What I Learned about Dance When I Became a Stripper

Wie sieht ein Tanz jenseits des Kanons und jenseits erlernter Ästhetik aus? Gibt es Bewegungen, die nicht nur richtig aussehen, sondern sich auch wahr anfühlen? In ihrem essayistischen Beitrag für das tanzraumberlinMagazin schreibt die Tänzerin Gemini über ihre klassische Tanzausbildung – und darüber, wie sie beim Strippen eine Bewegungssprache fand, die sich erstmals wirklich nach ihrer eigenen anfühlte.

Gemini
Tänzerin, Stripperin und Yogalehrerin

I was trained to be quiet with my body.
To make it obedient.
To make it precise.
To make it disappear into lines and shapes someone else decided were beautiful.
I grew up inside mirrors, ballet barres, studio floors, the smell of resin and discipline. I learned ballet. I learned howto take orders gracefully. I learned how to count before I learned how to feel.
There was always a right way.
A correct angle.
A silent agreement that pain was part of the choreography. That beauty meant control. That control meant worth.
And I was a very strict ballerina.
Like strict.
Everything pulled up, everything placed.
I knew exactly where my body was supposed to be at all times.
I moved into modern, but I was still strict. Even when the movement got heavier, more grounded, more “emotional” there was still a correctness to it. A way it was supposed to look.
Then contemporary, in college, in Seattle.
Because contemporary is where you go when you want to be free.
Right?
That’s what I thought.
But even there, I felt it, that same invisiblecage. Just with softer lighting. Instead of rules, it was taste. Instead of correction, it was approval dressed up as critique.
I became very good at making things that looked like risk.
But I wasn’t actually risking anything.
And after college, I became a professional burlesque dancer.
Which should have been the moment everything clicked. And in some ways, it did.
Glitter, stage, sensuality, character. It felt like I was stepping outside the rigidity I grew up in.
But I was broke. Like completely broke.
And worse than that, I hit a creative block so heavy I didn’t know who I was as an artist anymore.
Because I had to ask myself a question I couldn’t avoid:
If I’m an artist... where is the risk in my work?
Where is the part where I could fail? Where is the part where I could lose something? Where is the part that actually costs me?
Because I knew how to simulate risk. I knew how to make something look provocative, subversive, edgy.
But I wasn’t putting anything on the line.
And around that time, I kept crossing paths with strippers.
Even back in college.
And if I’m honest, I judged them.
I thought they were “slutty.” I thought I was doing something more elevated, more meaningful, more legitimate.
I had absorbed that hierarchy without even questioning it.
Dance on a stage = art.
Dance in a club = something less.
And I carried that with me.
Until I couldn’t ignore what I was seeing.
They were doing something I wasn’t.
They were taking real risks.
Financial risk. Physical risk. Social risk. Emotional risk.
They were walking into rooms where nothing was guaranteed, and still creating something. Still generating value in real time, out of their bodies, their presence, their awareness.
That’s not conceptual.
That’s real.
So I made a decision that didn’t make sense to anyone around me.
I became a stripper so I could move to Berlin.
That was the plan!
And I thought I understood what I was stepping into.
I didn’t.
Because stripping didn’t just give me a job, it completely cracked open everything I thought I knew about dance.
And the people who taught me the most, the people who reshaped how I move, how I think, how I hold myself, were Black strippers.
Women who were, at the same time, the most skilled, the most intelligent, the most precise dancers in theroom and also the most overlooked.
You could see it every night.
Customers carrying this unconscious racism, choosing who to pay, who to value, who to ignore.
And still, these women were undeniable.
Their musicality. Their timing. Their patience. The way they could stretch amoment until the whole room leaned in without even realizing it.
And they taught me.
Not in a classroom. Not in counts. But in watching, in being around them, in small corrections, in energy.
They taught me how to sit in movement.
How to let a moment breathe instead of rushing to prove something.
How to make eye contact that holds power instead of giving it away.
How to understand money as part of thechoreography, not separate from it.
How to build confidence as a practice. Not something you pretend to have, but something you earn, over and over again, in real time.
And now I live in Berlin.
I still strip.
And I dance more than I ever have in my life.
I’ve picked up a lot of heels dance classes lately. And my body feels more alive, more responsive, more mine than it ever did in all those years of training.
And people compliment me all the time now.
They say,“Your movement is so unique,”
“There’s something differentabout your quality,”
“Where did you train?”
And I always say the same thing.
I say, “strippers taught me!”
And there’s always that pause.
That moment where it doesn’t quite land.
And then they laugh.
Like I’m joking. Like it’s ironic.
Because heels dance, the way it exists now, doesn’t acknowledge where it comes from. Like it just appeared. Like it wasn’t built. Like it wasn’t taken.
But I know the lineage.
I know exactly where my movement comes from.
Every time I slow something down. Every time I hold eye contact. Every time I choose presence over perfection, there are specific people in my body.
And I refuse to erase that.
Because I used to be part of that erasure.
I was the one judging.
I was the one believing I was doing something more worthy.
And I was wrong.
Stripping didn’t take me away from being a dancer.
It made me one.
It stripped away everything that wasn’t honest, everything that was about approval, or correctness, or fitting into an idea of what art should look like.
Now when I move, I’m not asking if it’s right.
I’m asking if it’s real.
If it costs something.
If it holds something.
If it’s mine.
So yes.
I grew up in studios.
I trained to be perfect.
I learned how to disappear into technique.
I went to college for dance.
I became a burlesque performer searching for something I couldn’t name.
And now,
Now I’m a stripper in Berlin who finally understands what it means to dance.
Not as an illusion.
Not as performance of risk.
But as something lived.
Something exchanged.
Something chosen.
Over and over again.
And that finally feels like mine

 

Gemini is an American freelance dancer, stripper, and yoga teacher. Trained in ballet and contemporary dance, she holds a BFA in Dance from Cornish College of the Arts. Her work spans performance, nightlife, movement education, and screendance and is driven by an interest in attention: how it is earned, directed, exchanged, and embodied. She lives and works in Berlin.