Anexo 8. Entrevista de satisfacción al propietario

In order to be considered as good performers on the centre stage, nightclub dancers need to be able to demonstrate that they can interact with nightclub punters in the right way. On the physical stage/podium, this usually requires the use of eye contact to make a connection with audience members. ‘Confidence’ is seen as a key personality attribute required for this. However, nightclub dancers did not think of themselves as confident people, but were able to portray that they were on stage. This was also connected to their ability to convince the audience that they are ‘loving it’. These skills will be considered separately below.

‘Crowd interaction’

Participants discussed how the ability to ‘interact’ with nightclub punters was a key aspect of being a good nightclub dancer. Much of this interaction is non-verbal as it takes place when the dancer is separated from the nightclub punters on a physical stage, podium or other designated performance area. In addition to this, some nightclub managers require nightclub dancers to engage in direct face-to-face verbal and non- verbal interaction with nightclub punters in various spaces in and around the nightclub. With regards to their performance on the physical stage/podium, this generally meant making eye-contact with audience members. For example, ‘interaction’ was one of the three main selection criteria Leon used when recruiting new nightclub dancers for his agency (the other two were ‘style’ and ‘stamina’). Leon’s agency recruited some nightclub dancers through dance competitions at live club nights (as well as ‘traditional’ style auditions in empty nightclubs outside of opening hours). This helped him and his team leaders to assess how well the dancers interacted with the audience and ‘how the crowd responded to them’. In the extract below, Leon explains what he means by ‘interaction’:

…in the dancing competitions for instance, they catch eyes with someone and someone on the dance floor will go ‘whey!’ and they acknowledge it … it’s acknowledging people … it doesn’t alienate – it just shows you’re normal,

you’re all having a wicked time … that was what we deemed as interaction, rather than just sort of show-boating…

Leon, former podium dancer and events entertainment agency manager

Hence, for Leon, making eye-contact and ‘acknowledging people’ helps the audience to feel included and that everyone in the nightclub is sharing in the enjoyment of the experience.

Similarly, for the nightclub manager Lee, a successful nightclub dancer was one who would interact ‘with customers as we would like them to’. Whilst they are dancing on the stage or podium, this entails getting ‘the crowd involved in what they are doing’ in some way. This could be simply making eye contact with audience members or actual audience participation in the performance:

Lee: A successful dancer on the night is someone who actually gets the crowd

involved in what they are doing … We had two young lads who used to do some breakdancing dance-offs on the stage and the customers would basically be separated into 2 separate groups, one for one dancer, one for the other dancer, so on and so forth. So the dancers would interact with the crowd on their side, shouting and hollering, basically cheering them on.

Interviewer: So from your point of view is the kind of interaction with the

crowd that’s quite important?

Lee: It’s very, it is a key aspect and there is no point in having a dancer who is

not going to look at customers, not going to interact with them … we’re in the idea of entertainment and that’s what we are all about.

Interviewer: Yes, so proper entertainment then, with a big E if you like. Lee: Exactly.

Interviewer: So what’s the worse kind of nightclub dancer for you then?

Lee: The worse kind of nightclub dancer is someone who’s not very outgoing.

Someone who’s not confident - it really shows in a dance set, someone who is not confident you can definitely tell compared to someone who is, especially when obviously they are dressing up all the time in different uniforms, different outfits to go with the stage shows which we are doing. Not interacting with the customers as we would like them to. We have our dancers on the champagne reception serving out champagne so they get to know the customers before they actually do the stage shows and so they can have photographs taken and things like that and a lot of the people who aren’t confident won’t go for that.

Lee, nightclub manager

The quote above illustrates that Lee also required his dancers to ‘get know the customers’ by serving champagne to them as part of the champagne reception which would be a feature of most event nights at the club. For Lee, being confident and

outgoing are key personality attributes which nightclub dancers require for interacting with customers on the stage/podium and during the champagne reception.

Some employers may require a different type of crowd interaction between nightclub dancers and punters. Chapter 5 explored how nightclub dancers are recruited based on their sexual attractiveness because nightclubs are ‘strategically sexualised’, whereby they utilise and mobilise nightclub dancers’ sex appeal as part of a deliberate corporate strategy (Warhurst and Nickson, 2009). Here, it is suggested that this strategic sexualisation also manifests itself in the way in which nightclub dancers are encouraged by some employers to engage in non-verbal flirting with audience members:

…It’s also the connection they make with the crowd. So obviously, if you’ve got a man dancing in front of you dancing, half-naked and he’s looking at you and he’s flirting with you, you’re going to look back; so the connection you make with crowd is a big thing as well…

Kelly, ‘lead’ freestyle podium dancer at a nightclub

Although Kelly is referring specifically to male dancers in this extract, she also thought that female nightclub dancers should flirt with audience members in this way too. This has similarities with the way in which the exotic dancers in Wood’s (2000) study glanced at customers in a way that suggested that there was ‘something going on’ between the two of them (p. 18). Exotic dancers who were able to do this made more money in the form of tips than dancers who could not. However, nightclub dancers do not receive tips from customers.

Performing confidence

The nightclub manager Lee quoted above pointed out that a lack of confidence ‘really shows in dance set’. However, as Emily suggests in the interview extract below, this does not necessarily mean that the dancer has to necessarily feel entirely confident or be considered as having an outgoing personality in general, as long as they can

perform confidence:

Emily: …I think that confidence is really key.

Interviewer: Do you think that confidence is something that you always had

Emily: Well I mean when I say confident, you don’t have to be a confident

person in day to day life but I think that when you get up there you have to

appear confident … a lot of dancers might be quite quiet and they might not be

the confident people in normal circumstances but when you get up there to dance people are going to look at you and so you can’t be uncomfortable with people looking at you.

