Go-Go Dancing



Go-Go Dancing is Exactly What It Says on the Tin - dancing energetically on one's own, often but not always professionally, at a bar or nightclub for the entertainment of the patrons. While the outfits that go-go dancers wear are usually minimal to the point of being stripperiffic (and occasionally the dancers go topless, as at least one famously did at San Francisco's Condor Club in the 1960s), the dancers do not as a rule actually strip - go-go bars are not strip clubs.

The Other Wiki has an article about the history of go-go dancing, including a mention that as of 1991 there were more go-go boys in gay clubs than there were go-go girls in "straight" clubs.

Note that at least on American TV in the 1960s and early 1970s, "go-go dancer" could (and did) serve as a censor-friendly synonym for "stripper".

Compare the Bikini Bar and Strip Clubs.

Not to be confused with The Go-Go's, Go Go Tomago, Go-go Yubari, Hugo A-Go-Go or Go Go Gadget Anything. Or with the subgenre of Funk music that arose out of Washington DC in the 1960s-70s.


 * Go-Go Enslavement

Film

 * Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is about three go-go dancers who go on a crime spree.
 * Girl in Gold Boots, a 1968 film about what The Other Wiki calls "the seedy underworld of go-go dancing".
 * Go Go Tales, a 2007 comedy where the go-go club becomes a strip club.
 * The dance scene in Pulp Fiction uses go-go dance moves.
 * Stripper Go-go dancer Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) is one of the main characters in Planet Terror -- one-half of the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino 2007 Exploitation Film homage Grindhouse -- and some of the action takes place in the go-go bar where she dances. Part of her Establishing Character Moment is her performance early in the film.
 * In Iron Man, the flight attendants on Tony's private jet double as go-go dancers.
 * In It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Sylvester's unnamed girlfriend maintains a perfect stone face while go-go dancing in a bikini.

Literature

 * in Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station, one of the members of Mrs. Pollifax's tour group is (former) go-go dancer Iris Damson.

Live-Action TV

 * The Kit Kat Club, Catwoman's home base in the 1960s Batman TV series, had caged go-go dancers performing for the patrons.
 * From the same show, there's the Batusi, based on typical go-go dance moves of the 1960s (and named for the real-world Dance Sensation the "Watusi").
 * Goldie Hawn and Judy Carne were frequently shown go-go dancing on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, wearing bikinis with various slogans, Catch Phrases and punch lines painted on their bodies.
 * In a 1966 episode of My Three Sons, "Stag at Bay", a go-go dancer shows up as the entertainment for a bachelor party thrown for one of Steve's older coworkers. When the cops bust the party and she can't get her street clothes back, Steve tries to do the gentlemanly thing, and, well, matters get complicated.

Music

 * Pizzicato Five has a song titled "Go Go Dancer", sung from the perspective of a go-go girl from the 1960s or 1970s.
 * The video for Caravan Place's "Lone Digger" features a lone gazelle go go dancer in a bar populated by different anthropomorphized animals. She keeps dancing imperturbably when the other animals begin to attack and kill each other, and, in the end, she is the only survivor of the massacre.

Video Games

 * No One Lives Forever has a go-go lounge populated by a multiracial trio of go-go girls who are actually a Quirky Miniboss Squad with sniper rifles. Before you encountered them, they lounged around their dressing room moaning about how so very bored they were.

Web Original

 * Dr. Steel's live stage shows frequently featured go-go dancers dressed in PVC halters and miniskirts that matched his labcoat.

Western Animation

 * The Phineas and Ferb episode "Robot Rodeo" ends with an extended sequence of Isabella go-go dancing to a song about her frizzy hair.