You don’t have to taken college psych to grasp the basics of why pole dancing is erotic.
Rainbow Marchenko
There is this big steel pole on the stage, and the whole dance is about beautiful young women straddling it, grasping it with their firm young thighs, sliding up and down on it, and generally draping themselves all over it in a hundred different erotic positions.
Teddy Cleaver
The best pole dancers show a lot of personality on the pole, the same as any other artist, except in this case the personality on display is inseparable from sexuality. The best pole dancers—at the Vegas strip clubs or anywhere else—exhibit a gamut of emotions from rebelliousness to humor to playfulness to strength of will. It’s an electric experience to watch a great pole dancer who is in her zone.
The Debate Over Pole Dancing
Backsplits
There’s a big debate about whether or not pole dancing should be in the Olympics, and of course it should. Pole dancing is simply vertical gymnastics. Pole dancing requires the same strength, flexibility, grace, endurance, precision, and balance as gymnastics on a mat or a balance beam or parallel bars.
Chopstix
The top performers in the field are magnificent athletes. Why shouldn’t they be recognized for their skill and why shouldn’t everyone who appreciates athletics enjoy it?
Detractors complain that pole dancing is too sexy. Compared to what? Have you ever watched the other Olympic women’s gymnastics events? I don’t think I’ve ever met a guy who would turn the channel on that show.
Downsplits
And would it shock women to know that guys are erotically aroused not only by Olympic gymnasts, but also figure skaters? When I was a kid of 10, 11, 12, I loved going to the Ice Capades just to watch the female skaters bend over in those sassy little skirts with their panties riding up their butts.
It’s simply a fact of nature that when men see women who can spread their legs in full-split positions in eighteen different ways, and they’re doing this in skimpy little outfits that would normally be considered underwear, we can’t help but think, “Geez, can you imagine having a girl like that in bed?”
Banana Splits
Just because men (and boys) have protected women (and girls) from knowing that they think that way, doesn’t make it any less true. And just because men find thousands of things that women do erotic, it doesn’t mean that women shouldn’t enjoy those things or that those things are unfit for the Olympics.
But you don’t have to wait for pole dancing to make it into the Olympics to enjoy this beautiful art form. Las Vegas has gone pole crazy. Pole dancing can be found in casino shows, bars, nightclubs, tour buses, and even in hotel rooms all over Las Vegas right now.
Pole Dancing in the Vegas Production Shows
Jennifer Romas Performs Outstanding Pole Ballet in Sexxy
Sexxy, the new topless revue in the intimate Shimmer Showroom at the Westgate, is dominated by the dancing of Jennifer Romas, who created, produced, and choreographed the show, and also stars as the lead dancer.
Jennifer Romas may be the best all-around dancer performing in Vegas today, and the highlight of her performance in Sexxy is her breathtaking pole dance to Michael Bublé’s “Feeling Good.” (It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day…) Obviously trained in both gymnastics and ballet, Romas’ simultaneously athletic and erotic pole work had the audience spellbound.
I’ve been complaining for years about the pole dancing in Vegas production shows. One problem has always been that the cheapskate casino showrooms don’t invest in professional stripper-quality poles, which must be secured at both the top and bottom, and which must spin.
What we usually get in the casino shows is a second-rate pole that’s stuck into a hole in the stage and wobbles horribly from the weight of the dancer, affecting her balance, timing, and precision. I’ve been telling people for years that if they wanted to see real pole dancing in Las Vegas, they had to go to the Vegas strip clubs (see below).
Those are still, in my opinion, the best places to watch pole dancing in Vegas, especially since you’ll get to see more than one dancer up there, performing in more than one style, but in Sexxy, we finally have a casino production show with a real pole and a first-rate dancer who knows how to use it. Romas moves smoothly through a series of balletic and erotic poses. Sometimes she looks suspended in mid-air as she poses, as if she were absolutely weightless.
If you’re into pole dancing–especially erotic pole dancing–don’t miss Romas’ performance.
Pin Up at the Stratosphere probably has the other best pole dancer in a current casino showroom production. Pin Up is not a topless show, but it’s still one of the sexiest casino shows in town.
