In the West, a fan dance (i.e., a

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

performed with fans) may be an

erotic dance An erotic dance is a dance that provides erotic entertainment with the objective to erotically stimulate or Sexual arousal, sexually arouse viewers. Erotic dance is one of several major dance categories based on purpose, such as ceremonial danc ...

performance, traditionally by a woman, but not exclusively. Beyond eroticism it is a form of musical interpretation. The performer, sometimes entirely

nude Nudity is the state of being in which a human is without clothing. While estimates vary, for the first 90,000 years of pre-history, anatomically modern humans were naked, having lost their body hair, living in hospitable climates, and no ...

or apparently so, dances while manipulating two or more large fans that can be constructed from many different materials including ostrich feathers, silks, velvet, sequined and organza fabrics. The unifying factor in all is the spins, or fan staves, that give form to this prop. 2016pridefandancer

In the 1970s gay men removed the solid pin at the center of the fan and replaced it with knotted string allowing for a fluid curvaceous movement. This disco art has been seen in San Francisco's Trocadero (perhaps first before the East's Paradise Garage), New York's

Roseland Ballroom The Roseland Ballroom was a multipurpose hall, in a converted ice skating rink, with a colorful ballroom dancing pedigree, in New York City's Theater District, New York, theater district, on 52nd Street (Manhattan), West 52nd Street in Manhattan ...

plus numerous circuit parties from

Corbett Reynolds Corbett may refer to: Places * List of Corbetts (mountains), 222 mountains in Scotland between , with prominence over * Corbett, New York, a hamlet in New York State * Corbett, Oklahoma, a ghost town in Oklahoma * Corbett, Oregon, a community in ...

1996 “Jungle Red” Party in Cleveland to the White and Winter Parties of Miami and London's 1998 Red Heart's Ball. More difficult to construct (and manipulate) than the

flags A flag is a piece of fabric (most often rectangular) with distinctive colours and design. It is used as a symbol, a signalling device, or for decoration. The term ''flag'' is also used to refer to the graphic design employed, and flags have ...

commonly used today, there are but a handful of artists, male and female, who occasionally exhibit this style of dance. The 1997 and 2016 Dance on the Pier images both give a closer look at a pair of medium-sized fans caught in fast motion. At times these fans travel in a simple elliptical pattern seen as a circle by the audience while further into the choreography one might see a perfect windmill, helicopter blades, a set of wings or even Carmen's skirt. Hiding the body to evade morality codes does not factor into this reinterpretation on what a fan dance might be, but they do stand as another symbolic protest to the fact that homosexuals were not permitted to dance together in public or private spaces in New York City for decades. To see a tribe of these dancers together is poetry in motion. Out of the Darkness, an annual AIDS remembrance event every December 1st hosted by

AREA Area is the measure of a region's size on a surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while '' surface area'' refers to the area of an open surface or the boundary of a three-di ...

GMHC The GMHC (formerly Gay Men's Health Crisis) is a New York City–based Nonprofit organization, non-profit, volunteer-supported and community-based AIDS service organization whose mission statement is to "end the AIDS epidemic and uplift the lives ...

and

Heritage of Pride Heritage of Pride (HOP), doing business as NYC Pride, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that plans and produces the official New York City LGBTQIA+ Pride Week events each June. HOP began working on the events in 1984, taking on the work prev ...

, sponsored by the Keith Haring Foundation, has included such a tribe of fan and flag dancers as opening and closing performers for the evenings ceremonies many times noting in their program that these are ritual dances done upon a person's death. It is also a dance seen at a child's first birthday celebration of life where people remember all the children who did not survive those early months as bodies adjust to living outside the womb. In the UK, the fan dance has also been used in the finals of the Miss Nude UK 2000 competition and for The Windmill in

Soho SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...

where it replaced the tradition of nude tableaux which has since been replaced by

table dancing A table dance, or bartop dance, is a dance performed at (or on) a table or bar, as opposed to on a stage. It may be an erotic dance performed by a sex worker or it may be done as a leisure activity. Sex work In strip clubs, a table dance is a se ...

