French priest gets death threats after pole dance show

A French priest said Tuesday he had received death threats after a sold-out pole dance performance in his church that the local paper called "sexy".

Daniel Boessenbacher, the priest at the Protestant Saint-Guillaume church in Strasbourg, eastern France, told AFP he had alerted police to the threats after receiving two anonymous letters.

"There is no doubt, this is about a show involving Stabat Mater and pole dancing," he said.

A baroque music and performing arts association, Passions Croisees (Interwoven Passions), rented the church last week for two performances of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's lyrical sequence Stabat Mater, which they combined with dance and pole dance acts.

The Dernieres Nouvelles d'Alsace newspaper said the pole dancing by gymnast and former French pole dance champion Vincent Grobelny had been "skillful, athletic, graceful, impertinent and, some would say, sexy", and had left the audience "gasping".

The 1,000 tickets for the show had sold out very quickly, it noted.

The priest described the evening's programme as "flirtatious but soft", acknowledging that "some didn't like it".

One of the threatening letters said "parishioners should be decapitated", saying "this is not a church, it's a cabaret".

The other said about the priest that "his head needs to be cut off because he handed the key to our holy church to a dancing serpent".

Boessenbacher said copies of the evening's programme annotated with remarks including "you will die" or "you're going to hell" were found slipped under the church door.

"We're used to getting reactions, but not to getting death threats," the 54-year old priest said.

"They don't deter me at all", he said. "I think the church needs to open itself up to the world."

Pole dance is sometimes seen as synonymous with erotic shows in seedy sex clubs often shown in movies, but it is also a skilled athletic sport requiring a high level of fitness and dedication.

There are many national and international pole dance competitions, and the International Pole Sports Federation is lobbying for the sport's inclusion in the Olympic Games.

Two more performances combining opera and pole dance are scheduled at Saint-Guillaume, on May 31 and June 1.

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© Agence France-Presse