New York Post, Tuesday, August 13, 2019nypost.com29Look good, feel great, live longer
Hea lth&Fitness
AIM TO TEASE
For the stripper flick ‘Hustlers,’ Jennifer Lopez turned to the pole prowess of
a veteran Vegas dancer for the ins, outs and all arounds of the business
By LAUREN STEUSSY
W
HEN Jennifer
Lopez took fiancé
Alex Rodriguez to
a strip club in Mi-
ami this past win-
ter, it wasn’t just
her way of bringing some pizazz
into the relationship.
It was homework, under the tu-
telage of Johanna Sapakie, the
pole-dancing guru who taught
the 50-year-old how to effort-
lessly writhe and twirl for her
role as a veteran stripper in “Hus-
tlers,” out Sept. 13.
“I told her, ‘You need to go and
feel what that is,’ ” says Sapakie of
Lopez and Rodriguez’s strip-club
jaunt. “That really informed our
sessions. Jennifer doesn’t want to
guess — she wants to know.”
Sapakie, a muscular power-
house and an acrobatic dancer of
more than 20 years, choreo-
graphed and trained Lopez for
the movie, which follows a
troupe of cunning strippers at the
fictional Hustlers in New York as
they scam their Wall Street cli-
ents. Along with Lopez, Sapakie
also worked with the star-
studded film’s other actresses,
including Lili Reinhart (“River-
dale”) and Constance Wu
(“Crazy Rich Asians”). But lead-
ing up to the film’s wrap, Sapakiedevoted most of her expertise to
Lopez, who had a pole installed
in every city she visited for their
rigorous coaching sessions,
which lasted 2 ¹/₂ months.
“We would stick trainings in
anywhere in the day it would fit,”
says the Vegas resident, who
earned her stripes with Cirque du
Soleil and has been working with
Lopez on and off as a choreogra-
pher for the past five years.
Of course, her job was made
easier by the fact that Lopez al-
ready has the kind of dancing
cred other performers could only
dream of — not to mention aRoger Kisby
Lili Reinhart (from left), Jennifer Lopez, Keke Palmer and Constance Wu
play strippers in “Hustlers,” but first had to learn their way around a pole.Coach
Johanna
Sapakie shows
off a “Hustlers”
move at Sapphire
Gentlemen’s Club
in Las Vegas.See STRIP on Page 30