. In 1998

Thelma Houston Thelma Houston ( Jackson; born May 7, 1943) is an American singer and actress. Beginning her recording career in the late 1960s, Houston scored a number-one hit in 1977 with her recording of " Don't Leave Me This Way", which won the Grammy for ...

had 40 fan and flag dancers accompany her off the gangplank of the Queen of Hearts paddle wheel boat onto the stage at

Chelsea Piers Chelsea Piers is a series of piers in Chelsea, on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located to the west of the West Side Highway ( Eleventh Avenue) and Hudson River Park and to the east of the Hudson River, they were originally ...

for the Dance on Manhattan fundraiser.

Gloria Gaynor Gloria Fowles (born September 7, 1943), known professionally as Gloria Gaynor, is an American singer, best known for the disco era hits "I Will Survive" (1978), "I Have a Right, Let Me Know (I Have a Right)" (1979), "I Am What I Am (Broadway mus ...

did similar the year prior with 16 men.

Loleatta Holloway Loleatta Holloway (, ; November 5, 1946 – March 21, 2011) was an American singer known for disco songs such as "Hit and Run" and " Love Sensation". In December 2016, ''Billboard'' named her the 95th-most successful dance artist of all time. Acc ...

danced with just one man at the third of these annuals.

Movies and TV

In 1957 in the

Perry Mason Perry Mason is a fictional character, an American criminal defense lawyer who is the main character in works of detective fiction written by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason features in 82 novels and four short stories, all of which involve a ...

TV series, the last episode of 1957 was ''"The Case of the Fan-Dancer's Horse"''. This is Episode 15 of Season 1. This episode contains two scenes with fan dancing. In an episode of the Australian TV series ''

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries ''Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries'' is an Australian detective television series. It was first broadcast on ABC on 24 February 2012. It is based on author Kerry Greenwood's historical mystery novels, and it was created by Deb Cox and Fiona Ea ...

'' set in the 1920s the protagonist, private detective Phryne Fisher, goes undercover as a fan dancer in a gentleman's club (Series 2, Episode 1 "Murder Most Scandalous"). The 1963 film ''

Gypsy {{Infobox ethnic group , group = Romani people , image = , image_caption = , flag = Roma flag.svg , flag_caption = Romani flag created in 1933 and accepted at the 1971 World Romani Congress , po ...

'' is a musical about

Gypsy Rose Lee Gypsy Rose Lee (born Rose Louise Hovick, January 8, 1911 – April 26, 1970) was an American burlesque entertainer, stripper, actress, author, playwright and vedette, famous for her striptease act. Her 1957 memoir, '' Gypsy: A Memoir'', was a ...

a noted fan dancer. The 1983 film '' The Right Stuff'', has an extended scene featuring an actress playing

Sally Rand Sally Rand (born Helen Gould Beck; April 3, 1904 – August 31, 1979) was an American burlesque dancer, stripper, vedette, and actress, famous for her ostrich-feather fan dance and balloon bubble dance. She also performed under the name B ...

performing a fan dance. This movie is about the

Mercury Seven The Mercury Seven were the group of seven astronauts selected to fly spacecraft for Project Mercury. They are also referred to as the Original Seven and Astronaut Group 1. Their names were publicly announced by NASA on April 9, 1959: Scott ...

, the military pilots who were selected to be the

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

s for

Project Mercury Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Un ...

, the first

human spaceflight Human spaceflight (also referred to as manned spaceflight or crewed spaceflight) is spaceflight with a crew or passengers aboard a spacecraft, often with the spacecraft being operated directly by the onboard human crew. Spacecraft can also be ...

by the United States. In the 1989 film Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, in order to distract the guards

Uhura Nyota Uhura (), or simply Uhura, is a fictional character in the ''Star Trek'' franchise. In the Star Trek: The Original Series, original television series, the character was portrayed by Nichelle Nichols, who reprised the role for the first six L ...

performs a fan dance. ''

The Simpsons ''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening, James L. Brooks and Sam Simon for the Fox Broadcasting Company. It is a Satire (film and television), satirical depiction of American life ...

'' episode "Bart After Dark" has belly dancer/showgirl Shauna "Princess Kashmir" Tipton doing a fan dance at Maison Derriere.

References

{{Authority control Erotic dance Ventilation fans Concert dance

Movies and TV

See also

References