‘In Traction Like Me’: a Novice’s Tale

Do you watch the dancers in music videos and say to yourself, I know I could do that? Have you ever thought you could be an accountant by day and a dancer by night? Do you think you can shake your groove thang for 20 minutes nonstop to the pounding bass of ear-splitting house music while hundreds of people watch?

I did that. I go-go danced in a cage.

It was my friend Cathy’s idea. I told her I was working on this story, and she quickly piped up, “Why don’t you be a go-go dancer for a night?”

It sounded kicky. It sounded like a George-Plimpton-does-”Flashdance” kind of thing, and when I ran the idea past the publicist for the Shark Club, where girls dance in cages above the dance floor, he was receptive.

Little did I know the gut-twisting anxiety I had in store.

I have had some dance training, mostly ballet, with some modern and jazz thrown in. But that was a long time ago.

Here are some other lame qualifications that I thought could pull me through this stint: I run eight miles three times a week, do aerobics, take step classes, ride the Stairmaster for an hour and 15 minutes and lift weights. I watch MTV. And I went to a summer camp for the arts when I was 16 and was in dance class with the then-14-year-old Paula Abdul.

I was pretty confident that I could fake it.

This grand self-delusion lasted until I interviewed the first two go-go dancers, Dani Lee and Donna. Donna said, “People think anyone can do it, and that there’s no skill behind it. They are way wrong. There’s a definite skill to getting up there, looking good, keeping your movements kind of consistent, keeping your energy up, looking sexy but not too sexy and making sure you’re in a space and don’t fall.

“It’s not like anyone could jump up and do it. I’m sure there are really good dancers who couldn’t do it.”

I felt spasms in my stomach.

Said Kraig Anthony, a dancer at the Mayan, “I think, deep inside, a lot of people would like to get up there once and just dance. It’s like a fantasy. I had a friend who actually did it, and he said, ‘I don’t know how you guys can do it, get up there three nights in a row. It’s killer.’ I remember my first time I threw up, I wasn’t used to the workout.”

Great.

But all the dancers were supportive, bless them, when I told them I was going to try it for a night. “You’ll have fun,” they all said.

Tamilee, a dancer at the Shark Club, said she often encountered girls who were sure they’d make great go-go dancers. “You know what? They last about three minutes and they’re out. They start doing step-touch, or they grab the bars and grind the cage or do the same thing continuously, they have no variation.

“Practice in front of your bedroom mirror for 20 minutes, put on some music, and see how you look. But really,” she assured me, “you’ll be fine. And we’ll be down there watching you!”

I wondered when the next flight left for Paraguay.

My fears broke down like this: fear of looking stupid; fear of looking fat; fear of looking fat and stupid; fear of running out of dance steps; fear of inexplicably breaking into my aerobics routine.

Already some of my friends had found out I was go-going and had promised to be there to watch me make an idiot of myself.

I watched more MTV, did another funk aerobics class and, two days before my debut, took Tamilee’s suggestion and pulled out the mirror.

With my Walkman blaring Power-106’s dance mixes into my ears, I started to move and soon realized I kept doing the back-and-forth step-touch thing over and over. I tried some hip-hop steps and looked like I was auditioning for the drill team. Worse, my thighs shook like beige Jell-O and when I caught my reflection in the mirror, I had a very unattractive worried expression on my face.

I threw down the Walkman and started to come up with excuses: I fell while I was running and can’t move. I have to fly to Burma for a story. The dog ate my lace stockings.

But I knew if I backed out now, I’d catch more flak from my friends than if I danced and bombed.

I planned an outfit around camouflaging my thighs: black bicycle shorts over black lace stockings, black Reeboks, a striped crop-top and a wide black and silver-studded belt. My look screamed Fly Girl Wanna-Be.

I arrived at the Shark Club at 11 p.m. on a Saturday and watched Tamilee do her first set. She looked really good and I felt really awful. I was to dance two 20-minute sets, the first one starting at 12:10 a.m. and the second at 1 a.m.

I hung out with Tamilee and another go-go dancer, Karen Dyer, before my set. I drank some water, but my throat still felt parched. Was I really doing this? Why ?

There was no more time to panic. I had to go up. In the cage Tamilee showed me how to control the lights; you can flick some switches on the wall and have a black light, a strobe light, a red light, or a combination. “I’ll come get you when your set’s over,” she said, and she scampered off.

This was it.

I switched the lights on and started dancing. I don’t really remember much. It’s fuzzy now, like a dream. I can remember sweating a lot, I can remember seeing my friends down below, I can remember grabbing the bars and grinding the cage and being grateful for the camouflage lent by the bars and the strobe lights.

I was only a few minutes into my set, but I already felt tired, and I realized that Tamilee wouldn’t be back for a while; I had to keep moving, so I calmed down. Then I realized this was actually a lot of fun. For a split second it occurred to me that there were people down there who thought I was a go-go dancer.

Soon Tamilee came to fetch me and I went downstairs to the dressing room. My friends and sister joined me and assured me that I was good, that I looked fine. A friend who had been taking an informal survey of the crowd said one man had declared my technique “awesome!” and another said that I didn’t look like a professional dancer but that I passed muster.

With that, I felt more confident during my second set, until they played a slow Hall and Oates song, and I had no idea how to move to it. I did a turn and bashed my hand against the wall. Just as the deejay went back to a dance mix, Tamilee was there again, and my stint as a go-go Cinderella was over. I was thoroughly exhausted, and I didn’t know how the dancers could do this four or five times a night, three nights in a row.

The next day I was so sore I could barely move. My neck felt worse than the time I had whiplash from a car accident. I knew what a dancer meant when he said he used to wake up feeling like he had been hit by a truck. I already had the title for my next story: “In Traction Like Me.”

It was a blast for one night, but I realized that go-going isn’t for everyone--even trained dancers. So although you may think it’s the glamour job of a lifetime, take my advice: Kids--just try this at home.