Here it is, where I got it from cannot be revealed but indeed an important work that gives justification to a dance usually dimissed by people but now is given the full credit it deserves
----------------------
"The Socratic Strip"
When she appears on the little stage of the Crazy Horse, shielded by a black mesh curtain,
Lily Niagara is already naked. Something more than naked: she is wearing an undone
black bra and garter belt. During the first part of her number she dresses indolently, or
rather, she slips on stickings, and fastens them to the casual harness that dangles over her
limbs. She devotes the second part of her act to returning the initial situation. Thus the
audience, uncertain whether this woman has dressed or undressed, does not realize that
practically speaking she has done nothing, because the slow, pained movements, delicately
underlined by the anguish of her facial expression, simply declare her determined
professionalism and faithfully follow a grand tradition now codified even in instruction
manuals; and this nothing is unexpected, nothing is seductive. Compared to the techniques
of other grand mistresses of striptease, who know how to gauge accurately their offer of
an introductory innocence, which they conclude with an abundant, unpredictable slyness,
lasviousness kept in reserve, with savage twists for the final outrage (mistresses, in sum, of
a dialectic, Ocidental strip, the technique of Lily Niagra is already beat and hard. It recalls,
on sober consideration, the Cecilia of Moravia?s La noia, a bored sexuality composed of
indifference, here spiced by an expertise like a penance.
Lily Niagara, then, wishes to achieve the ultimate level of striptease. She does not present
the spectacle of a seduction at no one, that makes promises to the crowd but withdraws
the offer at the last moment; rather, she crosses the final threshold and denies even the
promise of seduction. So if the traditional striptease is the suggestion of a coitus that
suddenly proves to be interruptus, provoking in devotees a mystique of privation, the strip
of Lily Niagara chastises the presumption of her disciples, revealing to them that the
promised reality is only to be contemplated, and that even the complete enjoyment of that
contemplation is denied, for it must take place in silent immobility. Lily Niagara?s
Byzantine art preserves, however, the habitual structure of convential striptease and its
symbolic nature.
It is only in some boites of the most total ill fame that at the end of the performance you
can induce the performance to sell herself. At the Crazy Horse you are instructed, with the
greatest urbanity, that it is not considered proper to ask to purchase photographs. What
can be seen appears only for a few minutes of within the magic area of the stage. And if
you read the articles on stripping that enrich some of the publications on sale in leading
theatres, you realize that the nude dancer typically exercises her profession with strict
diligence, dedicating herself in her private life to domestic affections, to the young fiance
who accomponies he to her job, or, totally submissive, to a jealous husband within
impervious walls. Nor should this be thought merely a cheap device. In the bold and more
innocent Belle Epoque, however, managers went to great lengths to convince the
customers that their divas were insatiable monsters in private as well public, devourers of
meand and wealth, priestesses of the most unspeakable refinements in the boudoir.
But the Belle Epoque staged its sumptuous sinfullness for a well-to-do ruling class, to
whom the theater and the after-theater had to bow, a class who enjoyed total possession
of objects, the inalienable privilege of money.
~rougerum
----------------------
"The Socratic Strip"
When she appears on the little stage of the Crazy Horse, shielded by a black mesh curtain,
Lily Niagara is already naked. Something more than naked: she is wearing an undone
black bra and garter belt. During the first part of her number she dresses indolently, or
rather, she slips on stickings, and fastens them to the casual harness that dangles over her
limbs. She devotes the second part of her act to returning the initial situation. Thus the
audience, uncertain whether this woman has dressed or undressed, does not realize that
practically speaking she has done nothing, because the slow, pained movements, delicately
underlined by the anguish of her facial expression, simply declare her determined
professionalism and faithfully follow a grand tradition now codified even in instruction
manuals; and this nothing is unexpected, nothing is seductive. Compared to the techniques
of other grand mistresses of striptease, who know how to gauge accurately their offer of
an introductory innocence, which they conclude with an abundant, unpredictable slyness,
lasviousness kept in reserve, with savage twists for the final outrage (mistresses, in sum, of
a dialectic, Ocidental strip, the technique of Lily Niagra is already beat and hard. It recalls,
on sober consideration, the Cecilia of Moravia?s La noia, a bored sexuality composed of
indifference, here spiced by an expertise like a penance.
Lily Niagara, then, wishes to achieve the ultimate level of striptease. She does not present
the spectacle of a seduction at no one, that makes promises to the crowd but withdraws
the offer at the last moment; rather, she crosses the final threshold and denies even the
promise of seduction. So if the traditional striptease is the suggestion of a coitus that
suddenly proves to be interruptus, provoking in devotees a mystique of privation, the strip
of Lily Niagara chastises the presumption of her disciples, revealing to them that the
promised reality is only to be contemplated, and that even the complete enjoyment of that
contemplation is denied, for it must take place in silent immobility. Lily Niagara?s
Byzantine art preserves, however, the habitual structure of convential striptease and its
symbolic nature.
It is only in some boites of the most total ill fame that at the end of the performance you
can induce the performance to sell herself. At the Crazy Horse you are instructed, with the
greatest urbanity, that it is not considered proper to ask to purchase photographs. What
can be seen appears only for a few minutes of within the magic area of the stage. And if
you read the articles on stripping that enrich some of the publications on sale in leading
theatres, you realize that the nude dancer typically exercises her profession with strict
diligence, dedicating herself in her private life to domestic affections, to the young fiance
who accomponies he to her job, or, totally submissive, to a jealous husband within
impervious walls. Nor should this be thought merely a cheap device. In the bold and more
innocent Belle Epoque, however, managers went to great lengths to convince the
customers that their divas were insatiable monsters in private as well public, devourers of
meand and wealth, priestesses of the most unspeakable refinements in the boudoir.
But the Belle Epoque staged its sumptuous sinfullness for a well-to-do ruling class, to
whom the theater and the after-theater had to bow, a class who enjoyed total possession
of objects, the inalienable privilege of money.
~rougerum
