Profile

Email this article

Learning to strip in San Diego

By Yasmina Fine

May 1, 2006

San Diego--As a young woman, I would float off into my private little fantasy world where I would borrow my mother’s heels, throw on the knee highs, slide on a pair of silky dolphin shorts and cover my top with a training bra, tank top, t-shirt, sheer silky scarf and funky hat. The music would start:

“If you want my body and you think I’m sexy,…”

I’d toss her hat across the room and whirl her hair. Then I’d swing my shoes with the tips of my toes, eventually flinging each shoe in opposite directions.

Somewhere along the line, many of us lose touch with this sexy side to ourselves. Sometimes we need a little help finding it again.

Now there are educational opportunities to help you celebrate your sexuality again….

More dance than striptease or burlesque

Culture Shock Dance Studio (2110 Hancock Street, just west of Old Town) holds a “Strip Tease, Burlesque” dance performance class every Friday at 6:30 p.m.

I took in one of their classes recently and had fun, but not that much fun since I’m not much of a trained dancer.

More than 40 young women in their 20’s, mostly all-American with a few Latinas, Asians, and African Americans in the mix, lined up in front of the mirror ready to strut their stuff. Two twenty-something white boys hung out in back wearing baseball caps and appearing to be serious about learning the dance moves—and they weren’t gay.

Dee, an upbeat, sinewy and talented dancer, led the class.

Before starting, Dee announced the artist of the evening, “Christina Aguilera,” and he added, “It’s not going to be dirty.” And with that caveat, it seemed the class was less of a striptease dance class and more of an audition for a Christina Aguilera video or for the Chargers’ Girls’ dance squad.

Okay, I though, isn’t this supposed to be a striptease class? Since when do Puritans teach striptease?

Most women wore either loose fitting sweats with a tank top or yoga pants and some kind of a dancing bra.

Dee led us through a fun dance routine. However, I had hoped the studio would have provided us with bright blue feather boas, sparkly top hats, and clothing to strip from our bodies. No such luck. I don’t know, where’s the burlesque?

We stepped back and forth and around a few times, kicked and turned, and flicked our hips. We slinkily bent over, wagged our butts, then spun on the ground with our legs in the air, à la Sharon Stone. The routine wasn’t easy for a novice dancer to follow, but Dee mentioned that it takes a few sessions to get the routine down.

Apparently, the class is supposed to include the classic burlesque chair dance,… in two weeks.

Toward the end of the class the instructor blasted the “Don’t you wish you’re girlfriend was hot like me?” song and let us groove solo to our own rhythm and routine in front of 35 other women and three men. Okay, that was kind of fun and a challenge, too. We quickly found out whether we could dance without inhibition in front of a large crowd, with mirrors all around us.

The class, however, would have been a lot more interesting if Dee broke us in with the subtleties of striptease movement. That way we could have incorporated our own stripper personality into the routine and free dance.

I asked Dee why he keeps his striptease classes more buttoned-up than one would imagine, and he answered, “You can do it in a tasteful way.”

But is burlesque supposed to be tasteful? I thought burlesque was supposed to shatter propriety and be ribald and humorous.

Dee admits that a number of strippers do take his class, but he wouldn’t comment any further. He told me that he’s gone to a strip club only once in his life, and that was in San Francisco. He was not impressed. He asked, “Where’s the dance?”

I asked, “Where’s the burlesque and where’s the stripping?”

More burlesque than striptease or dance

No men allowed at Dance Moves’ “Adult Burlesque” class in Encinitas. Only women 18 and older.

Taking place from 7 to 8 p.m. every Monday at the Callahan Institute of Arts (613 Westlake Ave., Encinitas) is a burlesque dance class especially designed for women wanting to get back in touch with their inner temptress.

Believe it or not, many women in their late forties and early fifties takes these classes. It’s their chance to get back in touch with their sexy selves after having had kids or been engulfed in a career for so long. Some do it to impress their husbands, others do it for themselves.

Dance Moves’ burlesque dance class focuses on women enjoying their bodies and inviting their artistic sexual energy to re-emerge through dance. Without men in the class, women can practice and practice without feeling self-conscious. Should they feel like performing for the other sex later, they’ll have their moves down pat.

Where’s the burlesque? Well, c’mon think about it… a bunch of middle-aged women learning to striptease inside a dance studio, now that's burlesque! But where’s the strip?

More striptease than burlesque or dance

It seems neither of these dance classes above teach women or men how to take off their clothing in a teasing way, i.e. strip

Both Clairemont Mesa Blvd. and Rosecrans Ave. offer a variety of “adult entertainment” clubs where women remove their clothing. At Cheetahs the women strip down to their bare nothings. They walk around the club wearing tower high heels and string bikinis (in case you didn’t know), they hop on the stage while their favorite songs play, take off their bikinis and swing from a pole.

That’s definitely tease, since the men cannot get anything other than an expensive lap dance, the greatest tease mankind ever invented.

But, where’s the dance? These women do not dance. They flop themselves on the floor of the stage, crawl, and swim onto the pole like a girl at the playground. Where’s the dance here?

And, where’s the burlesque? I don’t see anybody laughing at these performances. They are lewd, but looking at the captivated and serious audience, nobody’s laughing.

Real burlesque, stripteasing and dancing

Well, what do San Diegans really know about burlesque dancing and the striptease?

Really.

How about renting a video about Gypsy Rose Lee? She made herself famous for her first striptease performance. She slowly stripped herself down to nothing and then threw herself into the stage curtain and ever-so-coyly wrapped it around her body to cover her bashful self. Now that’s burlesque-sexy, ribald and funny.

Gypsy Rose’s once said, “You don’t have to be naked to look naked. You just have to think naked.”

How about this? You don’t have to take lessons to get naked or act sexy, you just have to act naked and think sexy.

--------------------