So does Hayek view exotic dancing as an art or just another way to pay the bills?
“Absolutely [it’s an art]. Without a shadow of a doubt,” she says. “A woman’s body is an exceptionally beautiful thing. [Exotic dancing] triggers human emotions, and it’s a way of telling a story.”
Photo by Ann Marie Hayek
C.C. Sin gyrates to Van Halen's "I can't drive 55" while
Natalie Ocean giggles.
Hayek feels that not just anyone can dance, either.
“Just like not everyone can paint or sing,” she says. “I could paint, but not like Monet. But [exotic dancing] can be a learned art like an artist or a singer taking lessons.”
And that’s just what the five students are doing this week, perfecting their craft with the help of women who know the business.
“Come on in, the girls are just going over the syllabus,” she says. I follow her down the hallway to a small room where six women are gathered around a conference table, leafing through spiral-bound booklets in front of them. Hayek insists that I sit right at the table and not a few feet away like I had expected. I pull a faux-fur, winged-back chair up to the table and listen intently to Leslie Wells, the feature instructor for this particular class. Wells, who has been in the business 11 years, has shoulder-length, light blonde hair, piercing blue eyes and a killer smile.
“So you want to change your name to Natalie Ocean, not Natalie Taylor, right?” Wells asks across the table to a chestnut-haired girl with doe eyes who nods in agreement. Wells is scribbling down the girls’ feature names for the graduation certificates that will be handed out later that day.
All but one of the five girls enrolled in the class are house dancers from around the country who want to break into the feature entertaining business. C.C. Sin, a trim bleach blonde, is from Portland, Maine; Celeste, a buxom bleach blonde with a dark tan and bright blue eyes hails from Mississippi; Natalie Ocean, a petite brunette with an olive complexion and dark eyes comes from Kentucky; raven-haired Leilani Lei, with long limbs and dark eyes has come all the way from Hawaii. Sophia Sanders, a dark-haired, dark-eyed Venezuelan, who lives in New York City, is the only one who has never danced in a gentleman’s club before, but she feels she’s come to the right place to learn everything she needs to know to be a feature entertainer.
And what is the difference between a house dancer and a feature entertainer?
A feature entertainer is a special guest star hired by different gentlemen’s clubs to perform shows that include costumes and props in 20-minute theme shows. They have established credits such as magazine layouts, showcase and contest titles, or adult films. They are booked to bring in more customers to the gentlemen’s club.
While feature entertainers travel the country working at different clubs, house dancers normally work at just one club. They are hired to entertain customers during a shift of six to eight hours. They usually perform up to four songs at a time and make their money from table dances, private dances and lap dances.
The “Leslie Wells—Miss Nude Atlanta 2000” tape Wells puts in the VCR helps me distinguish between the two classes of dancers. Wells says making a tape is a great marketing tool for a feature dancer because it allows a club owner to see her costumes, her credits and her body. “You can’t airbrush a tape,” she says. Wells tells the girls the six-minute tape would take about $1,500 to make, but it’s worth the investment.
Costumes are another investment a feature dancer must make. As we watch the tape, Wells comments on how her “I Dream of Jeannie” costume cost $1,500, which is less than what some costumes go for.
After the video, Wells gets up to talk with Hayek in another room, and I chat with the girls. I ask how they picked their feature names.
“You just pick it out of the air,” C.C. Sin says. “It has to flow off your tongue right.”
Wells and Hayek help the girls choose a name that fits them best, but Hayek warns once you enter the business a dancer must not change her name because it shows the club owner she is unreliable.
Hayek knows from experience about the business. She was a feature entertainer for 15 years before starting Pure Talent in June 1994. She started the agency because she “wanted to make a positive change” in the industry and felt that bringing a dancer’s perspective would allow her to do that. I later learned this building is the Pure Talent Agency’s headquarters. It’s a licensed talent agency booking feature entertainers to various gentlemen’s clubs around the country, but it also holds a five-day class, six times a year for dancers in the industry looking to expand their area of study. The class cost is $1,000, but if you bring a friend it goes down to $750.