Dance is most commonly associated with art or folklore, as can erotica, for that matter. The dictionary describes erotica as "explicitly sexual literature or art"! So where does that place lap dancing?
Certainly lap dancing is erotic in its explicit sexual movement. Young women (usually), in various stages of undress, squirm around to music to stimulate or arouse erotic, sexual thoughts or actions.
Other dance forms are described as ceremonial, competitive, participation, performance or social dance. But when you think about it, lap dancing really fits all these categories.
Dance as a 'sexual performance' can be ceremonial, as seen in certain tribal rituals. It is also 'participatory', can be competitive and can also be seen as 'social' in that it forms part of 'gentlemen's' clubs' activities.
And this is where the subject becomes topical. The heading: "Police ordered to arrest women wearing a thong", in a lap dancers' case report on The Malta Independent's front page on Wednesday caught my attention and intrigued me. And it was not just trying to figure out whether the wearing of thongs had become illegal, or whether it was wearing them and nothing else that made one liable to arrest.
On the grounds of aesthetics alone, the wearing of thongs should definitely be banned on beaches. I am sorry for the narcissists who want to show off their tight little butts; however, too many people who have large, hanging, unsightly bottoms, unfortunately, wear a G-string, causing considerable pain to sensitive people.
But according to a police superintendent, as quoted in The Independent, "wearing a thong on the beach is one thing, but wearing a thong in a public place is illegal. Wearing a thong on the beach is not illegal".
Surely beaches are public places? They are certainly more public than a club!
Forgetting the thong for a while. Replying to, I am assuming, one of the defence lawyers in the case, a police inspector "admitted" that the law did not define dancing and therefore made no distinction between "lap" or "folk" dancing.
Maybe the law, in one of its asinine manifestations, does not define the distinction, but unless we are talking about a tribal sexual ritual (which was not the case here), there is a distinct difference between, say, il-Maltija in elaborate costumes, and a lithe, nubile female gyrating on a man's lap with bobbing boobies and wearing next to nothing.
The same officer also "admitted" that it was an interpretation of the investigative team that lap dancing was an immoral act. Which raises the question: Is an immoral act necessarily illegal?
Cheating on one's partner is immoral, as is unethical behaviour, but people who behave in this way are not usually arrested, unless the unethical behaviour is also criminal.
The heading "Police ordered to arrest women wearing a thong" also reminded me of the time when the police were about to arrest any female wearing skimpy clothing in Ta' Xbiex.
The red light district is on the fringe of that select residential area. And since daughters of the well-heeled could have been innocently caught up in this catch-all 'trap', it was not a success.
That, as well as this latest police action, is an effort to stop prostitution, or, at least, to stop such activities being overtly displayed.
And there is nothing wrong with the latter. The police stopping overt displays of public sexual activities, that is. What is wrong is the way the police go about it, reducing them to comical caricatures of boobing bobbies.
They jump into situations without assessing a situation and planning it properly, laying themselves wide open to smart-ass defence lawyers.
Of course, the term "public" is also questionable in that while a woman touting her trade in a shop window, as in Amsterdam, or in a doorway, or leaning out of a window on a cushioned sill, as in Gzira, fits that description, a club, although open to the public, is not accessible to minors, for example.
In the Ta' Xbiex skimpy clothing saga, the police were skating on thin ice, since skimpy clothing is no indication of inviting immoral behaviour these days (unless you happen to be lap dancing in a gentlemen's club). Clothing alone does not mark a woman, or man for that matter, as a prostitute. It is behaviour that does that. It is soliciting that is illegal. Anyway, the Ta' Xbiex idea soon bit the dust.
It is now the minimal erotic dancer's clothing, often reduced to a G-string, which has hit the news.
The Times carried a staider report, far from the front page, with the overlong title "Police see no signs of prostitution in nightclubs raided".
The inspector involved in the raid was quoted as saying that there was no evidence of prostitution and that the prosecution was limiting its case to the charge that dealt with "immoral purposes". The women had been arrested because they were dressed indecently in a public place, "said they were dancers" and did not have work permits.
This last quote had me in fits. Are the police going to be raiding ballet performance because the male dancers wear very tight tights and the female dancers wear transparent, skimpy costumes?
The lap dancing scene needs to be tackled seriously and not in the farcical way it is being handled. Researching the subject, I came across a study by Julie Bindel at the London Metropolitan University, called "Profitable Exploits: Lap Dancing in the UK", for Glasgow city council, which puts the subject into its proper perspective.
Ms Bindel based her observations on six clubs in Glasgow and London, and on interviews with dancers, customers, club owners and others with various degrees of involvement in, or knowledge of, the lap dancing 'industry'.
From the body of evidence obtained from dancers, club owners, customers and police officers, as well as general observations during club visits, the study concluded that some lap dance club owners and managers create a context in which the buying and selling of sexual services may occur.
The study found that the club owners tend to absolve themselves of any responsibility if sexual services are found to be occurring, or being arranged, on the premises, yet at the same time there is some indication that they encourage the dancers to project an air of sexual availability to customers.
Let's face it - rubbing yourself all over a man's body for a fiver does rather give out that signal.
The report also states that club owners and managers also create a series of structural conditions that can lead some dancers to offer sexual services in order to survive financially by making it difficult for the dancers to earn an adequate living legitimately.
This is not to say that there is evidence of significant numbers of dancers engaging in prostitution activities, but that the clubs are run in a way that both implicitly encourages the customers to seek sexual services from the dancers, and means that some dancers will offer them, concludes the report.
It also concludes among other things that contrary to the opinion of club owners interviewed for the purposes of the study; lap dancing clubs can be seen as part of the sex industry.
We obviously need a similar study in this country if we really want to know what really goes on in such places here. However, the fact that the 35 women arrested all come from Eastern Europe and are aged between 19 and 31 should give us some ideas.
phansen@timesofmalta.com