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Showgirls headed to smaller shows
Tourists' changing tastes have diminished their numbers since the first Best of Las Vegas poll
By MIKE WEATHERFORD
REVIEW-JOURNAL
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Showgirls bedecked in feathers high-kick their way through "Jubilee!" at Bally's.
The traditional showgirl has been a long-standing feature of "Folies Bergere" at the Tropicana.
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"It's really hard to be a showgirl," says Anita Mann, who has made a career of choreographing their movements onstage.
It's not easy to look beautiful while balancing a huge feathered headdress and trying not to trip on staircases while wearing high heels.
And after a night of holding poses, she says, "your back hurts."
All that said, it has been changing tastes and not the hazards of the job that diminished the number of showgirls on the Strip.
In 1982, readers could be blinded by the sequins trying to make their choice for the Best Chorus Line in the first Review-Journal readers' poll.
The winner was the long-departed "Lido de Paris" at the Stardust. But the pack included six "stage spectaculars," as casinos of the era advertised their French-derived production shows.
If readers wanted to stretch the definition, there were six more smaller revues promoted to varying degrees on the promise of pulchritude.
And the Review-Journal's Showguide listed 21 properties in 1982. Today there are nearly 40 standing productions, not counting visiting headliners, concert venues, afternoon shows or comedy clubs.
For years, Best of Las Vegas readers have considered the Best Showgirls category (as it quickly became known) to be a two-way race between the perennial winner, Bally's "Jubilee!" and the perennial runner-up, "Folies Bergere" at the Tropicana.
To expand the category, today's voters have to stretch the definition to the smaller topless shows representing today's version of "Horsin' Around." If Best of Las Vegas voters don't, at least ticket buyers do.
"I think the public perception of a showgirl in Las Vegas is they show themselves -- a little play on words there," says Mann, producer of the topless "Fantasy" at Luxor.
"The public thinks any girl that's in a show, they call them showgirls," says Ffolliott "Fluff" LeCoque, who for years has overseen the showgirls of "Jubilee!"
"Jubilee!" was the last creation of the late Donn Arden, the choreographer whose trans-Atlantic travels in the '50s led to the Stardust's importing "Lido de Paris."
In those days, there were two distinct job descriptions: dancer or parade girl, LeCoque says, the latter topless and known as "mannequins" in France. "Originally they never moved. They just stood and posed. They never moved an arm, an eye, a leg or anything."
But over time, "it just slowly meshed and merged," LeCoque says. By 1974, "Hallelujah Hollywood," the forerunner to "Jubilee!" was the first Las Vegas revue where every woman auditioning had to dance.
"The distinction now is gone," says Mann. "Showgirls have become dancers and they're one and the same. Extremely well-trained dancers."
"Folies" and "Jubilee!" long ago abandoned the practice of importing cast members en masse from Europe. Only "Le Femme" at the MGM Grand rotates an international cast of dancers every few months.
But in other aspects, "Le Femme" is in keeping with downsized topless revues such as "Fantasy," "Skintight" and "Erocktica." All of them substitute energy and intimacy for spectacle.
"Jubilee!" had a $10 million budget just for its costumes. In today's dollars, it would be almost impossible to fill a stage with 50 or more showgirls, given the uncertainty of that type of financial risk against such competitors as Cirque du Soleil and Celine Dion.
But a small revue has its advantages as well. The old production shows were "more about the show than the girl," Mann says. "What we do is now about the woman and not about the show as much. You get to know the dancer as an individual."
But those who experienced the era of showgirl glamour hold out hopes for its return. Even a younger choreographer, "Hairspray" Tony-winner Jerry Mitchell, says he would love to create today's version of a Donn Arden spectacular.
"People associate showgirls with glamour. I think that element will always be around in some shape or form," LeCoque says. "People are always going to want to see beautiful girls."
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