Dita Von Teese, the once and forever burlesque star

She’s the Glamonatrix who looks equally as comfortable luxuriating in a Champagne glass, emerging from a giant shell, perched upon a cake or astride an oversized lipstick bullet. She’s the Rhinestone Cowgirl, the Bird of Paradise, the star of Strip, Strip, Hooray! and Dita’s Crazy Show. She’s a star.

In contrast to OnlyFans influencers, Dita Von Teese comes from an older, spectacular style of tease, and at fifty-one, remains the world’s best-known burlesque dancer. She’s the most famous striptease showgirl since Gypsy Rose Lee and perhaps the world’s leading erotic celebrity. She’s come a long way since she was simply a Michigan-born girl named Heather Sweet.

Along with over thirty years of international burlesque performances, she’s appeared in music videos for Taylor Swift, Thirty Seconds to Mars and Die Antwoord, acted in 2022’s Don’t Worry Darling and was married to Marilyn Manson for a year, having dated him for a further six.

In October she began her ultimate showgirl challenge, staging her high-glamour Las Vegas show Dita Las Vegas: A Jubilant Revue. It kicked off at the Jubilee Theater, Horseshoe Las Vegas on October 5, her homage to the historic, pioneering burlesque show Jubilee! though, she emphasizes, it is not a recreation of the original:

“I never called this a ‘re-do’ of Jubilee!, that was never the plan,” she tells me. “The past couple years, I was on tour with my show Glamonatrix, playing historic theaters all over the world. My partners at Live Nation brought the head of Caesars Entertainment out to see my show at the Chicago Theater, and it was sold out to the rafters; 3,800 people. [Caesars Entertainment] understood the extravagance of my show, and they offered me the Jubilee Theater. I asked if I might be able to put the Jubilee! showgirl costumes back on stage in a new way, with showboys and showgirls of different types, merging my show with the classic Vegas show.

“This is a burlesque show… the biggest burlesque show in the world, but with a wink to Jubilee! I expect there to be some people who don’t approve, but I have managed to keep the spirit of burlesque alive and well by evolving the art form, so my hope is to let the classic Vegas revue live on in a new way as well.”

Until Donn Arden’s bold introduction of showgirl culture in the 1980s, bared breasts on stage (outside of strip clubs) had rarely been seen in America (1957’s Minsky’s Follies, at the Dunes Hotel in Vegas, was the first to daringly set a precedent). Arden was prepared to shake up American audiences — and did so when the first topless showgirl paced across the Stardust stage with the patented “showgirl walk” that required a swaying, side-to-side tilting of the pelvis, not unlike the fashion runway walk that stalks the catwalks to this day.

The original Jubilee! — produced by Arden — debuted July 31, 1981, at an initial cost of $10 million, and it was a hit. The show wouldn’t close until thirty-five years later, in 2016, the longest running Vegas revue ever.

Von Teese had seen it many times over the run — she recalled “marveling over the glorious and extravagant Bob Mackie and Pete Menefee costumes, literal tons of feathers!” — and when it closed in 2016, she felt that something was lost.

“I remember thinking that it was sad to put all of these beautiful costumes away forever, and I remember wishing there were a way to keep the essence of the showgirl alive in Las Vegas. The Lido in Paris had also closed recently, and that was yet another death blow to high glamour in entertainment.”

Though Dita Las Vegas: A Jubilant Revue is unquestionably her own, original show, Von Teese incorporates some of the original Jubilee! choreogra- phy into its seventy-five minutes. Similarly, though there are new costumes from Jenny Packham, Mister Pearl and Alexis Mabille, custom footwear by Christian Louboutin and “a masterpiece of Swarovski crystal made by Catherine D’Lish and Michael Schmidt,” she also uses some of Bob Mackie’s original costumes.

“I actually have full access to all of the original costumes!” Von Teese says. “The costume rooms backstage at Jubilee! are dreamy, too. It’s my favorite place to be. It’s difficult to choose what to put on stage and I definitely have my favorites. I’m making sure all of the best, most iconic looks have their moment on stage. The difficult part has been deciding what I want to wear myself versus what I want to watch someone else wear. Everything has been beautifully maintained and continues to be meticulously cared for by the same people who worked on [the original] Jubilee!”

The odd contradiction of Von Teese is that it feels as though she comes from a dream of the past, and yet is only able to be the star because of our current culture and its acceptance of highly sexualized imagery; “I know full well that in a different era, I could never have been a showgirl, and I couldn’t have had a burlesque career that has lasted as long as it has if it were the Thirties or Forties either. I’m filled with gratitude for what I have been able to achieve, and reaching milestones I never would’ve dreamed were attainable, so I just keep at it.”

She began the show just having wrapped her Glamonatrix tour of Europe and the US and had a starring role in Taylor Swift’s “Bejeweled” video just before.

In a culture of sexualized selfies, Sam Smith videos, BDSM-inspired fashion and musicians wearing little beyond latex and fishnets, it still feels rebellious and daring for a woman in her early fifties to be the ultimate burlesque showgirl: seductive, shameless and boasting an elite level of fitness.

Von Teese doesn’t take her body for granted, and it has reminded her of its fallibility in recent times.

“About five years ago, I had chronic pain and I was told I had arthritis in my back and a lower disc bulge,” she admits. “I was told that high heels were catching up with me. Then, I read a book called Healing Back Pain by Dr. [John] Sarno, and I did a lot of emotional work, and my chronic pain dissipated. So, I actually feel better now than I have in the last fifteen years. The mind-body connection is much more important than people realize.”

She isn’t squandering the energy and vitality she’s worked hard to return to.

“I’ve always been inspired by seeing women a bit older than me who keep performing, and that’s one of the reasons that I think it’s important that burlesque is diverse and inclusive,” she says. “I believe that we all need to see examples of beauty and sensuality in different forms and at different phases of life. I’ve always cast my shows with different types of people. That’s nothing new for me, but I am especially excited about this show, because I’m taking that to the next level, with more types of performers than ever.”

As for a future in film, she demurs — “I don’t really have an interest in that.”

“I feel I’ve been rewarded for following my own path,” she reflects, “and for taking the road less traveled. I remember when I was first getting mainstream press in America and people thought I would just drop the burlesque thing to be an actress or something, but I remember saying, ‘I didn’t do this to pave the way for a different career. This is what I love to do, I believe in it.’”

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s March 2024 World edition.