The pole dancer, Koree Kurkowski (see pics above), is limited by the fact that the pole is not fastened to the ceiling (as professional stripper poles in strip clubs are), but her pole work is breathtaking. Kurkowski’s act is mostly a striptease performed as a series of long-held sexy poses, a kind of pole ballet (she even wears toe shoes).
X Burlesque, a topless show at the 
Flamingo, has a pole on a mini-stage out in the audience where many of their showgirls take a turn. Here’s one of the X girls swinging over the crowd (pic at right). X Burlesque is one of my favorite topless shows in town because the dancing is so high-energy and the dancers seem to be having fun.
Jubilee, the long-running showgirl extravaganza at Bally’s, has a professional-style pole that’s fastened at both the floor and ceiling, and it’s probably the highest pole in Vegas—50 or 60 feet tall. The show opens with a spotlight on a dancer at the very top of the pole, and when I saw her up there, I couldn’t wait to see what she would do with all that pole.
But after she made her way slowly down the pole to the stage–just sort of slowly sliding down–she left the stage, they ditched the pole, and we never saw it or the dancer again. Bummer!
There’s usually an awesome pole dancer performing at the Sapphire Comedy Hour (show review) on Friday and Saturday nights (Sapphire web site). She comes out between the comedians. This show is not out in the Sapphire main room where the strippers perform, but in Sapphire’s more intimate 300-seat showroom. Here’s one of the Sapphire pole dancers (at left; click to enlarge the pic). For my money, the pole dancer is the best part of the comedy show, followed by the burlesque dancer.
The Best Places in Vegas to Watch Pole Dancing Are the Strip Clubs
Jade
Having said everything I just said, in my opinion there’s only one place to watch really high-end pole dancing, and that’s in a strip club. Pole dancing was invented by strippers, and it’s meant to be sexy.
Even if you’re a woman who would like to watch pole dancing in Vegas, I recommend you consider a strip club. It so happens that Las Vegas’ best strip clubs for watching great pole dancing are also female and couples friendly.
There’s no “clean” version of pole dancing being done anywhere today, even in the competitions that try so hard to disassociate themselves from strip clubs.
The moves and poses are based on erotic leg spreads and brazen sexual postures that are highly suggestive. Where strip club pole dancing differs from “competitive” pole dancing is that in a strip club the dancing is specifically geared toward trying to turn people on, and in my opinion, that’s a positive feature of the art, not a drawback.
The Best Strip Club Pole Dancing in Vegas
Dlseena at Palomino Club
Photo by Hew Burney
If I want to watch pole dancing at a nude club, I go to Palomino Club (club review / club website). The pole dancing would be the best and most erotic in town even if the dancers kept all their clothes on, but it’s a definite enhancement that they’re nude.
Palomino Club is couples and female-friendly–in fact, on a busy weekend night roughly 5-10% of the audience at Palomino Club will be women, and they come to party.
The best pole dancers at these clubs are young and slender, with dancers’ bodies. Their nakedness puts the poses into another whole level of erotic. The strength in their arms and legs, their limber backs, their flexibility, is the epitome of health and youth. Just watching them you feel glad to be alive.
Reagan Reilly, Vegas Strip Club Feature Dancer
Photo by Hew Burney
Sometimes the dancers’ routines are fast and energetic, a form of taking flight, and sometimes the moves are a slow and deliberate seduction. Sometimes the dancers start out in leather, showing off their power over the audience.
And sometimes the dancers are playful and childlike.
Palomino Club has quite a few pole artists who could compete against the best anywhere. See also: “The Pole Dancers of Palomino Club”
If a nude club seems a little too far out for you, I recommend checking out the pole dancing at one of the Vegas topless clubs. Though most of the topless clubs put less emphasis on their stage shows, I recommend Sapphire (club review /club website) in particular as a club that features accomplished and exciting pole dancing, and is a club that welcomes women and couples.
If you’re a woman who’d like to watch great pole-dancing and you’ve never been to a strip club before, check out my wife’s account of her first visit to a strip club with me to see if you’d enjoy it: I Took My Wife to a Vegas Strip Club (and Lived to Tell About It).
(You can find an encyclopedia of more than 300 pole dance moves, each one illustrated with a video, at the Pole Dance Dictionary website (which is where I stole the little black and white pics from.)
Yay there’s a photo of me. 😀