feathers!

This is stating the obvious, mostly, but I'm really into stripping. It would be a hobby if it wasn't my profession. I'm interested in all aspects of it: its place in the sex industry, stripping as saleswomanship, as performance both in its modern form and as the current manifestation of exotic dance, as an entrepreneurial endeavor that can liberate women from capitalist wage slavery and allow them ownership of their time; I read its artistic, political, and economic meanings.

So it should be no wonder that I enjoy taking stripper class. This year I've had the pleasure of pole dancing classes with Summer of PDX Pole Divas and just this past Sunday made it down to the New York School of Burlesque for a fan dancing class with the Professor, no, the Dean of Stripping, Jo Weldon. I've never even thought about attempting a fan dance either at work or at a burlesque show, but when I saw it on her calendar, a big, warm, "I WANT" seized my brain.

Sunday was also a day for the F train to be, a ha ha ha, F'd up, and for a big thunderstorm, so I got to the classroom (the Slipper Room) a full 20 minutes late for class. I didn't want to presume to interrupt but luckily another student showed up, and we knocked on the door, both late for stripper class (imagine!). Luckily we hadn't missed too much and were told to grab a pair of small feather fans (think hand fans, not the giant performance ones) and take a spot in the class.

Jo is a fabulous instructor and I am so amazed that she's singlehandedly deconstructed and teased out the basics of burlesque in such a clear, concise way. I really hope she's working on an actual dance textbook, because if anyone is going to put carefully considered disrobing and teasing into the canon of dance as performance, it's her.

By the end of the class she'd given us at least a dozen basic moves (and that's without floorwork) and choreographed a short dance for us. I loved the feel of the feathers and the way holding a prop automatically made my movements more considered and deliberate, and immediately started fantasizing about doing a fan dance on the huge stage of the Fox Club.


A few weeks ago, the day I met up with Mimi, the guy getting my coffee at Liquid Planet noticed my Texas Burlesque Festival T-shirt and asked me if I was involved in "that burlesque-type thing they're doing at the Wilma Theatre." I of course was not, not being from town, but wanted to know more. "Well, it's supposed to be like burlesque but less racy." Less racy? I thought. Now, I supposed you can have burlesque without nudity, but without being racy? That's like a chocolate chip cookie without chocolate chips. It's not a chocolate chip cookie anymore, it's just a sugar cookie. I googled, but found nothing, so if there is indeed any Missoula burlesque going on, please email me so I can see the show next time I'm there.

Oh, and shortly after that I was in the parking lot of a grocery store in Missoula when I improbably saw a gorgeous, elaborate ostrich feather headdress in the back of someone's PT Cruiser. I should have left a note! I took a picture, though.

Glamour. It's where you find it, sometimes in the back of a Chevy outside of an Albertson's.

I am a fish with lungs spiritually

Tell me if I overreacted, friends. As you can see by my sidebar, I read a lot of other stripper blogs. Not every one is written impeccably, but they all have stripper stories, which I like to hear. I also am interested in the way other dancers handle life its ownself. But it's like a virtual dressing room over there; I'm not going to always agree with everyone, and such was the case with one entry yesterday on CaseyDancer's blog (the one that ends with a plea for a book deal):

I always said I don't want a mate who is "OK" with me stripping - only a creep would be "OK" with that!

You can read my response and hers in the comments that follow. Here's the kicker of her response:
Sure, strippers can marry & have boyfriends, but I don't believe their level of spiritual intimacy can evolve to the degree I'M looking for, while she's still stripping. So, any man who is "OK" with it, in my eyes, just isn't very evolved. Hence, a "creep".

I can't imagine the pain it must cause her to feel this while while both dancing and in a relationship! To believe that only a guy who hates her job is not a creep; to believe she is harming her own spirituality by dancing, to have spent 22 years in an industry catering to and employing those she sees as fundamentally flawed. How awful for her.

Now, I just asked Mr. Wayward if it's true we're not spiritually evolved. His response?

"It depends on the form of spirituality you choose. I'm highly spiritually involved."

"That's true," I said, "You do have a fully formed life philosophy. What do you call it again?"

"I'm an existentialist."

And it's true, we do create our own meaning (or not; sometimes there's a dash of nihilism in there, for me).

What a fitting way to end a day that started at the D2 like this:

Guy at bar: "I had this great professor in Europe who would talk about the differences between the ways men and women act in stripclubs; women would be rambunctious and men, he said, sat there 'with a nearly religious reverence.'"

Me: "A professor actually said that? How fabulous!"

GAB: "Yeah! He was great! So, you're familiar with Freud's theory of sublimation, right?"

Me: Nodding, like it's the most natural thing in the world for a customer to ask. And because I've read a book about sex. Or two.

GAB: Goes on for, like, fifteen minutes about Freud, European attitudes about America, etc. etc.

So that was the morning. The in between part was fine, especially the parts where we had goodlooking tradesmen in (carpenters, glaziers) spending money. And the part where I got a mystery $20 on my stage from a guy who left immediately after. He was like the stage tip fairy, dropping a $20 and disappearing. I do love the weekend day shifts at the D2, I really do. Nights are full of partiers and groups, but the days bring in the mellow, more mature, spendier guys on the weekends. Let's hope for a continuation tomorrow.

I learned how to take off my clothes!

Jo Weldon has burlesque classes; actually, she has a whole damn School of Burlesque. Last Sunday I had the pleasure of attending her The Art of A-Peel: Glove and Stocking Removal and Costuming and Choreography classes. I believe it was the first time in my whole life someone actually gave me instructions on how to take it off, and I've been removing my clothing for my whole life; I've been removing it professionally for 13 years now.

The class was fabulous. There were seven women in attendance, some of whom had never so much as seen a burlesque show in their lives. Yet they all enthusiastically followed Jo's detailed instructions on how to control movement, present your body, and involve the senses in the simple act of peeling a glove from the arms and hands. I also really appreciated how she taught the way to unsnap garters and remove stockings in a visually appealing manner as actual dance moves and an essential part of stripping choreography. She argues for the legitimacy of exotic dance, burlesque, and striptease as forms of dance with codified moves, something I agree with in principle, but her classes really put it in action.

Anyone watching an experienced dancer performing a classic striptease understands they're seeing something thought out and choreographed. It's very different from the more spontaneous dancing we do on stage in a strip club, but stripping has its own list of moves that are common to dancers all over the country. I don't know what the names are -- what do we call it when we put our hands on our knees and toss our hair? And when we spin backwards around a pole holding on with one hand? -- but you see the same moves used over and over.

I suppose that makes modern stripping more of a folk style, since it's not taught formally in dance class but informally, on the job, as you need to learn. I sure would have loved to have someone teach me movement, though. It would have lessened the period of time I was an awkward new girl. For any strippers passing through Manhattan, I endorse the School of Burlesque classes. They're fun and useful. And tax-deductible continuing education!