Working as a Go-Go Dancer in the 1960s -- 1

When Penny Johnson was not performing as a ballroom dancer at a place like Kellerman's, she might have earned her money as a go-go dancer in the years following 1963. The Wikipedia article about Go-Go Dancing includes the following passages.

Go-go dancers are dancers who are employed to entertain crowds at nightclubs or other venues where music is played. Go-go dancing originated in the early 1960s, by some accounts when women at the Peppermint Lounge in New York City began to get up on tables and dance the twist. Some claim that go-go dancing originated at, and was named after, the very popular Los Angeles rock club Whisky a Go Go which opened in January 1964, but the opposite may be true – the club chose the name to reflect the already popular craze of go-go dancing.

 Many 1960s-era clubgoers wore miniskirts and knee-high, high-heeled boots, which eventually came to be called go-go boots. Night club promoters in the mid‑1960s then conceived the idea of hiring women dressed in these outfits to entertain patrons.

The term go-go derives from the phrase go-go-go for a high-energy person, and was influenced by the French expression à gogo, meaning "in abundance, galore", which is in turn derived from the ancient French word la gogue for "joy, happiness". ...

Go-go dancers began to be hired on a regular basis at the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood in the Los Angeles area in July 1965. The Whisky a Go Go was also the first go-go club to have go-go cages suspended from the ceiling (they were there from the very beginning in 1965), and thus the profession of cage dancer was born. ...

Hullabaloo was a musical variety series that ran on NBC from 12 January 1965 – 29 August 1966. The Hullabaloo Dancers — a team of four men and six women — appeared on a regular basis. Another female dancer, model/actress Lada Edmund, Jr., was best known as the caged "go-go girl" dancer in the "Hullabaloo A-Go-Go" segment near the closing sequence of the show.

Other dance TV shows during this period such as ABC's Shindig! (16 September 1964 – 8 January 1966) also featured go-go dancers in cages. Sometimes these cages were made of clear plastic with lights strung inside of them; sometimes the lights were synchronized to go on and off with the music.

Shivaree (syndicated, 1965-1966), another music show, usually put go-go dancers on scaffolding and on a platform behind the band which was performing. Each show of the period had a particular method of bringing the go-go dancers into camera view. ...

American shows of the 1960s featured dancers highly trained in the various choreography used in each show ....

The following YouTube videos show go-go dancers working in the 1960s.

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