EVENT REVIEW// Dita Von Teese – The Roxy, LA 12.13.10

words/photos: ani yapundzhyan

twitter.com/aninomous

It’s an interesting phenomenon the way all types of women love Dita Von Teese.

No matter where their interests may lay, or what culture they chose to belong to, women love Dita.

The reason becomes obvious once you follow the “Boss of Burlesque” for a few days on twitter, or read a single interview.

She is glamorous, fashionable, sexy, of course.

Dita Von Teese is also incredibly intelligent, witty, and down-to earth.

Most of all, she is a classy broad.

An easier way to explain it would be that she comes off as the opposite of the JLo, nose-in-the-air, holier-than-thou persona.

Women want to like her.

She is gorgeous and sexy, with a super-thin waist, incredibly toned, maybe 95 pounds tops, yet women are not threatened by her, because of her attitude.

Dita drives around in classic cars that match her given outfit, but doesn’t take them or herself too seriously:

“Broken down vintage Jaguar,” she recently tweeted,  “Good thing I brought my CSI script with me…Happily studying on the side of the road!”

In another tweet a few weeks ago, Dita wrote: “I wish David Lynch would direct another TV series! He chooses the most interesting actors & is the only one who can do brilliant weirdness!”

Seems like a far cry from the self-absorbed actresses, “singers” and reality trash of today.

The biggest proof of Dita Von Teese’s awesomeness lays in the diverse makeup of her Burlesque Shows.

I was standing in the very front as the curtain opened and she sauntered over my way on Tuesday, Dec 13th for one of her six shows at the Roxy on Sunset.

Clad in a glittery pink dress, Dita waved her huge pink tail of feathers my way and I caught a whiff of its perfume.

I knew she would smell good.

And as jazz-infused big band music played, Dita strutted down the stage in her diamond-studded dress, with the music getting slower and more sensual as her clothes came off. The “sophisticated striptease,” as they call it, finished off with Dita on a carousel horse wearing fishnets and tassels.

This was the first of three bits she would perform that evening. The rest of the show saw, as I said before, the most diverse group of dancers I’ve seen in burlesque, from all over the world.

Following Dita was LA’s Selena Luna, a gorgeous 3-foot burlesque star, who opened her act by sitting in a chair in a silk robe as a woman dressed as a giant marijuana plant passed her a joint the size of a baseball bat.

As Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” played on and smoke filled the room, Selena Luna hit the joint a couple of times and unrobed herself to reveal bright green lingerie

underneath, complete with weed-plant wings. As she stripped down to her tassels, she held a sign over her head reading “Legalize.”

I didn’t know whether I was tripping on mushrooms or having a wild dream.

A dancer from Russia as well as a “Boylesque” star followed with not-so-memorable sets, but world-famous tassel twirler, New York’s Lady Martini, made up for those two.

Dirty Martini stepped on stage and all you could see of her were her legs, because she was surrounded by balloons, all attached to her dress.

She slowly lit a cigarette and proceeded to pop the balloons one by one until there was nothing left but her round, voluptuous body in lingerie. She didn’t finish her show until she finished her cigarette.

While all the girls moved and sauntered and stripped in very sensual overtones, nobody danced quite like New Orleans’ Perle Noire, aka “The Black Pearl”.

This woman had moves. She was doing cartwheels, the splits (slow and sexy, of course), and she even threw on a banana skirt in a tribute to Josephine Baker.

She had New Orleans written all over here.

Dita’s second bit landed her in a (glittery) bathtub, where, to the audience’s utter surprise and joy, she actually turned on the hose and began to spray her body with water.

Hot water. Rising steam.

Here was a woman clad in nothing more than a pair of panties and tassels, twirling around every which way in a bathtub, spraying her near-naked body with water, all the while making it seem nothing short of tasteful and classy.

Most women could not pull that off. Imagine Britney Spears in that scenario.

And this is my point: It comes from within.

Dita is a classy woman, and she puts on a classy show.

Her third and final bit was “Rhinestone Cowgirl.” As big-band “swanky” versions of 50’s country songs played on, Dita rode a gorgeously designed suede pink mechanical bull with six-foot long Swarovski-covered steer horns.

The heavier the music got, the harder Dita rode that bull. Sometimes she’d just lay on it, sometimes, she’d be sitting up, sometimes she’d be upside down. Mostly, she was grinding.

And it looked like so much fun.

The whole ambiance made me want to see the show in an intimate, smoke-filled bar in London, which one day I probably will.

Because the thing is, after seeing a show as extraordinary and inspiring as Dita’s, I am going to jump at every chance I get to see more.

So are all those other women.