I have an idea in my head, but not too sure on how they work or what's the scoop on them. Thanks!
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I have an idea in my head, but not too sure on how they work or what's the scoop on them. Thanks!
Amateur nights are an excuse for seasoned professionals to make a quick few hundred or thousand by slaughtering the competition. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
What Tempest said and they are usually rigged. I did when second place once in a Deja Vu amateur night.
Although they can be highly entertaining when genuine amateurs pop in and not seasoned professionals.
Amateur nights really are becoming a joke. Many clubs even do this ridiculous thing of having all the girls that want to work at the club, including working professionals, come to amateur night just to have an excuse to put something on the billboard & attract more people. Some of the clubs have turned these into circus acts too, making the "amateurs" do all sorts of things that seem childish... like having the amateurs use the hopper balls on stage to see which girl's chest bounces the most.
Plus, many will find every excuse in the book to not give you the money after the contest or suddenly tell you that you have to work at the club for about 3 months first.
If you happen to find a normal/decent club though it's just a night where customers or girls who want to try out can dance on stage for a set.
i dunno. i've done them, and they can be fun. mind, i did them as a pro who just wanted to get hired at clubs that wanted girls to do the contest as a mass audition. but they weren't rigged, because i didn't know anyone and did well. in one, i got 3rd and the girl who got 1st was a friend of a girl who worked there already, 2nd was drop dead gorgeous and charismatic and really should've won 1st. but whatever, she was just there for a quick buck and had no interest in working there anyways.
you can ask what you'll be expected to do before you go in, and even if you do go in without knowing, any legit amateur contest will start with someone (a manager or housemom, probably) explaining what you're going to do and whatever the rules are. in some, you can accept tips, but at others it'll disqualify you, for example. pay attention to the rules before you start. i'd recommend calling first, at least to find out the dress code. some clubs will sell you a regulation thong if you don't have one. it's best to come prepared.
the music is gonna be hard to dance to. you don't get to pick it. usually multiple girls go up at once.
don't try to put on a big show. look cute and a little shy, but like you're really having fun. smile and giggle a lot. wear a normal dress and lingerie rather than stripper clothes. normal 4" heels instead of lucite stripper shoes. even pros do better when they don't act like pros. which is easy with the awful music.
I agree that they're usually rigged. My old manager has been begging me to come back to the club, and he told me that I could do their amateur night and he'd have me win. Which...you know...$500 in the bank isn't a bad idea. But I feel it always looks so fucking obvious when the "amateur" girl has two and a half years serious experience.
Some clubs would only hire girls during amateur nights.
If you're looking to be hired, I'd recommend NOT going in for amateur night. Call the club and ask for an audition instead. Set up a specific time to go in if you can.
I've known some clubs that will not do private auditions; two of the best clubs in the Hampton Roads, in Virginia, will ONLY hire girls on amateur nights, no matter how experienced you are, or how much money you had made somewhere else.
I tried to persuade the owner of one of those clubs by showing him how much I made two fridays ago ($794 bucks; I even took a picture of them and showed it to him), and that I could bring a whole lot of clients to the club, and I showed him a cellphone video doing some dancing at home. Still, he told me to come to the amateur night. He wanted me, but the house mom didn't. So I wasn't hired by that club.
Charlie, there are clubs where asking for a private audition will not work. Jay12 gave a prime example by showing video of her dancing, yet the club not hiring her. Many of the clubs force girls (including seasoned veterans) to show up for amateur night just for something to advertise on the billboard. If they can't get the girls to come then they can't get people in the door who just want to laugh at the total newbs, see only the "new talent", support their friends, etc. but will buy beverages in the mean time. Its just an excuse for the clubs to get more people & have better sales.
About the only way around it in a case like that is to be VERY well known in your area as a top earner, & have the look that the club wants, so that the clubs don't want to take a chance that they'd lose out on having you. In Denver probably only 2-5% of seasoned dancers could get away with bypassing the amateur nights in clubs that use them as a marketing ploy & force veterans to audition through them.
I go in to amateur night when I want easy money...
I did one about a year ago when I was trying to get back into dancing. I wanted to have fun, I really tried to but ultimately found the whole night demoralizing and just a little humiliating. My boyfriend went with me but before the contest even started, he decided it was lame and went home leaving me with no moral support or cheering section, all by my lonesome in my skivvies in a room full of drunk rowdy dudes overjoyed at even the faintest chance of taking a girl home from the club.
where it seemed that all of the other contestants brought small, loud armies along with them or at the very least a boyfriend who was a decent enough guy to have stuck around to cheer his girl on after convincing her to be there in the first place.
I wasn't the oldest or fattest girl there but I was second in both unofficial categories. Contrary to what a lot of other gals have been posting about amateur contests being an excuse for pros to clean house, this was an actual amateur night. There weren't any other girls with any dancing experience besides myself and I was caught out by a few people because I made the mistake of taking my platforms out for a spin for old times sake. mostly I just felt dumb because I thought that there would be some weight given to the quality of your performance, but as it turned out, the places went to the 3 thinnest, youngest girls. I just couldn't compete with that, being as I am not thin by any stretch of the imagination, and at best can claim to be young-ish. Not only was there no advantage to being able to strip with a degree of fluidity, but it seemed that the inverse was true, the more the girl resembled the result of a one night stand between a frightened deer and an ironing board, the higher she seemed to be in the esteem of the judges.
