The difference between a stripper and a dancer

Hmmmm....

Wish I'd encounter more "dancers" then.

My experience though has been both types of employees inhale the $1s.

Disagree. Cute but way off the mark. A dancer may be G rated (ballet, broadway, ballroom), or R rated (bikini club), or X rated (topless, nude). Depending on the venue and the girl, the dancing may be really professional, or just going through the motions. A stripper may or may not be a dancer, but by definition she has fewer clothes on at the end of her set than at the beginning.

You can't go wrong calling a stripper a dancer. She won't be offended. But in many situations, you are in REAL trouble if you call a dancer a stripper. For one thing, most dancers never take off any of their clothes.

Signed - the humorless pedant.

Dancer has many meanings. Stripper has 1. Callinng a stripper a dancer is an insult to the dancers out there who train in their art. That's like calling a pimp a c.e.o.

I am using urbandictionary.com
dancer: A very hard working athlete usually talented and dedicated to the art of body movememnt, not "party dancing" or a stripper, but educated in areas of ballet, hip hop, jazz, tap, modern ect. type of dancer
stripper: an occupation that involves taking (stripping) one's clothes off for the sexual stimulation of others. most strippers are female.
also the second most popular definition for stripper is:
stripper: A stupid bitch who got pregnant when she was a teenager by a losser and now gets naked for dollars to support her bastard child

I think there are 3 categories of stage "dancing":
(1) "Striptease"
Striptease is the art of seductive dance where the clothing is removed bit by bit. This is something you almost NEVER see in a strip club anymore. The women that practiced this art really were artists.
(2) "Stripping"
as practiced in modern strip clubs, this just means taking off your top and possibly bottom at the start of the second song while catching your breath.
(3) "Real dancing"
I think a stripper can be a real dancer. When I see strippers really working hard, doing highly athletic moves that are in fact physically dangerous, and making me admire their skills (as opposed to just their natural assets) I think "wow, she's really is a dancer."

As I've noted in some reviews, there seem to be big local differences in stage dancing. In the Detroit area, where high mileage is normal, a lot of dancers get away with just shuffling around on stage for a while, maybe doing a twirl or two, but looking for the most part like they're waiting at a bus stop on a cold day (minus the clothes, of course). At Scarlett's in Toledo, the quality of stage dancing is pretty impressive. I would go there to watch the dancing (as well as ogling the boobies)!

I was only bringing up this topic because we seem to use dancer and stripper interchangably, but I thought it was funny one of the ladies who works in this business thinks they are different. BTW, she never refuses my tips.

Incidentally, as for stripclubspy's categories of stage dancing, I don't know that I've ever seen "striptease". And I rarely see "real dancing", but there are some who do, but I always think of those as pure dancers.

We have to call them something. I think they find dancer less demeaning.

I see no distinction between the two. But I have heard "I'm not a whore like a lot of dancers here". Regardless of what there classification is, bouncer, stripper, waitress, DJ, etc, none I have met,has ever turned down a buck.

From my experiences they prefer being called a dancer. Irregardless, they won't turn down an opportunity if the money is right.

Just strippers in denial about what they are. The way they think generally has little intersection with reality, so why should what they prefer to be called be any different?

Most women in the SC industry call themselves "dancers." I've heard may times how they tell someone in the outside world what they do or what they used to do and I always hear "dancing" at a club. People know what it means. The dancer who tries to suggest there is a dichotomy of strippers and dancers has too high an image of herself and is one who I would probably avoid. And for this discussion I excluded trained formal dancing.

They want to be called dancers because they think it's more upscale. Remember the scene in "Independence Day," when the Will Smith's girlfriend tell the First Lady she is a dancer and the President's wife says "Oh, ballet." She replies, "No, exotic."

I think strippers and dancers are the same thing, it's all semantics. I think some girls will do anything who happen to be strippers or dancers.

Any stripper I've gotten to know at all well has been fine with being called a stripper and usually uses the term herself among friends. With some PLs, they may say dancer out of deference to his sensitivity more than their own. Also, in a club, where there's no doubt who "dancers" refers to, the DJ and staff all use the term because it sounds "classier", so everybody winds up saying it. OTC, nobody knows what kind of dancer you could mean, but everybody knows what a stripper is.

The DJ at my favorite club now refers to them as entertainers.

Context context context. If you are speaking of dancers at your local ballet club meeting, there would be no need to ask. On the flip side, at the bar with your buddies, there would be no need to ask.

Even as a customer, I find the term "stripper" somewhat demeaning. Although I've certainly met some girls in clubs who were best described that way. The ladies I like to spend time with in a club deserve to be known as dancers because they usually do more than just "strip." They dance, they entertain and they relate to the guys who are their customers. If not, they don't get more private dances...and they don't make any money.

I think it's interesting that "StripperWeb" uses the word stripper. Guess they didn't want their site to get confused with the NYC Ballet or something.

I think Finallap summed it up, we use the word dancer when we want to be more politely referring to strippers.