Building the Perfect Strip Club: Part 2, The Stage

Our first tricky element inside the club is the Stage. In fact the stage represents such a dilemma I considered getting rid of it entirely! Why? With the lap dances providing so much dollar potential per song and the stage so little typically the stage is financially a waste of time. Except in places where being at a club is about showing off to the other customers the chances of somebody ‘making it rain’ are about as likely as winning the lotto. Everybody knows that the same money is going to get them far more value on the lap dance couch. Do this simple test. Make an estimate of the tips that a dancer is taking as they leave after a stage set. You likely know what the typical tip is at that club and you can count the tippers. Then figure how much they would have made in the VIP room for the same three or four songs, particularly if a payment for extra service was included.

Many reviews here talk about how the waitresses wiping down the floor and the poles being sexier than the dancers. While the waitresses may be hot isn’t it more an indication of how little effort is going into the stage dance?

A lot of clubs are spending a lot on the stage and lighting and getting very little from it. So I considered two possibilities:

I concluded that having a significant stage was essential to the identity of a strip club. Having no stage might permit local authorities to regard it not as a performance venue but a bordello.

How large to make the stage? A dancer can dance in a pretty small space, so the real factor is how many chairs you want to go around the edge. Since the prime goal is interaction this translates to how many customers can a dancer interact with individually in a three minute song? At fifteen seconds each it is twelve. That sets the size. Then I decided that rather than the usual lounge chairs I would use stools. Why? When sitting on a stool one leans a little forward rather than lounging backward. It puts you toward interacting with the dancer.

How high to make the stage? There are two ways in a performance space to be seen by everybody. The first is to have a high stage and the second is to have tiered seating. I would say that the majority of clubs go with the tall stage This gives a good crotch-level view when the dancer is lying but otherwise to the customers at the stage edge the dancer is towering high above them. Not good for interaction. So instead I chose a stage only 12 inches high with a wide tip rail. This gives a crotch-level view to those sitting at the edge when the girl is standing. With a little squat also provides a nice boob level view and with kneeling an eye level view. There is also a narrow floor level walkway between the slightly raised stage and the tip rail. The tip rail was widened enough for the rail itself to be part of the performance space, with dancer being able to sit, kneel, or even lie on it up close to the customer. As a bonus the lower stage also lets us get away with the ten foot ceiling height.

From a lighting standpoint the pole dance part of the stage has a narrow strip footlight as well as some color-adjustable LED spots. There is also a projector that could be used to project patterns and effects of light against the mirror at the back of the stage wall and around the club, although its principal use is for televised events. The tip rail has a series of pinpoint LED spotlights along its length.

Since the stage is only one foot high the seating area will be terraced. The seats near the stage are at floor level. Then there are two short ramps leading to side platforms 4 inches above the floor, with a ramp from there to a center back terrace eight inches above the floor, and then two more short ramps to Lap Dance Lane at sixteen inches above the floor.

There are several different general shapes that I have observed for strip club stages. The first is the runway, like a fashion show setup. The runway layout means that for any particular location the dancer’s attention, and even the direction that they are moving, is away from their seat much of the time. The runway shaped stage is also a difficult arrangement to light without shining in the eyes of the customers on the other side. The second stage shape is the island. Island shaped stages do keep the stage literally at the center of things, but like the runway still has the problems of the focus of the dancer being away from most of the people most of the time and being hard to light without glare. The third shape is the peninsula. If the peninsula is deep it has the same problems as the runway, but if the peninsula is shallow it can be easy to light and allow the dancer to keep her show directed at the just one side and leave nobody out. A shallow peninsula has troubles in a large club staying close to the customers but not in a small one like this. The only disadvantage of the shallow peninsula stage is that it takes more floor space to get the same number of stage side seats because there is seating along only one side Although not mandatory it is easier for a dancer to put on an interesting performance if they have more to work with than just one pole. So the wide peninsula stage in Club 10 has two poles, a handrail bar in front of the glass wall in the back, and a bench against the back wall (which also serves to contain the subwoofers of the sound system).

Since we are recommitting to making the stage the center of attention you might notice in the renderings that the club are lacking installed TV screens as most clubs do now. TV screens in a club send a message of ‘we know sometimes our show isn’t that hot so you might want to watch the golf game instead’. But from the dancer’s standpoint they look out and see guys looking away at the TV and, along with the realization of how little money they make from the stage think ‘why bother trying to do a good dance’, which is shortly followed by not bothering to do a good dance! Taking away the TV screens is the club sending a message of: “Golf? There is a hot naked girl dancing here and you want to watch Golf!”

But you may wonder about special events, like Monday Night Football the NBA playoffs, World Series, or even the Super Bowl. The club will be giving up attendance and revenues by not having those events available for viewing. The answer is to have the club have a sports mode of operation. A projection screen is lowered on the back wall and the event projected on it using the DLP projector. The event's audio is piped over the sound system but lowered to barely audible during commercials. Stage dances are dropped in favor of just having the dancers circulate around (in, for example cheerleader outfits if they wish) and sell dances. They also can do short routines on the poles on either side during the commercials. In other words the club is either a nude live show OR a topless sports club, but not both at once.

The same logic behind no TVs on ordinary nights extends to the frequent club practice of putting up posters of gorgeous models. In some ways that is even worse. It is like saying “Attention men, this is what really beautiful women looks like. If our dancer does not look like these then she is not actually that beautiful after all”.

But if you get rid of the TV screens and the posters and make the stage the sole center of attention you have to deliver. In particular you can’t have it be vacant much of the time!

In this club all songs are remixed and padded with sweeps to exactly three minutes for reasons I will discuss later. For a DJ with audio editing skills this should be no problem. Each dancer’s ‘set’ will consist of three songs or nine minutes total.

The dancer can collect any personal possessions or props still on the stage while the next dancer is doing their introduction song. If there is a stage spray and wipe down to be done it also occurs during the next dancer’s introduction dance. The people seated stage side are never left just sitting there with nothing going on.

With three minutes per song and three songs per dancer there are six dancers per hour plus six extra minutes. What happens during those two songs? The song at the top and bottom of the hour is a ‘promenade’. Any dancer not occupied in the lap dance or VIP areas must participate. Excluding those already busy makes it less distruptive than the 'all call' stage display. In a widely spaced line each dancer takes a dance from one side of the stage to the other and then returns along the tip rail walkway. If they haven’t lined up a private dance by the end of the tip rail they can continue in a path in the rest of the seating area.

Since I feel each club needs a signature piece of whimsy during the promenade the dancer can choose one of several signs to carry around like the round signs at boxing matches. Some signs might be generic like “100% Natural” or “You’ll be amazed” but others might be offers like “My Special: Two for One Topless” for example. But each dancer gets to decide which special they will offer, if any, so there is variety and no need for a DJ to announce specials. As mentioned in the first segment what will attract the best dancers is making the most money with the fewest hassles, so let the girls decide whether to offer a deal rather than the manager. It also helps if you want to prove that the dancers are independent contractors if they have control over the pricing.

(Note, there are computer renderings that go with these articles. To access them click on my name and select pictures. When viewing one of the renderings you can right click on a picture to download a higher resolution version)

Review: I am discussing my ideas about strip club design and management and designing a sample club as an illustration. The parameters are: 4000sf storefront with 10 ft ceilings, lap dances and VIP allowed but no alcohol. Club can run with as few as 3 non-dancers at slow times. The primary design goal is to maximize opportunities for interaction between dancers and customers and thus sell dances.