sexandsensibilities.com

By Elizabeth Fox, Sex and Sensibilities student intern

Take a scantily-clad woman.

Add in your favorite pole dancing poses, a healthy splash of booze, and a random smattering of people with sketchpads.

Sound like a recipe for disaster?

Quite to the contrary.

This is Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, the world’s self-proclaimed premier alternative drawing movement. And alternative it certainly is.

On this particular night, a group of “art monkeys” (slang for Sketchy’s students) gathered together at Dr. Sketchy’s first Filipino branch for a raucous evening of “dames, drinks, and drawing” starring the ever-entertaining Lady S, champion of the 2010 Philippine Pole Dancing Competition, Associate Director of Pole Academy Philippines, and, needless to say, an incredibly engaging model.

As one art monkey, busy sketching Lady S in a pose that I’ve only seen in movies, bluntly put it, “Whoa. She’s hott.”

Dr. Sketchy’s, which was founded by New York City-based artist Molly Crabapple in 2005 and has now spread to over one hundred cities worldwide, runs classes that are basically ordinary life drawing lessons. Artists arrive, set up their workplaces, and sketch a human model in various poses. Just, instead of what one art monkey called your typical life drawing model—“fat, muscular”—the model is sexy, often leather-clad, and striking untraditional poses. And, instead of your typical art student, the monkeys occupy a wide range of talent and intensity, from stick figure-drawing amateurs to famous artists. Oh, and instead of your typical sober atmosphere, let’s just say that Dr. Sketchy’s sessions, usually held in bars, are a little more festive.

“[There’s] nothing else is like it, especially not in Manila” said Tessa Cam Rowe, who founded the Filipino branch, based at Amber Ultra Lounge in Global City, this January. “This is the first ever art class meets burlesque. In art school, live drawing sessions are limited to nude models under sterile lighting. Here we introduce more models with personality, under dramatic light and in scanty clothing. It’s all more visually stimulating; it encourages the imagination.”

Art monkey Carlos Rafael Ahorro, a professor of traditional arts, agreed. “The concept completely changes the way of drawing—the black lingerie against her white skin, her makeup—it’s all more sensual,” he said. “There’s so much more left to your imagination, so many more ways to manipulate the image.” Encouraging impulses like Ahorro’s, to elaborate on the image before him and make it his own unique piece, is one of Dr. Sketchy’s key objectives.

Another goal of the school, and in particular Rowe’s Filipino branch, is to break the stigma surrounding pole dancing and other edgy performances. As Rowe said, “Pole dancing isn’t dirty. Pole dancing is an art form. We want to break people’s preconceived notions about art, and introduce more and more shock factors to our audience.”

And just to devil up your imagination, next up on Rowe’s wish list for Dr. Sketchy models will have something to do with drag queens.

Indeed, that night preconceptions were definitely broken. The Hollywood-bred image of pole dancing is one that makes every straight man’s greatest fantasies come true before his eyes, but the absence of excessive eroticism in Lady S’s performance exposed a new kind of pole dancing, a kind with the same poses and outfits but without the dollar bills or lap dances, a kind free from “dirtiness” and existing solely by the beauty of the performer and the shapes of her body. Though Lady S is certainly a Class A pole dancer—as was proven towards the end of the night by a special performance from her burlesque class—when she first entered the room, she walked instead of strutted, and her first action, instead of assuming a sexy position, was to wipe down the pole with a towel.

During each pose, she did not hide her physical discomfort from the audience, instead shifting as it grew too great. She even dropped her pack of cigarettes once.

In short, she was gorgeous, she was sexy, but she was also accessible.

As she giggled in between poses, sometimes sticking her tongue out at the monkeys, any sort of actor-audience barrier that we may have established at the beginning of the class was torn down, and it just became what it was meant to be: a group of friends sitting around together, drinking, laughing, and trying their hand at some sketches.

So, Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, a recipe for disaster? As Carlo Cruz, a filmmaker, said, “It’s a shocker. It’s different. It’s unorthodox.

“But I sure like it.”

Interested in Dr. Sketchy’s Manila branch? Learn more here.

Elizabeth is a junior at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where she studies comparative literature, participates in a lot of extracurricular theatre and music, and sleeps very little.

A somewhat militant feminist from a very early age, Elizabeth was truly introduced to the world’s current battle for women’s rights one year ago when she took a class entitled “Sex and Society”, which opened her eyes to the ways women’s bodies continue to be rigidly controlled today despite the fact that so many women are finally “liberated”.

Elizabeth came to Manila hopeful for a new experience and an internship in writing and women’s health. During a lengthy, late-night search through much more tame and lackluster options, Sex and Sensibilities jolted Elizabeth awake by merely having the word “sex” in its title, and appeared as an oasis of SASsiness. She shot Ana an email immediately and the rest, as they say, is herstory.