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Pole Dancing 101
Sheila Kelley's School for Bedroom Strippers
See below for writer credit
Published May 2002

Kelley first became interested in stripping while studying for film roles.  This fascination eventually evolved into the gritty stripper movie ‘Dancing at the Blue Iguana’, which Kelley produced and starred in along side Daryl Hannah and Jennifer Tilly. During the filming, Kelley immersed herself into the seedy life of strip clubs during which she learnt dancing techniques and tricks from real strippers. "Having had the dancer background, I took to it very easily and very well. Never in my life have I been in better shape."

"Women come to the class terrified, like I did, but also compelled. There was just something, from the very first time I saw a stripper in a strip club I was hooked."  Kelley says who during the making of ‘Dancing at the Blue Iguana’ paid strippers to teach her their sexy dance moves.

Kelley certainly doesn’t look like a stripper sat in comfortable sweats, her look is more that of a slim and attractive Hollywood mum-next-door. When performing elaborate tricks on the pole, twisting and spinning like a topsy-turvy ice-skater, Kelley adds a touch of class that makes her act seem almost wholesome.

The thought of teaching it to others came to her while stripping for her husband, Richard Schiff, who plays Toby Ziegler, a sharp tongued Communications Director on award winning series about life in the White House - West Wing, Kelley and Schiff have two children, ages 7 and 1 and a half. "It struck me how unbelievably empowering it was for me to dance for my husband alone," she says. "Simultaneously, you become your most open, your most vulnerable and your most powerful."

Schiff says men are bug-eyed with envy when they find out his pretty wife, likes to strip for him. He says he has also discerned a difference in female friends who have taken her classes. "It has changed their marriages, and it's changed the way they walk through life. There's a centered kind of sensuality in them that might have been fighting to get through before," he says. "Then there's just the fun they have. They're always howling and screaming back here. I'm playing with the kids, and then I hear this hooting and hollering, and I think, 'Man, I want to be back there. What am I doing changing diapers?' 

"I probably got pregnant after a lap dance," Kelley adds, "There's a way to spice up your marriage." Now Kelley teaches four 90 minute classes of her ‘Stripping for Everyday Women class’ a week. Yet the lessons aren’t designed to turn her students who are mostly upper-middle class actresses / friends ranging in age from 24 to 57, into strippers to take the stages of the seedy strip clubs on Sunset. Kelley wants stripping out of the clubs and into the master bedroom. "What I am doing is taking that beautiful art form of erotica out of a decadent place and bringing it to women as an empowering tool," explains Kelley. One student, who preferred to stay anonymous, claimed the classes give married women a renewed sense of sex appeal. "Women my age, housewives and mothers, aren't prepared to say, 'Look at me, aren't I gorgeous?' It's embarrassing," said the actress and mother, who is in her 50s. "The class is incredibly embarrassing and brings out all of your insecurities. And yet, you're dying to do it."

"I’ve taken the best elements from all the different types of dance I have studied over the years, and created my own movement technique. It’s a 40 minute warm up flow, getting the body moving in a more feminine way, in a more curvaceous way, and after that we do pole work and each person does a routine."

"I've never been able to act sexy in a movie. I was playing romantic parts and everything, but that was an area where I just felt foolish, totally foolish," another student says. "Sheila's very supportive and wonderful. She eggs you on and keeps saying, 'Oh, powerful move, powerful move,' and screaming out how beautiful everyone is. And she means it."

The classes aren’t designed to titillate the women’s partners, that’s a bonus factor,  the classes are to help women feel sexy and confident in themselves without relying on men or anyone else to make them feel that way. These sisters are doing it for themselves!

"It’s a really beautiful bonding experience. The women move from beginners, to intermediate to advanced together, so they develop this incredible bond and trust. There is just this unspoken camaraderie" says Kelley, "If you are scared, I’ll get up there and do it with you. I’ll be right next to you talking in your ear."

"Allowing your body to move the way it wants to move naturally, being overtly sexual without apology, gives these women and myself an enormous sense of satisfaction," Kelley continues to explain.