The girl that won was really sweet and extremely beautiful, with, you guessed it, nary a lick of ability for the job that she was offered before she was even announced as the winner, which didn't seem to shock anyone. In fact I knew she had it in the bag when the owner of the club started taking her photo next to his hot rod, and essentially not letting the poor thing out of his sight for more than two minutes at a stretch.
our tips were ours to keep. as I recall I took home something like 17 dollars for my efforts.
What really sucked about the whole thing was that I bothered with this farce at all when that afternoon I had auditioned at The Dolphin which is one of the fanciest clubs in town and was asked to stay for a shift but I guess I thought that since I had danced before, I would have a frog's chance chance in hell at placing in the contest which I figured would net me more than a night spent trying desperately and in vain to get my non-existant hustle on in the wholly unfamiliar environs of a gown club which I was woefully underdressed for, though I was tempted. I told them that I had prior plans, which was true but that I could work the next day but I never heard from the dolphin again.
So yeah, I'm leaving those contests to the 21 year old girls with the perfect perky handful breasts and asses that you could bounce quarters off of. Aside from having a generous and passably perky rack, (THANKS, MOM)
I was totally out of my depth. These sorts of things are best left to the girls brimming with the potent cocktail of pie-eyed folly and gullibility that gets mistaken for a sense of fun and adventure, The exploitation of which has made joe francis the worlds richest vaginal irrigation vessel beats skill, at least in that context. Serves me right for thinking I'd have a leg up I guess. Whoever said that age and treachery win out over youth and beauty didn't know what the hell they were talking about.
It's a gamble but most of the dancers that actually show up just take the money and run back to their home club. I remember when I went to Fantasy world for amateur night years ago there were 5 girls from my home club. we actually almost came to blows over who got to enter the contest and take home the prize money. Finally a compromise was reached. 2 entered that week, if one of them won, divide the prize money, the following week, 2 more would enter, and so on.
They may hire you if they like your look.
The way it works in my town is a bit of a mix between all the above answers!! Amateur night serves a couple of purposes:
1. The club gets more people in and saves money on stage performers (winning is only a hundred bucks in my club)
2. The agencies come to pick out new girls to hire.
Most girls that do it are trying to get on the circuit, so have been doing some VIP dancing, or are getting back into the business. There are a couple genuine amateurs and not so many pros, but thats probably because of the lousy prize money - I won't lose a night's pay for a hundred bucks!!! Because most clubs up here get stage girls on the circuit through agencies, amateur night IS the only way to get hired without previous connections.
I just went in to audition somewhere. Their website advertised that you can audition a 5 oclock any day of the week, so I called ahead and let them know I was coming and found out who I needed to talk to. I got all dolled up, mentally prepped, and all the way down to where the club is (via transit, which is a whole other scenario) only to be told that I have to come in on amateur night now. I feel slightly humiliated about the whole situation, but is there anyway that actual amateurs get hired? (Even if we don't win, since we obviously don't have your skills, ladies).
I once auditioned at a club like that. I was told to come in around 7pm on Tuesday to audition. When I got there I found out there wasn't an amateur night, just the one manager who hired. I was warned he was strict and I got scared. He offered me a job (thought I was pretty with a great figure) but told me to wear a nicer outfit when I started, which I did. I worked there almost 6 months which was a record for me.
I remember an amateur contest I did one time that was rigged. There were three other girls and me. One was a Puerto Rican in excellent shape and the two other were really fat black girls who couldn't dance. I go on stage and get a lot of applause only to lose to these three. One of the girls even grabbed her flabby belly on stage. The Puerto Rican girl was a fantastic dancer so I didn't regret losing to her but the other girls were awful and very fat. I later found out they were related to the house mom and she rigged the contest so they could get hired. In a strange irony about a year later I met the owner of the club and he told me he found out what she was doing and fired her. He then offered me a job. Unfortunately the club closed not long after before I could start. Btw, I wasn't upset they were black, I was upset they were very fat. I also once lost a contest to a fat white blonde as well.
I was shocked when my manager asked me if I wanted to do amateur night. I had been working at that club for 3+ months and at the time, I had been dancing for 8-9 months. I was like "how can I do an amateur night here??" and she's like "eh nobody really cares! it's just a promotion that'll get guys in who don't normally come and top prize is 500 dollars"
I didn't do it, but still it was weird to me.
Thinking about doing an amateur night in Philly! I need the cash and it's like shooting fish in a barrel! :D
I got started at "amateur night" however, I was the only one who showed up so I just proceeded to work for about 3 hours and came home with a couple of hundred dollars. After that I was hooked! (That was 3 weeks ago tomorrow)...
At my old club if girls came in on amateur night just to get hired they would make them do the contest. It was obnoxious.