‘Their work, their jobs and their income is at risk’

Robyn Rooke has been running her own pole dancing business since the beginning of 2010, and has owned the studio space she teaches in at BV Studios in Bedminster for five years. “I’m really proud of what I’ve created. This is a space where people can express themselves,” she says. Her pride is justified: the studio is spotlessly clean, with wooden floors and a wall of fairy lights that provides not just a pleasant ambiance but the perfect background for students to take pictures, documenting their progress.

The studio is closely linked to Bristol’s two city centre pole-dancing and strip clubs, Urban Tiger and Central Chambers, which hit the headlines when MP for Bristol West Thangam Debbonaire referred to them as “degrading”, and said she “hope[d] licences are rejected” in a series of tweets. Both clubs recently faced their yearly license review, and although they were granted the right to continue trading, the media attention has sparked an intense debate about whether or not they should be allowed to continue.

Robyn takes a seat on a couch in the corner while two girls practice on the poles for an upcoming showcases, and it is hard not to get distracted at times by their incredible athleticism. “I have girls from the clubs who come here,” she says. “Either they learn to dance first with our classes, and really enjoy it and then realise that it could be a solution to their job worries, or I also get girls who already work there and come here to learn more tricks or improve their stage shows.”

Robyn is thoroughly unimpressed at the claims Debbonaire has made, and challenges the idea that the clubs contribute to sexual harassment figures. “Are the levels of harassment up around the clubs? Or is it just high in the city centre? The clubs have been there for years – you’d think we’d have noticed a correlation by now if there was one,” she says.

She also rejects the idea that these women are somehow causing sexual assault and harassment: “To say that there are women in the clubs who are making it dangerous for women out there – why are you blaming other women for sexual assault?

“There are at least a hundred dancers in Bristol, and their work, their jobs and their income is at risk. In all the time I’ve been in Bristol and knowing all these girls, I have not met anyone who is unhappy with what they are doing, or who is doing it because they’ve been forced into doing it, or to pay someone else off or has been trafficked. That is always what is hinted at.”

Inside Robyn’s studio, which she has owned for five years

This isn’t to say that there aren’t instances where this happens, but Robyn points out that closing down strip clubs, which are highly regulated, won’t do anything to prevent it. In fact, it’s likely to make it easier to exploit girls. “Anything that is left to be illegal, because you would rather brush it under the carpet or pretend it doesn’t exist, puts it in the hands of criminals and people that shouldn’t be doing those things,” Robyn says.

Sexual Entertainment Licenses are the most thoroughly checked and monitored venue licenses; strip clubs have to prove they have adequate policies that protect the safety and happiness of their workers on top of proving that they deserve the right to serve alcohol and meet the other conditions of being a bar. It raises the important question of, had the licenses been revoked, what alternative options the dancers might have.

“Do they not work? Do they go on Job Seeker’s?” Robyn says. “There are a lot of things that go on in Bristol that are underground, that are below the law, and they’re just hidden. And it’s not out front where everyone can check on it and make sure everybody is safe. Some girls may be tempted to do something that is less lawful to feed their family or get through university.”

Robyn dancing on stage at Glastonbury Festival

Seeing pictures of the women and men who dance in Robyn’s studio, whether they are strippers or just enjoy pole-dancing as a hobby, it seems clear that not one of them feels degraded in the way that Debbonaire suggests. On the contrary, there is a keen sense of empowerment; everyone is free to fully express themselves in a way that doesn’t often happen in day-to-day life.

It’s also hard to not be struck by the sheer amount of thought goes into every single detail of this industry; Robyn orders heels exclusively from America because she hasn’t found a company in the UK that deliver to her standards, and says that there are seamstresses that cater almost exclusively to creating dancers’ outfits. It’s something else to consider when discussing the continued existence of strip clubs: it is not just the livelihoods of dancers that may be at risk, but a whole host of different small businesses.

As the interview wrapped up, Robyn checked her phone to see how Urban Tiger’s licence review had gone, and was ecstatic to find that it had passed. For her, this fight is about listening to the voices of the women who are involved in this industry, rather than those who put forward opinions supposedly on their behalf.

“When women do stand up and say, ‘I’m not being exploited, I’m perfectly happy doing what I’m doing, I’m earning money, I’m feeding my family, I’m putting myself through university, I’m bettering myself through this’,  they don’t get heard,” Robyn says. “The response is, ‘Oh no. Quiet you. Sit down, you don’t know any better. You think you’re empowered but you’re actually not’.”

Read more: ‘Sex workers have a right to speak truth to power’