That’s the idea behind the Pure Talent School of Dance. But the Pure Talent School of Dance is not the aerobic, strip-for-your-lover type of performance training.
Photo by Ann Marie Hayek
From left, Celeste, C.C. Sin, Sophia Sanders, Leslie
Wells, Natalie Ocean, and Leilani Lei.
“You don’t just learn how to take off a costume. It’s for the women who want to learn the A to Z’s of the business,” Hayek says. “It’s about the stage presence, what a club owner expects, what an agent expects. It’s about the whole business.”
Students learn about safety issues, like how to travel safely from show to show. On Monday and Thursday, Evelyn, a professional choreographer, worked with the girls on their routine and taught them some dance moves. Professional image consultants were there Thursday to teach them the ins and outs of stage makeup, like applying false eyelashes, contouring the face and straightening their hair.
Luke Lirot, an adult entertainment lawyer specializing in First Amendment law spoke Tuesday and answered all the girls’ legal questions. In between all those activities, the girls practiced, practiced, practiced.
All that practicing seems to have paid off. As Natalie Ocean gets up to show the class what she’s learned, Hayek blasts Madonna’s “Material Girl.” Dressed up in a silver-sequined gown that nearly touches the floor, long white ballroom gloves and a black boa, Ocean struts as good as Madonna herself. Hayek and Wells scream “Yeah!” and “Woo!” from the back to encourage the students.
“I like how you were looking over your shoulder while you were unzipping your dress,” Hayek says after Ocean’s second song, Whitney Houston’s “Queen of the Night” had stopped.
I was curious to see how one could perform with five days of this class and no prior experience dancing in a gentleman’s club. When Sophia Sanders took her turn, one could tell she was nervous from the sheepish grins, but she slipped out of her purple-sequined cowboy costume like a pro, dancing appropriately to Will Smith’s “Wild, Wild West.”
Sanders tells me she finished college at 19 in Venezuela, learned English and has lived in New York for the past eight years. She wanted to become a feature entertainer and said that dancers in New York wouldn’t show her any moves when she asked for help. But Sanders is refreshingly honest about what she wants out of the business.
“I’m looking forward to being a diva, a famous person,” she says in a thick Spanish accent. “I want that; I’m not afraid. You have to feel proud of yourself.”
Now Sanders has to go back to New York and dance in a gentleman’s club to get used to the atmosphere. Bravery comes in all forms. She offers to get me a place in New York for about a month until I can find one of my own, and in my head I negate all the misconceptions I hear about women in the adult entertainment industry.
Leilani Lei, decked out in her pink 50s-girl costume, worked the stage like she was born for it. It amazes me how “Rock Around the Clock” and “Good Golly Miss Molly” could be so sensual.
Celeste ended up sitting this session out because she didn’t know her songs well enough to dance to them, but she promised she’d send a tape of her dancing the routine at her club back in Mobile, Ala., where she works.
“Ooooh, this is my favorite part,” Wells says as she grabs a stack of framed certificates, each printed with their feature entertainer name, to hand out to the students for the graduation ceremony. The proud graduates stand together as Hayek and I take a few pictures to commemorate the moment.
As I leave, Hayek waves off my attempt to shake her hand and instead gives me a big hug.
“Call us if you ever want to work with us after you graduate,” she says.
“Really?”
“Oh yeah, of course,” she says.
I will definitely keep that in mind. And I know just where to go to get my education.