LAS VEGAS — A place that rarely preserves its past is now trying to preserve its pasties.
Make that pasties and crystal bras, feathered head pieces, fans and thongs — anything that documents the existence of an increasingly rare bird: the showgirl.
“We were the original Las Vegas,” said Lou Anne Harrison Chessik, the former showgirl behind a new exhibit that memorializes the garb and glamour of her withering art. “It’s important to me that we understand this history.”
There are two large-scale showgirl revues left on the Las Vegas Strip, so very different from the 1960s when every respectable casino housed its own flock of beauties in boas.
Their bloodlines might trace back to the French cancan girls of the 19th century, but it took the one-upmanship of Las Vegas to make them icons.
Now, they’re fading from the stage, and Chessik and others are part of a still-young movement to make sure they’re not forgotten.
To that aim, Chessik has created the annual Showgirl Art Competition, an exhibit in its second year on display until August at the Nevada State Museum in Las Vegas.
The costumes on view include glittering skivvies designed by Cher costume designer Bob Mackie, a cherry- colored feathered flurry called “Red Heat Wave” and other high art of the genre.
But the exhibit’s focus is artwork depicting the bare-chested performers themselves. It includes the work of Terry Ritter, a dancer turned artist who set up her easel backstage at the shows to create dreamy portraits.
More improbably, it includes the artwork of high school students, who were likely stunned by their luck when a still lean and leggy Chessik, 51, and a group of former dancers arrived in their classroom to regale them with the history of the showgirl.
The homework: Paint portraits of dancers. Think Edgar Degas, think Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.
Chessik knows this is a new world for most teenagers — even teenagers in Las Vegas. The French-Canadian acrobats of Cirque du Soleil now dominate the entertainment scene of the Strip. The word “showgirl” has been adopted by far less glamorous establishments.
“A lot of strippers and different groups use the name ‘showgirl’ now,” she says, somewhat embarrassed.
This wasn’t always so. Some of the first showgirls in Las Vegas were classically trained European ballerinas who arrived to perform in “Lido de Paris,” a review imported in 1958 by producer Donn Arden.
