Why is this site called LiftedLeg?

Long story short “when you think of LiftedLeg think of a dancer lifting their leg in any number of fabulous ways, and nothing else!”

I first registered liftedleg.com back in 2003 - 21 years ago.

At the time, I was running/publishing/editing a major site called Balletco (at www.ballet.co.uk) and had been since 1996. Within months of starting Balletco I realised that saddling myself with a ballet title was rather limiting for a site that wanted to cover the breadth and diversity of dance, and it would be nice to morph and have a better title above the door. But change is not easy and Balletco was growing like an unstoppable train - all very exciting really.

In 2002 I started to think seriously about what new names might be used for a dance website.

I liked that in football there was FourFourTwo magazine, another called “Come Saturday Afternoon” (I think) and we had Virgin as a brand with Virgin Trains, Virgin Airlines etc, which is a bit off the wall when you think about it. Anyway, thinking outside the box seemed the order of the day, and I consciously wanted something different and playful.

It occurred to me that dance was nearly always about lifting and moving parts of the body, and LiftedLeg seemed to roll so easily off the tongue and be a base level description of what all dancers and physical performers do. What I didn’t choose was “Lift a Leg”, which is common slang for something we all do in the bathroom each day, although apparently it can also mean good luck in some circumstances (see at the bottom of this page).

Back to 2003, when I registered the name… I bounced the idea of using it off a few people, and one of my writers said they would no longer contribute if such a title was used. Gulp. And shortly after, I registered the name DanceTabs and went on to use it to great effect a few years later.

But I never gave up on liking LiftedLeg as a title, and actually used it as a private email address for a short while.

And so to 2024 and a site talking about dance and just down to me and my writing - so why not go with a title I have long liked?

For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t particularly want to see the name and site as a snarly “pissing on dance” place, rather a site that loves dance but sees it through realistic and sometimes playful eyes.

I’ve droned on and overanalysed enough. But when you think of LiftedLeg think of a dancer lifting their leg in any number of fabulous ways, and nothing else!