Go-go dancing
Go-go dancers are dancers who are employed to entertain crowds at nightclubs[1] or other venues where music is played. Go-go dancing originated in the early 1960s at the French bar Whisky a Gogo, located in the town of Juan-les-Pins. The bar's name was taken from the French title of the Scottish comedy film Whisky Galore! [2] The French bar then licensed its name to the West Hollywood rock club Whisky a Go Go, which opened in January 1964 and chose the name to reflect the already popular craze of go-go dancing.[3] Many 1960s-era nightclub dancers wore short, fringed skirts and high boots[4] which eventually came to be called go-go boots. Nightclub promoters in the mid‑1960s then conceived the idea of hiring women dressed in these outfits to entertain patrons.
Not to be confused with Go-go, an unrelated subgenre of funk music.Etymology[edit]
The term go-go derives from the phrase "go-go-go" for a high-energy person,[5] and was influenced by the French expression à gogo, meaning "in abundance, galore",[6] which is in turn derived from the ancient French word la gogue for "joy, happiness".[7] The term go-go dancer originated from the French bar Whisky a Gogo located in Juan-les-Pins, a seaside town near Cannes, which was among the first places in the world to replace live music with records selected by a disc jockey and to provide the spectacle of paid dancers known as go-go girls.
Holidays and celebrations[edit]
Currently, the City of West Hollywood celebrates the history and culture of go-go dancing by hosting an annual "Go-Go Boy Appreciation Day" that includes a street festival and competition.[29]
Performance art dancers[edit]
Go-go dancers that are hired to dance at night clubs, special parties, festivals, circuit parties or rave dances in bright, colorful costumes are called performance art dancers.[30] Most often, go-go dancers are typically women who perform to entertain a crowd in public or at clubs and they often wear sexy clothing or printed clothes.[31] Their costumes often include accessories such as glow sticks, light chasers, toy ray guns that light up, go-go shorts embedded with battery-operated fiber optic tubes in various colors, strings of battery-operated colored lights in plastic tubes, fire sticks, a musical instrument, or an animal (usually a snake). In the early to mid‑1980s, the performance art dancer John Sex, who performed with a python, played a role in making go-go dancing popular once again at gay and bisexual night clubs along with his life partner Sebastian Kwok.