, in the club, looking hot as hell when they hand over the cash for us to dance or them, the customers like the mystery and sexiness of seeing a random hot girl (who isnt their wife, girlfriend etc) and just cause their wife does it, doesnt mean they wont be intrieged by us. We are the chosen few (lol) and it takes so much more to be a stripper and to earn money doing it.
Pole dancers who have never stripped and are sniffy about strippers, i think, are sniffy about it because they look down on us, like a lot of people do, because all they see is the seedy side of things. Most of my friends have asked me to teach the some pole moves, i dont mind, they dont want to be strippers, they just want to be able to say they can do it.