History and pasties

By Kristen Peterson

Wednesday, June 9, 2010 | 12:05 p.m.

It’s unbearably hot on the corner of Sixth and Fremont streets. Outside the Emergency Arts building, perfumed ladies in pillbox hats, fitted skirts and pin curls stand 10 deep on the sidewalk, as if JCPenney, which opened here in 1951, is having a sale.

But the JCPenney is long gone. So is the medical center that replaced it. The building now houses Emergency Arts, a space for galleries, studios, boutiques, The Beat coffee shop—and the Burlesque Hall of Fame Museum, which is having its ribbon-cutting, which is why the place is wall to wall with performers. It’s Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend, the museum’s annual fundraiser.

This is where the world will see the history of burlesque, in thousands of artifacts rotated into the space: elaborate costumes, photographs, playbills, promotional material, scrapbooks, diaries.

Mayor Oscar Goodman and burlesque legends, including Tempest Storm and Dixie Evans, line up behind a pink boa for the ribbon-cutting. Las Vegan Kalani Kokonuts, the 2009 Queen of Burlesque, is here, as is Holly Madison, the Peepshow darling, and the media.

“Satan’s Angel, drop that shoulder,” shouts a photographer to the dancer who launched her career in the 1960s, spinning flaming tassels from her bosom. “Perfect! Love it. Love it!”

The mayor cuts the boa. The dancers escort one another, Madison and the film crews inside for a private tour of the small space, exhibiting Sequins in the Sand: Celebrating 20 Years of Miss Exotic World.

“It’s an honor to have you come here,” Evans tells Madison. “What you’re seeing now is how we started.”

By that, Evans means the small display of memorabilia originally gathered by the late dancer Jennie Lee, and displayed for years in a barn on a goat farm in Helendale, California. Evans, who became the Marilyn Monroe of burlesque in the ’50s, has served as the museum’s longtime curator. In 1990, she started the Miss Exotic World Pageant to bring people to the museum and draw more attention to the almost-forgotten art form. The museum and pageant moved to Las Vegas in 2006. Evans explains that it’s the young girls who have “just latched on and promoted burlesque.” They’re carrying the torch.

After the tour is over and the women of all ages pose glamorously for the last of the photos, they’re ushered out the back door, away from the mob, and the museum opens for business.