I'm a Dancer. Not A Stripper.

You have not experienced rowdy New York until you attended a midnight showing of the cult classic masterpiece "Showgirls". That's exactly what my friends and I did last night. After a day of watching protests and rehearsals we then attended a farewell party for an old director of ours and then headed off to the notorious ABT hangout; the Russian Samovar. It was huge group of dancers there all going slightly crazy but we had bigger and better things to do.

Being a HUGE fan of the movie "Showgirls" when I found out there was a Rocky Horror type showing of it going on in the East Village I knew I had to be there. We headed downtown and upon arriving at the theater were greeted by a variety of drag queens accompanied by gay New York. We made it into the theater and sat second row right in front of the makeshift Volcano set that had been built to do a recreation of the show Nomi dances in during the movie. The pre-show started and was hilarious. I haven't laughed that hard in forever and the drag queens impressions of the movie (including a sketch of two drag queens lip-synching to their own voices reciting movie dialogue) were spot on. While these were some of the more manly drag queens I have ever seen, the audience was eating it up and I think everyone wished they would have kept going throughout the whole movie.

We were encouraged as an audience to shout out our favorite lines, talk back to the screen and basically were given the keys for a free for all. That's exactly what we did. Our group got so loud that we even had a couple of "shut ups" thrown our way but in the end I think that we really brought the level up quite a bit. The front few rows were most into yelling at the screen such gems as "thanks darlin", "its a versace", and my personal favorite from a few rows back during the pool sex scene "fish out of water Nomi!". The pool scene was our cue as an audience to turn it into "an all out rock concert" as the drag queens instructed us to.

Before the movie a parade of drag queens, drag kings and for some reason a young woman with a giant Troll (you know the troll toys from the 90's) mask on who was referred to as Troll-y entertained us. She attempted to hump everything in sight and as promised everyone who bought a large popcorn got a free lap dance. Right before the movie started the entire group of drag queens and characters flocked out to the audience and maniacally lap danced anyone they could. Included here I have a few pictures and while none quite do the night justice you can still get a glimpse of the now legendary Troll-y.