Kelley claims the classes not only make women feel more confident about themselves sexually but also about their bodies. "It helps them own their body no matter what. One woman thought she had a big butt and as she turned around from the last third of the dance, she had to walk back, she went ‘oh no they are going to see my big butt’ and then she claimed it, she went ‘yeah! They are looking at my big ass’. You could see it in her moves! It was a beautiful moment. She didn’t give a damn!"

"The most erotic dancer I ever saw was a 250 pound Jewish girl wearing braces who as she got up to dance, she just floated. She was a real stripper.  I was awestruck, dumbfounded by her beauty. This is when I realized that it doesn’t matter what you look like it’s about how you move your body. She was a big girl, but when those hips moved the men were riveted. She was beautiful for those few moments," explains Kelley.

"Women have such erotic power. We don’t use it because we are scared. We are told ‘bad girls do that’. ‘It’s nasty to move your hips like that’, ‘you’re a slut’ ‘you’re a whore’. I want to blow those days out of the water." Kelley says.

Judging by the popularity of her program since it started in May, last year women want to blow that image out of the water as well. Kelley teaches lap and pole dancing to classes of 6 - 10 women of 'all shapes and sizes' a week each paying $50 for a 90 minute class. The waiting list is growing so fast that Kelley is looking for rented space to accommodate bigger classes and there is talk of doing a video to reach others.

Kelley’s classes may indicate that in the new millennium another sexual tabbo is being brought into the mainstream. Hollywood has recently made strippers the theme of films like Showgirls and Demi Moore’s Striptease. Crunch gyms in Los Angeles started cardio striptease classes as favored by ex-Baywatch beauty Carmen Electra. The classes proved so successful that sessions are now being offered at Crunch clubs in New York and Miami. Sexy actress/model Pamela Anderson, who has a stripper pole in her bedroom, recently announced she might give up acting to strip onstage during her boyfriend Kid Rock's rock concerts.
Kelley has no plans to return to acting in the immediate future and won’t be staring in a movie reunion for L.A Law, which is being planned for the American network NBC’s 75^th anniversary. Kelley won’t be starring in the special one off reunion show of the groundbreaking drama about the lives loves and courtroom battles of Los Angeles lawyers as it will only star first season cast members, Kelley joined in the third.

"I had an opportunity to do a pilot this year and I just wasn’t into it. I don’t get the incredibly satisfaction of giving something to somebody when I am acting these days that I get from what I am doing. This is so rewarding. I feel like it really transforms people, it really changes people’s lives for the better. I’ve got the most touching phone calls in the middle of the night from women genuinely choked up with emotion, saying ‘how can I thank you? I am a different human being, I walk through the world like a different person’. I don’t get that from acting.  But I do think I will eventually get back to acting, I love to act."

"I did not say I wanted to become a stripping teacher. This all just happened," Kelley says. "I know how powerful I feel when I do it. I know how sexy I feel. I know how beautiful I look to me and to my husband, and that's all that matters."

Five ways to bring out the pole dancer in you!

1. Invest in some sassy outfits that would be fit to grace the stages of Stringfellows - if you look sexy you’ll feel sexy too! With the Internet you can shop from the privacy of your own home at discreet sites like: www.annsummers.com
   
   
2. Set the mood with some appropriate music. Kelley uses everything from Kid Rock to Jah Rule.
   
   
3. Keep eye contact with your partner as you dance. Looking at the floor is another of Kelley’s tips.
   
   
4. Learn in the comfort and security of your own home with a video on exotic dancing by Fawina a former exotic dancer from: www.exoticdanceschool.com
   
   
5. Create yourself an alter ego - swap your Mary Poppins prudishness’ for a more daring persona - developing a steamy new you will help you shed your inhibitions and leave you free to do anything you want.

Sheila Kelley can be found and contacted via her website at http://www.sfactor.com

The writer of this article comes to the-vu courtesy of the Splash News and Picture Agency. Due to too many weird emails, we have removed her name.

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