Interviewer: Yes, so it is almost like making it look like you are confident. Emily: Yes, you have to appear confident whether you are or not.

Emily, freestyle podium dancer (emphasis added)

Similarly, Jessica suggests that an ‘outgoing’ personality is performed:

Interviewer: What do you think makes a good female dancer?

Jessica: I think personality’s a big thing in it because if you are outgoing and

you’re happy and you look like you’re enjoying your job, then it kind of comes out in your performance. And confidence, I think that’s a really big thing because if you’re shy then it shows.

Jessica, freestyle podium dancer

Jessica also suggests that looking ‘like you’re enjoying your job’ is connected the performance of confidence. This supported from the following quote from Amber:

You could be a really good dancer and not be confident and it can make it look like you’re not enjoying yourself. But if you show that you love what you do and you don’t care what anybody else thinks, it’ll make you look better.

Amber, freestyle podium dancer

This suggests that feeling nervous or having a lack of self-confidence is not problematic as long as it does not affect nightclub dancers’ ability to show that they ‘love’ what they do. The next section explores the ability of dancers to convince the audience that they are enjoying themselves, whether they are or not.

‘Loving it’

Participants highlighted nightclub dancers’ ability to portray that they are having a good time whilst they are dancing on the stage/podium as being an important aspect of being a good performer. The former podium dancer and events entertainment agency

manager Leon expressed how it was particularly important that nightclub dancers are able to convince the audience that they are genuinely enjoying themselves. Such emotion would have to be read in the nightclub dancer’s eyes to be perceived as genuine:

…this is what does it for me; this is what gives you the x factor, right: the eyes. You can just see they’re just loving it, you can see it on their faces it’s like ‘yeaahh!’ and it’s like ‘come on!’ … and you see those and you’re like ‘wow, they love it so much!’ and you just want to go for it … that is the key thing, that’s what I think … makes a performer, because if they don’t look like they’re loving it, like they’re having it, then you aren’t going to make me dance, you just look like you’re standing there doing you’re thing – ‘yeah, wait until it’s over, I’ll get my money, fuck off,’ you know what I mean? And yeah, you’ve got to love it, you’ve got to see the love, ‘cause you can tell when you go round the dance floor and you’ve got some people who are dancing like complete idiots … And people start having it and that’s a beautiful thing and this has to be good, see; I love it, I can just see it going off now. I am there. I am there.

Leon, former podium dancer and events entertainment agency manager

Hence, it does not matter whether a nightclub dancer is displaying their actual feelings or is ‘deep acting’ and bringing their feelings in line with what is expected of them (Hochschild, 1983), as long as the emotional display is perceived as authentic and punters can ‘see the love’. The aim of all this is to encourage the nightclub punters to dance: if nightclub dancers look like they are ‘loving it’ and ‘having a wicked time’ (see the previous quote from Leon), then punters will want to dance to share in these positive emotions. Kelly explains this further:

…get people dancing and once people start dancing, the night is young then! … when you got into a nightclub and no-one’s dancing, the atmosphere is rubbish, you’re not going to enjoy yourself. If you’ve got one person egging you on and you’ve got the dancers going and you’ve got a couple of people on the dance floor going for it, it’s an all better atmosphere and a better night at the end of the day. We’re generally there just to pick the atmosphere up and get people enjoying themselves. We are quite needed in that club, it’s boring without us! …if you look grumpy, someone’s going to say ‘ooo, look at her up there, grumpy cow,’ but if you’re smiling they can see you’re enjoying it and it passes on towards them then as well, they just end up enjoying it and getting into it.

Creating an ‘atmosphere’ and encouraging punters to dance and enjoy themselves is one of the ways in which nightclubs can compete with other nightclubs and late bars/pubs on the quality of the experience that they have on offer, rather than the price of drinks (Mintel, 2006). Indeed, Emma, the entertainment manager at ‘Superbash’, was clear and explicit about this selling point:

You know our job is to help make people have a good party and have an experience rather than just come into a club to get drunk. That is definitely what Superbash bases itself on, the experience … it’s all a very positive sort of atmosphere, I think.

Emma, dancer (freestyle and choreographed) and entertainment manager at a ‘superclub’

However, whilst it seems that most employers of nightclub dancers wanted them to make eye-contact with customers and smile a lot, one participant gave an example of a nightclub which required the opposite:

…Another club that I dance at the moment [name of club and location], what they specifically like is kind of very aloof, so the dancers don’t interact with the public, they’re more like something to just look at, so it is less smiley, where as a lot of jobs like want you to be like really smiley and getting the crowds going. This one prefers the girls to kind of sit separately and create an air of mystery, an air of something special when they all perform, coming on stage and with the costumes - it’s got feathers, it’s got masks. So, yeah, it really is like each club prefers a different kind of thing…

Emily, freestyle podium dancer

This suggests that nightclub dancers need to be aware of the requirements of different nightclub managers in terms the ‘atmosphere’ they are trying to create and the corresponding ‘feeling rules’, which in turn inform the type of emotional performance that is desired (Hochschild, 1983). In addition, it is worth pointing out that Emily, on the one hand, worked in some of the most prestigious commercial nightclubs in the UK, including the one she is referring to in the extract above. Leon, on the other hand, initially started his business in the Underground/Hard House sector of nightclubs. The implication here is that there are even more significant contrasts between the type of emotional performance that is expected from nightclub dancers and the amount of emphasis which is placed upon this aspect of their work. This is supported by evidence from Kelly, who contrasted her first podium dancing job in a underground/ Hard House

venue, which had a ‘happy atmosphere’ where punters went because ‘they loved the music and things’ to the commercial/Funky House nightclub where she currently worked which punters would ‘stumble’ into ‘at the end of a night on a night out.’