ent001673-028

This item has not been digitized in its entirety. The original item is available for research and handling at the UNLV University Libraries. Additional digitization is available upon request. Please contact Special Collections to request additional digitization or with any questions regarding access at special.collections@unlv.edu. mints, Life Savers, packs of Marlboro Lights and feminine napkins. These are stocked on a shelf over the dressing table. They buy these on an honor system, the proceeds dedicated to helping one of the dancers who has an autistic child. With all this serenity and sisterhood about, you?╟╓d never know that in a few weeks, for the first time in the history of the Folies Bergere, the entire cast will have to submit to a re-audition. ?╟úIt was Ginny [Murphy, the Tropicana?╟╓s entertainment director] who instigated this,?╟Ñ says Jerry Jackson. ?╟úIt came from Bally?╟╓s, where they?╟╓ve been doing it for years.?╟Ñ In April 1997, the show was revamped for the first time in 14 years and renamed The Best of Folies Bergere?╟÷Sexier Than Ever. But an all-cast audition?╟÷that?╟╓s something entirely different. It is not uncommon for 200 or 300 dancers to answer these casting calls. For those looking to keep their jobs, it has to be cause for more than a little trepidation. In the gyms and dance studios around town, the rumor is that Folies is being scaled back and that the Trop is looking to jettison some of its higher-salary line captains and senior dancers. Jackson flatly denies this. What is undeniable is that the job can be far from steady. A showgirl?╟╓s career, like the froth on a glass of champagne, while intoxicating, dissipates all too quickly. ?╟úDancing is never one of those jobs like, OK, I?╟╓ve got my job, now I?╟╓m set for years,?╟Ñ says Carey Hem. ?╟úYou have to look good. You have to keep up in your dancing. Or all of a sudden they decide we?╟╓re changing the look of the show, or we?╟╓re getting rid of this group of dancers. You never know. It?╟╓s one of those things at the end of the contract?╟÷everybody has this little thing in the back of their head: T wonder if I?╟╓m going to get rehired??╟╓ It?╟╓s just one of those things about dancing.?╟Ñ As Fluff puts it bluntly, ?╟úIt?╟╓s not a job for life.?╟Ñ q tX still still miss the attention being on stage will get you,?╟Ñ lisa Browder admits one afternoon over lunch at the Tropicana coffee shop. ?╟úI don?╟╓t like looking in the mirror and seeing some of the changes I see. I would still like to be able to turn heads. I don?╟╓t; I?╟╓m well aware of that.?╟Ñ But it?╟╓s easy to see that she once did. She is tall, slender still for a woman in her mid-40s, and there is a studied grace in her carriage, in the way her hips turn independently of each other, with the sureness of thought, so that every stride of her long legs is a phrase, an articulation of their thinking. She also has a scrapbook stuffed with memories of her years as a Vegas showgirl. A smile crosses her wide, supple mouth, remembering the day she brought it to work to show everybody at the office. ?╟úPeople would ask, You did that? Really??╟╓ They couldn?╟╓t believe iti?╟Ñ She chuckles, recalling the looks on their faces. Her blue eyes widen with a twinkle of mischief, and suddenly they are youthful again, luminous. ?╟úAnd of course they want to see the pictures because they?╟╓re shocked that you actually did that. And you can just see the wheels start turning, and you know what they?╟╓re seeing in their minds because they have that image of you as a little bit wild, a little bit risque. And they can?╟╓t imagine that you were that way. So it?╟╓s a fascination for them. They want to know: Are they seeing the real you??╟Ñ lisa grew up in Conroe, Texas, a small town outside Houston where you?╟╓re about as far from the big bright lights of Broadway as you are from the stars glowing at night in the huge Texas sky. She began studying dance at the age of 5 and dreamed that one day she?╟╓d be a star. She never became a star, although she did get out of Conroe. She danced professionally for 13 years and got to tour a dozen countries. For 10 of those years she was a showgirl on the stages of two of the most lavish revues ever produced on the Las Vegas Strip?