ART REVIEW: The Showgirl Must Go On

Just before the old girl turns fifty, they’re pulling the plug.  When the topless revue, Les Folies Bergere, opened in 1959, it became the epitome of Las Vegas’s sexy glamour.  But times have changed and the showgirl, that lanky beauty in sequins and feathers, is hanging on by an elegant fingernail.  Folies closes on Saturday night, not quite making it to its golden anniversary and leaving Jubilee! at Bally’s, as the last showgirl standing.

Thanks to the Lied Library at UNLV’s Showgirls Collection, Folies and other classic shows won’t be forgotten.  The collection documents the unique place in Las Vegas’ history that showgirls hold, rescuing costumes, design sketches, photographic prints about the productions, designers and producers as well as the images of dancers and choreographers.  The collection includes 211 items from the Donn Arden Collection, the Las Vegas Show Costumes Design Collection, The Las Vegas News Bureau Collection, the Jean Devlyn Design Scrapbook, the Harold Minsky Collection, the Sands Hotel collection and the Jose Luis Vinas Collection, all housed in the Special Collections at the University Libraries.  This isn’t really open to the public, but is available for research.  The collection can’t capture the spirit of the show, however.

Artist Terry Ritter can.  Her leggy beauty kept her onstage in sequins and spangles for years as a Folies dancer.  She never lost her special love for that showgirl glitz and glamor.  Her paintings are a blissful collision between Degas and Louis Icart, both of whom had a passion for ladies in frills and fluff.  Like Degas, her paintings document the dancers in action backstage, onstage and alone.  But Degas’ dancers always seem a little harried, rarely show the joie de vivre  in being a girl that both Icart and Ritter capture. However, Degas and Icart are observers, appreciative but always on outside looking in, their women mysterious and remote. Ritter’s luscious showgirls frolic and twirl and swish in a kaleidoscope of color.  One feels the muscle and power beneath the sleek beauty. Ritter’s paint dances on the canvas as it twists around a silky ankle or froths over a sinuous hip.   We’d almost envy it, but there is no need; we’re the one doing the high kick.

No living artist captures the showgirl’s timeless magic like Ritter does.   Her work can be found at the Casino Royale Gift Shop at the Monte Carlo, The Art Center at Neonopolis and the gift shop at the Tropicana.

To many, Earth Hour, where the entire Strip will go dark for one hour at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, is a fitting dance partner for the ending of this Vegas icon.

Images reproduced with permission by Terry Ritter.