Defensive Lap Dancing: Position, Mirrors, Never Turn Your Back

A safe lap dance is mostly positioning: keep your hands free and his occupied, keep your weight on your own feet so you can stand up in one move, keep the mirror or the room in your eyeline, and turn your back only for a few counts and only on a man who has already shown you he follows rules. The hands speech sets the expectation (see /advice/rules-before-the-dance); your body is what enforces it. A customer who finds that his hands have nowhere useful to go usually stops trying, and the warning never has to be said.

The principle: he gets what you give, nothing he can take

Every technique here is a version of one idea from the working dancers who contributed to Dancers Information's guidance: position your body so he cannot reach what he is not allowed to touch, and stay ready to move. The dance is still a dance. It is also a sequence of positions that keep you in control of the distance, and the men who are a problem are the men who try to close it. Design the dance so that closing it takes effort, and you will see the effort start before the hand arrives.

Hands

Yours stay free. Do not hold anything, do not put both hands on his shoulders for long, and do not let him hold them. Free hands are what you use to put his back, to brace against the seat, and to push off if you need to stand. His hands get a place: on the seat, under his thighs, on the armrests, at his sides, whatever the club allows. Gemma Rose's playful version with a shy customer is to pin his hands herself and make a game of it, which gives him something to do with them and makes the rule feel like part of the show. Any time his hands move, yours move them back, and you keep dancing. The correction is part of the choreography.

Weight and balance

Keep your weight on your own feet, not his lap, for most of the dance. If you are sitting fully on a man, standing up takes two moves and he can hold you down with one arm. If your weight is on your feet, standing up is a single motion and nothing he does stops it. Lean in, hover, brush, but own your balance. This also saves your knees over a long night, since a lap dance performed on your own legs is a squat held for three minutes and a lap dance performed on his is a position you cannot leave.

Heels matter here. An ankle-strap platform you have broken in gives you a stable base; a loose or new shoe does not, and a stumble into a customer is both a safety problem and an invitation.

Should I ever turn my back during a dance?

Briefly, and only once you trust him. The turned-back move is standard and customers expect it, but the moment your back is to him you cannot see his hands, cannot see his face, and cannot react in time. Dancers Information's rule is never to turn your back on a customer, and vets soften that to: never for long, never on a stranger who has already tested the rules, and always with the mirror doing the watching. For a new customer, keep the turned-back phase to a few counts, with your eyes on the mirror or the room, and come back round. For a regular who has never once moved his hands in thirty dances, you can relax it. That is one of the things regulars are for.

Mirrors and sightlines

Most private areas have a mirror; it is there for the customer, and it is also yours. Position the dance so the mirror shows you his hands when you are facing away, and so the door or the floor manager is in your peripheral vision when you are facing him. If a booth has no mirror and no sightline, keep every move facing him. Know where the bouncer stands and whether he can see your booth from there; if he cannot, tell him which booth you are in before you go back, which Dancers Information recommends as routine for every private dance, not just the ones that worry you.

How do I handle a customer who keeps shifting to reach me?

Change the geometry, not the mood. If he slides forward, you step back and dance from a half-step further away, smiling, as if that was the plan. If he spreads his knees to pull you in, dance beside him instead of between his legs. If he grabs at your waist, take his wrists, put them on the seat, and keep going. Each correction is wordless the first time and says "hands" the second. The third time, the dance is over and you walk; the full warning sequence is in /advice/rules-before-the-dance. What you never do is let the geometry drift to where he wants it because the correction feels awkward. Inverse described a new dancer who let customers grope her for months because she assumed it was normal; most of the touching she allowed started as small shifts she did not correct.

Drunk customers, and leaving the booth

A customer who is unsteady is unsafe to dance for, both because his hands are unpredictable and because a man who cannot control his balance will grab for the nearest thing when he loses it, which is you. Dancers Information says plainly not to dance for the very intoxicated, and vets add that they often do not pay anyway. If you take a tipsy-but-functional customer, widen every distance above and keep your weight entirely on your own feet; see /advice/drunk-grabby-or-both for where the line is.

End the dance on your feet, facing him, between him and the exit. Collect the money before, never after (see /advice/paid-up-front-every-time), so leaving is just leaving. If anything happened in the booth that security should know, tell them on your way back to the floor, not at the end of the night. A dancer who walks out mid-song because of a third hand should also walk straight to the bouncer, so that the customer's version of events is not the first one anyone hears.

Do this tonight

• Do every dance with your weight on your own feet and both hands free.
• Give his hands a place before the first song and return them there, without comment, the first time they move.
• Find the mirror and the bouncer's sightline for each booth you use.
• Keep the turned-back phase to a few counts with new customers, longer only with proven regulars.