╟÷the Dunes?╟╓ Casino de Paris and Baby's Jubilee!. For two shows a night, six nights a week, lisa Browder was beauty larger than life. She was one of Les Mannequins, alluring and unattainable. Slender, long-legged, statuesque?╟÷lisa Browder from Conroe, Texas?╟÷her head aflame in brilliantly colored plumes imported from Paris, her eyes painted seductively, valanced by long black lashes, her small, perfect breasts bared to the world, perfectly framed in floating halos of sequins and organza and lame costing thousands of dollars. Seven years ago, just as time calls a halt to the fantasy every showgirl must create for herself, it brought an end to Lisa?╟╓s. She was in her mid-30s when it arrived like the sounding of a distant knell, plaintively, in the little depredations Nature wreaks upon the flesh. She knew it was over long before her employers began dropping the inevitable hints. ?╟úWhen they start criticizing your look, you?╟╓d better start thinking of doing something else,?╟Ñ she says. ?╟úIt?╟╓s not pressure, really. It?╟╓s just that you have to start paying attention to the little signs. The girls do. A lot of them don?╟╓t want to see it. But if you?╟╓re honest, you know you can?╟╓t last forever.?╟Ñ There was Fluff LeCoque to contend with. ?╟úFluff is very good at seeing changes in you,?╟Ñ lisa says. ?╟úI remember she came up to me one night and said, You?╟╓ve lost too much weight. I want you to put on some weight.?╟╓ And I had lost weight, but I thought, she?╟╓ll never notice. She does. She catches bruises. She?╟╓s very astute. She would be up in the light booth, and she?╟╓d come down between numbers and say, ?╟ Get that bruise off your leg.?╟╓ So they see. They see things.?╟Ñ At the age of 37, Lisa was permitted to show herself to the stage door. Now she wears her auburn hair clipped in a tight, no-nonsense pageboy and reports to work every day dressed appropriately?╟÷that is to say, unassumingly. Today, over lunch at the coffee shop, it?╟╓s a black Eton-style blazer, a white blouse, gray slacks, sensible low-heeled pumps. She?╟╓s administrative assistant to the vice president of casino marketing at the Tropicana with a ?╟úfantastic boss,?╟Ñ she says, and duties she professes to ?╟úreally love.?╟Ñ ?╟úI had a couple of different careers, trying to find my niche, because I always thought of myself in entertainment. That?╟╓s where I always thought I belonged. So it was not an easy transition for me.?╟Ñ It?╟╓s been a long road from Conroe. ?╟≤q/V v f orms ormally, I would never go topless,?╟Ñ says young Sabina Zenglein. ?╟úI mean, I wasn?╟╓t sure if I would. But after seeing the show and seeing how classy the show is, I was like, it?╟╓s not a big deal at all. You don?╟╓t even notice after a while that the girls are topless. It wasn?╟╓t a big deal. ?╟Ñ But she hasn?╟╓t told her parents yet. * ?╟úI think at first they?╟╓ll be shocked about it. But I don?╟╓t think it?╟╓s going to be a big deal. They?╟╓re so excited that I?╟╓m in the show, and they?╟╓re very supportive of it. Actually, I think I?╟╓m making a bigger deal out of it than they really will. So, as soon as they ask, I?╟╓ll tell them.?╟Ñ Sabina is showgirl tall, an angular 5 feet 10 inches. In her everyday clothes, though, she hardly looks glamourous. Painfully thin is more like it. And without her stage makeup, her face appears hollow; her complexion, while soft and fresh with youth, is rather pale. Her smile, although she?╟╓s been practicing it for weeks, is shy still, and a giggle trips from her lips when she attempts to describe what the cliche has already described for her as a dream come true. f |It?╟╓s;something that I wanted to do for a long time. Since I was little. I always wanted to be a professional dancer. But I didn?╟╓t know what I was going to do and where I was going to start. When I got this job I was really excited.?╟Ñ ?║3 ?╟úh/heg hare to hate a certain hind of rtai quality, a rettau jpadde* a certain innet light Sk jo indefinable* 9hete?╟╓j a magic about them ifurt 6 6 APRIS 1998 If M