Maya Erdelyi-Perez

From ice sculpting at the Ice Hotel in the Arctic to staging renegade fashion shows in the Paris subway system, the life of New York born artist Maya Erdelyi-Perez is not unlike one of her own surreal animated films.  On the eve of shooting a new music video, Maya chats with me about illegal subway spectacles, collaborating with band No Surrender and Tunde Adebimpe from TV on the Radio and her upcoming exhibit this Saturday night.

Dames Aflame costume designer Stephanie Ludwig (Left) and director Shannon Newton (Right)
photo by Jimiflix

Interview with Dames Director Shannon Newton Plus Photos and Video

My friend, who agreed to speak with me about burlesque on terms of anonymity, recently came back from Atlanta with stars in his eyes and a newfound passion for the South.  None of us really got it until he told us about the Dames Aflame burlesque show that he had caught during his travels:

"You know I think New York women are hot.  And New York burlesque dancers are really hot, just not, well... beauty queen hot.  The Dames Aflame dancers are beauty queen hot.  All of them.  They appeal to men in the way that strippers do.  Which is why, in New York, you go to see naked women at a strip club if you're a man.  In Atlanta, you can go to a strip club — or you can go see a Dames Aflame show."

I  was curious and so I contacted Shannon Newton, who runs the Dames Aflame Dancers in Atlanta.  In a phone interview that felt more like a backstage pass, I got her to give me the inside scoop on why even mega-corporations think that her show is a stand-out.

Interview with Burlesque Superstar Angie Pontani

Seattle residents don't miss Angie and Murry Hill with the legendary Dita von Teese, Tomorrow Night, Wednesday April 1st at 7pm at the Triple Door.

"This is Burlesque" Star Angie Pontani
Photo by Dale Haris

From the first brick laid at the saloon, women – straight, gay and miscellany – have expressed curiosity about what goes on in entertainment venues where other women get naked. But while strip clubs may host a sprinkling of adventurous female patrons, burlesque shows can claim at least half – if not a majority – of women in their audience.

It’s Saturday night and I’m seated at “This is Burlesque,” one of the hottest tickets in the New York burlesque circuit and hosted in the intimate, sensual environs of Soho’s Corio eatery. The energy is as raucous as you would expect even if the patrons are not what you imagined: immediately behind me a decked-out bachelorette party glitters like a Christmas tree, and on every side women cheer the performers on while their dates – mostly men – look on with more quiet appreciation.  On the line to the ladies’ after the show, a modestly dressed woman in her twenties confesses: “This is one of my favorite things to do on a date. It’s much more original than the dinner and a movie thing. Plus you get to see if the guy knows how to have fun.”

She did seem interested,
from his point of view.

 Maybe she's sick of those artist types.  Sometimes they call the next day, sometimes they do it twice or even three times, but most don't.  He looks like the type who will call.  And call again. And maybe he won't be as boring as he looks.  No, he probably will be, but he'll be someone to write back home about so they know she's not as lonely as they think she is.

All the cool kids got their launching licenses at 16.  The really precocious ones, the ones who smelled like private school cardigans and clove cigarettes, they were launching at 15.  She had privately dared on 15 but the mission was aborted when the dorm mistress caught her sneaking out of her room with a stolen spacesuit.  Somehow the time when the mere thought of heights made her dizzy had gone by in light years. Things had changed fast in launch school; by the time she was 14 she already knew that she would be a Maverick and not a Wingman.

  Someone familiar with Kevin Smith's movies - Mallrats, Clerks I and II, Chasing Amy -- may tingle with déjà vu when Zach (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) do the morning zombie shuffle through their platonically shared apartment in the opening scene of Zach and Miri Make a Porno.  No matter how disheveled each appear, and no matter how strong the "we're just roommates with no fringe benefits" vibe is initially conveyed, Kevin Smith is setting us up yet again.  She may not have had her coffee yet, but Miri is obviously the "really hot girl" which no amount of sleep deprivation can undo, while Zach is, in spite of all lattes he'll drink at his barrister job later that day, the not so great looking teddy bear that the really hot girl is going to fall for. 

       Stephanie Meyers' tween-hit novel Twilight breaks every literary commandment preached on the first day of Creative Writing Workshop 101:  "Thou shalt not commit clichés."  "Thou shalt not pen in platitudes."  "Thou shalt not write saccrine romances about impossibly beautiful teen vampires and insecure mortal heroines who don't know how beautiful they are and therefore evoke greater empathy from their female fan base." And, if we were in Creative Writing Workshop 102: "Thou shalt not use impossibly beautiful teen vampires and their courtship of mortal heroines as a coy mechanism to teach tweens and teeens how to abstain from sex until marriage."  Here you may want to give Meyers a few points for subversivenessness -- after all, what is more counterintuitive than a Mormon in vampire's clothing -- but a chaste vampire hottie does take a few teeth out of the erotically saturated genre of vampire fiction -- even if it is vampire fiction PG. Or perhaps G -- Bella and Edward, our Beauty and the Deceased, only get as far as first base.  Edward may be a vampire, but he is also made in his author's own very Christian image.