Toronto's Daily Magazine By Kevin Ritchie Friday, October 14, 2005

Turning On By Taking It Off

Once the vocation of those select few able to lift their own body weight and spin around and around in mid-air, the art of exotic dancing has gone mainstream, reworked into fitness routines to help housewives and college students burn calories. Increasingly, ex-strippers are going into business for themselves, opening studios and hosting workshops while club owners are allowing the curious to get on stage just for fun at amateur nights.

"Society is all sexed out and crazy," says Shannon Sorbes, a dance instructor at Poleworks. Tired of stripping for men, Sorbes quit dancing and began offering drop-in classes in Vancouver's Gast Town area. "I didn't feel good when I was doing it for men, I felt anger. But I love the dance form - it's underground. We did it all ourselves, no man was up there showing us how to do it."

Poleworks is one of several studios to open in and around Vancouver in the last two years and the trend has spread east through Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. Even Tammy Morris, the Vancouver stripper who told the National Enquirer she had one-night stand with Ben Affleck, quit clubs to open a studio. 

Critics charge the surge in exotic dancing's popularity is typical of the "chauvinist female pig" - the subject of a recent Maclean's cover story, which lumps the craze together with drunken Girls Gone Wild-style behaviour.

All of the people Dose spoke with use exotic dancing to empower and build confidence in women and men of all ages and sizes. Whether or not you're doing it for yourself, your partner or a room full of clubbers, here is a run down of the places to go to learn to take it off.

POLE DANCING

"Our angle is fitness," says Sharon Goodman, proprietor of the 2,000 square foot Pole Dance Studios in Vancouver. "But I've had requests for everything." Goodman quit her day job as a corporate Webmaster to open a studio, enchanted by the rigorous choreography she saw at clubs. Students learn to build their self-confidence through sexy dance moves, but with no stripping. She advises women to wear comfortable workout clothes and avoid wearing lotion or oil, which can stick to the pole.

Her clientele is mainly female, but since her studio is above a gay bar, she takes requests from men. With more upper-body strength, men learn the moves faster than women, but often fail to grasp the foundation of her lessons: exaggerating one's femininity through hip movements and gyrations.

"To look sexy, you have to be conscious of what you're body parts are doing," Goodman says. "It's easier to teach men the technical spins, but they're not as graceful-looking as the women."

WOMEN'S MOVES

Mary Taylor explains how to exude confidence and pull off moves seamlessly, advising women to constantly trace their hands along their bodies. If a button or zipper gets stuck, one can easily recover by 'stirring the pot': move the hips in a counter-clockwise, knees slightly bent, then turn around and deal with the costume malfunction. A basic pole move is the Fireman's Spin: Walk around the pole with your arm high up on the pole, gradually gaining momentum then quickly hop on the pole and as you're hanging on and spinning, slide down like a fireman.

A more advanced floor move is what Mary Taylor's calls the 'g-string fling' - usually undertaken to remove that final article of clothing. Sitting on the floor, lift your legs in the air and pull your g-string or panties up to your ankles. Then, hook it over your toe and onto your heal like a slingshot. Take aim at your partner's chest (or face) and shoot.

MEN'S MOVES

Jennifer Nicoll teaches routines for Montreal's DG Entertainment. She tells men to play up their physical strength, by doing one-armed push-ups, but in a humping motion. She stresses men who dance for female audiences have an added challenge: Keeping a girl's attention. Although women can get away with jiggling in a guy's face while he stuffs a tenner into her thong, female audiences are harder to impress. 

"You have to grab a woman mentally," Nicoll says. "You have to entertain a woman. For a guy to just walk up and shove something in my face, it's not really exciting."

Tammy Morris, owner of Tantra Fitness in Vancouver concurs men need to work it a bit more than women do. "Men do more of a hip-hop or aggressive dance routine," she says. "When a man comes out, it's more about the costume - a firefighter or policeman - and fulfilling the fantasy. Men are much, much more visual than women."

Male exotic dance moves are designed to emphasize the chest, abs and crotch area whereas women generally emphasis their backsides. Walking up to the audience, a man's feet should remain flat (he typically wears black running shoes or is barefoot) as he puts his dominant foot forward and flexes his abs, tracing his hands along his body down the front of his body to his crotch. 

One standard move is the body wave, which can be done while dancing or while doing a one-armed push up atop a partner. It starts with pushing the chest forward, then the stomach, pelvis and crotch. Then, he can turn, right foot over left, in a fast gesture and go into a wide stance, flex his buttocks and look back.

In her 11-year experience as an exotic dancer, Morris has never seen a man do a pole routine. "It's easier to teach a man to do a handstand or hang upside down on the pole from his legs," she says. "But once he's up there, unless his legs are shaved, he can't really hang on."

SEMINARS

For women who have no intention of losing weight and just want to take it off, there are seminars. Former exotic dancer-turned-guru Mary Taylor offers workshops through Good For Her in Toronto, but also travels the country with different sex conventions teaching women how to dance for their partners. At home, men may not expect their partner to act overtly sensual and may feel uncomfortable and giggle.

"When you're doing it in public for a room full of men, you don't think about it; it's a performance. The louder they clap, the better you perform," she says. "When you're doing it at home, it's very, very intimidating."

She teaches a basic collection of moves she's learned over the years to women mostly 30 and up, a group, she says, is less inhibited than their younger counterparts.