At Executive Fantasy Hotels, we take pride in the quality of our rooms, not just how nice they look, but also how they are fully equipped to incentivize you to explore your fantasies and enjoy more of your sensuality with your partner. For example, several of our rooms include a dance pole for you to play around, dance, and enjoy foreplay.
But rarely do we think about the history behind the amenities that surround us, and the one of the dance pole might be one of the most surprising you’re going to find. What does the Universal Exposition of Chicago, in 1893, has to do with our rooms?
The sexy origin, filled with plot twists, of Pole Dancing
Sol Bloom, a young American entrepreneur was visiting the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition when he saw something that dazzled him: the Ghawazi dancers. The Ghawazi were an ethnic group of nomad musicians and dancers from Egipt who were pushed outside Cairo around 1834, when the authorities banned public dancing. As a consequence, they began traveling outside Egypt. They used props like canes and swords, and their dance involved isolating the torso and hips, something shocking to the deeply conservative American audience of the time.
Sol Bloom, who had an avid eye for business, hired them before traveling back to America, and right after that it was made public the next Universal Exposition would take place in Chicago, in 1893. The Ghawazi dancers were a huge success not only due to their novelty, but because Bloom publized them as “unsuitable for ladies”, which only dragged more attention to the show. Over 27 million people attended the Exposition during its six-month run. This set up for success the traveling shows they began doing on circus tents after the Exposition ended. These tents were also crucial in what came next.
A playful idea: dancing around poles
It was the Ghawazi dancers who discovered they could dance around the circus tent poles as a way to attract public to their performances. This mixture of “exotic” origins and traveling shows derived in what became known as “Kouta Kouta” or “Hoochie Coochie” belly dances, causing a sensation with their short skits rich jewellery.
By the first decades of the XXth century, the alcohol prohibition also meant other cultural expressions were deemed morally inappropriate, which made these dancers move from the circus tents to private dance bars.
The king of rock and roll and the expansion of pole dancing
Another unexpected twist in the history of pole dancing is how it expanded across the entire USA thanks to Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock video. This music video drove people’s attention not only for Elvis’ hip swings but for the pole slides, grinds and twirls him and other dancers perform in it.
However brief the video is, it made interest in the technique expand and boom in people’s imagination, setting the path for the modern dance pole and dance techniques you can enjoy at Executive Fantasy Hotels.
