Dancing for dollars.

The NY Times has an interesting series this week, on Las Vegas: its people and problems. This article is on dancers at strip clubs, and is pretty interesting for those of us who have seen such things only in the movies and on TV. It talks about how many of the dancers have goals to be something else - actress, model, veterinarian, teacher, attorney - and that this is hoped to be a stepping-stone, a way to earn enough to take the next step up, and how it's successful for some. But only for some. And it talks about how the dancers view the customers: as meat with money, and the goal is to separate as much money from the meat as possible. It also mentions that some clubs - like the one discussed at length in this column - do a good job of providing a support group for the strippers who work there, almost like family.

A similar club appears in the movie Dancing at the Blue Iguana, a non-glamorous look at the lives of five dancers in a strip club. Supportive of the women who work there, it takes the place of family for these dancers who don't have much of a supports system or family outside of work. (Different from the NY Times article, then, in those dancers tend to do a really good job of drawing a line between work and an outside life, and continue to have somewhat of a normal outside life.) And Blue Iguana was astonishing in another way: it wasn't scripted; it was done entirely through improvisation. Five months of improvisation to come up with a basic story, followed by 3 weeks of actual filming. As a result, the actors were deeply immersed in their characters, and the performances were fresh, lively and extremely believeable. A movie worth watching, and another reason to have Netflix.