Burlesque icon Dita Von Teese recently opened her dazzling residency at Voltaire inside The Venetian. The star chatted with Las Vegas Magazine’s Em Jurbala about the show.
Voltaire, what a perfect room for you!
Right. It feels really nice. It’s so glamorous.
How do you use a space that has so much of its own personality to influence the show?
It’s definitely a big shift for me. Even though the runway was invented for burlesque in America in the 1930s, it still is (different from) most of the theaters that I do—these big historic theaters that hold like 3,000 people … It was a lot of me trying to figure out how to make it feel immersive and adapt the show to utilize the runway and the whole room … I’m not used to having theater in the round or being that close to people. There’s a lot of beads that go rolling off into the audience, which people can feel free to capture, but it’s definitely a different feeling, and I’m really getting into it.
I know you to be incredibly detail-oriented; does that increase tenfold knowing you’re being viewed from all angles?
Actually, not at all, because I’m that way no matter what. I’ve never ever in my entire career thought, “Oh, no one’s going to see that from back in the balcony.” I always think about the details because it’s not even whether someone sees it, it’s what does it for me … I love the details. I love diving deep and really digging into the history of whatever I’m doing.
It’s great to see the vintage headpieces you used in your recent run at Horseshoe Las Vegas are back. What’s new, and what’s sticking around?
A lot of people who’ve seen the show feel like it’s an entirely new show because it’s such a different backdrop. Of course there’s going to be some of my best-known numbers like my martini glasses. And yes, thanks to Caesars Entertainment we were able to bring over a curated selection of the Bob Mackie costumes from Jubilee!, which really means a lot to me because those costumes are really untouched since Jubilee! closed … There’s a lot of new things. I’ve added a lot of things and done some edits … There’s a big fetish number and I’ve completely changed that. It used to be an ensemble cast without me and now it’s one of my own numbers with an epic new set piece.
There were two burlesque stars in your previous show’s cast. Are they in the current show? Are there more burlesque performers in this cast?
There’s three! I added, besides Dirty Martini, who is a global icon of burlesque and world champion tassel twirler, and Jett Adore, who’s been part of my tours for as long as I can remember. We’ve added Tosca Rivola, who is an amazing performer. She does the Cyr wheel. She’s very involved in the burlesque scene now, but I found her at this open casting and she did this incredible act and I was like, “Can you do it and add some strip tease?” So I’m pretty sure she’s the only woman to be performing strip tease while also revolving in a Cyr wheel.
Since you feature artists who have their own styles of burlesque, does the process of designing each show become collaborative, or do you know what you want and ask them to execute?
It’s a little bit of both. For instance, Dirty Martini, her number is a little bit different from what she did at (Horseshoe). She’s performing with one of my jeweled carousel horses, which is one of my oldest props from a long time ago. It’s really a spin—no pun intended— on the tassel twirling. It’s a collaboration … I think all of us burlesque performers have the formula of what our best number is, and so she adapted that to this set and this prop that I’m known for creating.
The Venetian, 18+. voltairelv.com
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