From Australia with Kate Wright Dynamite… Best Showgirl the other side of Hawaii
If you are in the juggling game you find that each phase of life is building toward the next phase. Hopefully the next phase begins before the present phase ends.
We try not to be phased by any of this. Instead we try and stay ahead of the changes and welcome the next phase while trying not to be caught clinging to the previous phase.
While you are in the thrall of your youth most of this counts for nothing. You are too into the launch phase. You hardly notice that ahead will be a labyrinth of complex choices to navigate on your journey up then down and finally out… also known as the final phase.
In one phase we go indoors. In certain venues we are dealing with cigarette smoke, scantily clad showgirls and magicians that like to drink whiskey after shows in the cheapest saloon they can find.
The showgirls and want-to-be boyfriends tag along every night. Cheap whiskey, road weary magicians and showgirls are a jugglers fringe benefits.
Jugglers pound out decades of work. By the time we are near done we are like Fuller Brush salesmen; we’ve almost knocked on every door in every town.
Showgirls are like meteors. They get a contract, tour with Ringling for a year, pick up a second season at a theme park cast as eye candy in the killer whale show, and if they are really lucky end up in Las Vegas closing in on the end of their careers in one of the cirque du soleil shows.
You get to thirty and you are top dog in the chorus. Those slender hips are looking voluptuous by now. You’ve been glueing eyelashes, blowing kisses and winking at the curtain calls so long you honestly can’t remember a month since forever that you didn’t read Vogue cover to cover backstage waiting to come on to do your tits and ass closing number.
And for what? So you can be on a diet? All so you can go have a lousy drink with some want-to-be boyfriend and a couple of jugglers lousy with misery over missing their wives?
The showgirls are tough as they come. They got trick knees, sore hips and bad backs. None of the want-to-be fellas got the guts to fight off the racking jealousy that comes with tramping with a lady dancer entertainer.
That’s show business. You get in, you get a gig, and one day all too soon you get out. Curtain closes and nothing but a ghostlight on stage and nothing left but a few pictures in a scrapbook of you with a pair of the best pair of legs any man has ever wanted.
Showgirls are nothing but rotten lust and heartbreak. Break a dads heart, break a fellas heart and break a jugglers heart watching them kill it every night and for what? So, they can retire at 37? So they can go start a family before its too late? Tough as nails these dancers.
It’s not living the dream so much as having surviving the heartbreak of starting the next one…
