Entertainment in Atlantic City just got significantly gayer.
Nightlife impresario Ivan Kane is using his Royal Jelly Burlesque Nightclub at Revel to launch a weekly all-male revue, “Ivan Kane’s Le Male Burlesque.”
Kane has launched a number of burlesque clubs across the country and Le Male is his third show aimed at a gay audience.
“I’ve done this show twice before very successfully at both of my original burlesque clubs,” Kane said. “The first was in L.A. and that’s when I brought burlesque back into the pop mainstream. Then eventually it was obvious that I needed to do a hot male burlesque show. So I launched it in Hollywood the first time. I worked with people from the gay community to develop it and promote. I then launched it in Las Vegas. When I came to Revel, they wanted me to brand something specific to Revel so I did, and I changed the concept a little bit. But so far, as the male burlesque show in Vegas, it was very successful. We had a long, long run with packed houses. With Atlantic City, I wanted to take everything I learned from doing the show in Hollywood and Vegas and make it a midweek destination for the gay community.”
To that end, Le Male Burlesque will feature professional dancers and choreography talents from Broadway and pop music, with wild costuming and elaborate staging. Kane said the scale and scope of the show is what will distinguish it from the average exotic- dancer show.
“It boils down to production value and choreography,” Kane said. “I worked with the same choreographer that I’ve worked with for years, Tovaris Wilson. He’s worked with Janet Jackson ad Britney Spears. He’s a very sought-after choreographer. So right there, his level of excellence and my level of excellence elevates the show. We have go-go dancers dancing in the VIP section, on the casino bar stage and on the elevated catwalk. I’ve found that what we do is very, very elegant because of the level of dancers on stage. We hold many auditions in New York. We have the crème de la crème of the New York dance scene. If they aren’t dancing here for me, they are on stage on Broadway or behind every major recording artist. I think with the combination of Tovaris, the level of the dancers and myself, the proof is in the making. We have rotating dancers and rotating costumes. We’re taking it above what is commonly found in most gay clubs.”
The show’s choreographer, Wilson, agreed that its production values are going to take the show over the top with audiences.
“The level of production that Ivan always puts into the shows is top-notch,” Wilson said. “I feel like for a club show, you don’t normally get that. He inspired me to approach that from my side. I don’t want it to be just any other show you can see. I want you to experience a show that could be on Broadway or TV that breaks the bounds of the normal club or bar show. For me, it was a lot of fun to create because I got to do what I always fantasized about: doing a show for the gay community and making it super fun, and I didn’t have any restrictions. It was fun to create all the movements and all the music we got to use.”
Having choreographed for Broadway shows and big-name pop stars, Wilson is accustomed to some of the biggest stages in the business as the setting for the shows he helps to create. But working with the smaller stage and the moving platforms of Le Male Burlesque was a challenge he enjoyed taking on.
“It’s difficult because there is not a lot of space to work with,” Wilson said. “But on the other hand, because I have all these different contraptions that I can use, so many different possibilities open up to me that I wouldn’t be able to do in a normal show. So it’s challenging but it’s different. I get to be a lot more creative than I would be normally using a floor on an open stage. I get to have people swinging from the rafters or coming down on a catwalk. It felt like a playground for me.”
The VIP invite-only debut of Le Male Burlesque July 10 drew equal amounts of gay men and straight women. And while the show can appeal to straight women (and the go-go boys prowling the room didn’t seem to have any problems working both sides of the fence), Kane and Wilson said the show is designed to appeal to a gay audience.
“We’re not going to turn women away at the door but if past history has been any indication, we’ll skew about 80-percent LGBT and maybe 20 percent women,” Kane said. “It is a show geared towards the LGBT community. It’s a different kind of show than Chippendales or a Thunder From Down Under, which is geared towards a bachelorette party crowd. That’s not what we’re doing. This is a show geared for the LGBT community. It will be predominantly gay.”
“I wanted to be really conscious about the music that I chose,” Wilson added. “I wanted to do something that I know the gay community would be excited to hear when it came on. I use that as a jumping-off point, the music in the gay community that we all love. I wanted to be inspired by the iconic gay movies like ‘Paris is Burning.’ I wanted to bring that feeling into it. I wanted to cater towards the community and not have guys just up there dancing randomly. I wanted to come from a real place and real experiences that we’ve encountered.”
Ivan Kane’s Royal Jelly Burlesque Nightclub hosts Le Male Burlesque Wednesdays at Revel Casino Hotel, 500 Boardwalk, Atlantic City. For more information, call 855-348-0500 or visit RoyalJellyBurlesque.com.