Go-go Dancing

Go-go dancers are dancers who are employed to entertain crowds at nightclubs or other venues where music is played. Go-go dancing originated in the early 1960s at the French bar Whisky a Gogo located in Juan-les-Pins. The bar's name was taken from the French title of the Scottish comedy film '' Whisky Galore!'', which was titled ''Tight Little Island'' in the United States. The French bar then licensed its name to the very popular West Hollywood rock club Whisky a Go Go, which opened in January 1964 and chose the name to reflect the already popular craze of go-go dancing. Many 1960s-era clubgoers wore miniskirts and knee-high, high-heeled boots, which eventually came to be called go-go boots. Nightclub promoters in the mid‑1960s then conceived the idea of hiring women dressed in these outfits to entertain patrons.

Etymology

The term ''go-go'' derives from the phrase "go-go-go" for a high-energy person, and was influenced by the French expression '' à gogo'', meaning "in abundance, galore", which is in turn derived from the ancient French word ''la gogue'' for "joy, happiness".Le Petit Robert: GOGO (À), 1440; de l'a. fr. ''gogue'' "réjouissance" The term ''go-go dancer'' originated from the French bar Whisky a Gogo located in Juan-les-Pins, a seaside town near Cannes, which was among the first places in the world to replace live music with records selected by a disc jockey and to provide the spectacle of paid dancers known as go-go girls.

In the 1960s

On 19 June 1964, Carol Doda began go-go dancing topless at the Condor Club on Broadway and Columbus in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. She became the world's most famous topless and bottomless go-go dancer, dancing at the Condor for 22 years. In Canada, in 1966, Bonny Rush was mentioned as the country's first topless go-go dancer in the news media.

Fully dressed go-go dancers began to be hired regularly at the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood in the Los Angeles area in July 1965, wearing Courrèges boots (or often the knee-high boots known as go-go boots) and mini flapper dresses. The Whisky a Go Go was also the first go-go club to have go-go cages suspended from the ceiling (they were there from the very beginning in 1965), and thus the profession of cage dancer was born.

By early 1965 the concept of go-go cages had also become popular in Europe. In Germany, the discothèques ''Scotch Kneipe'' and ''Pussycat'' in Munich were the first to have go-go cages.

British go-go dancer Sandy Sarjeant became popular performing on the ITV music show ''Ready Steady Go!''.

The phrase ''go-go'' was adopted by bars in the 1960s in Tokyo, Japan. It gained a lesser reputation when it was abandoned by a majority of clubs and appropriated by bawdy ''burlesque'' and striptease establishments, which in turn became known as go-go bars and the women working there known as go-go dancers too. During the Vietnam War there were many go-go bars in Saigon, South Vietnam, to entertain U.S. troops. A synonym used in Vietnam for go-go dancing is "table dancing".

Television and media

Go-go dancers were employed as background dancers accompanying performances (real or lip-synced) by rock and roll bands on teen music programs in the mid-1960s. '' Hullabaloo'' was a musical variety series that ran on NBC from 12 January 1965 – 29 August 1966. ''The Hullabaloo Dancers''—a team of four men and six women—appeared on a regular basis. Another female dancer, model/actress Lada Edmund, Jr., was best known as the caged "go-go girl" dancer in the ''Hullabaloo A-Go-Go'' segment near the closing sequence of the show. Other dance TV shows during this period such as ABC's ''Shindig!

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