Gio
by Michael Lane
May 31, 1999
THE QUEEN OF NEW ORLEANS BURLESQUE
New Orleans, LA
n New Orleans
they call her the "Queen of
Burlesque," after the Times Picayune credited
her with bringing burlesque back to Bourbon
Street. During her eleven year residency
in the Big Easy she was also appointed queen of
Mardis Gras' Krewe Du Vieux, which was an
incredible achievement for a transplanted New
Yorker. During Mardi Gras she
chose a double-ended dildo as her scepter, as
she tossed beads to the crowds.
Maybe it's her Spanish-Italian heritage, but GiO
(just GiO) certainly exudes a sense
of entitlement. She's been in numerous films,
including the 20th Century Fox documentary
Stripper early in her rise to stardom. Like many
strippers, Gio's career began as a way to pay
for college. But with moderate dance training
and a penchant for performance
art, she soon became a featured dancer
working across Canada. Humor is very much
a part of her act. She's been known to arrive on
stage in a racing car jumpsuit and a remote
control car, which the audience will eventually be
driving between her
legs.
GiO came to perform in New Orleans during the
1988 Republican Convention and by that
Fall was hooked on the music and the miles of
decaying architecture. Armed with a
degree from New York's Pratt Institute and
nearly a decade of dancing under her belt,
she moved to New Orleans where she
conquered Bourbon Street with a passionate
vision
to resurrect burlesque as a legitimate art form.
Today she exclusively dances at
Rick's gentlemen's club and is warming up to
cyberspace with her personal chat service
(www.giotalks.com), providing what she calls
"Intellectual Cabaret." We talk to the
incredible
GiO after a very special event--a private
striptease for the Monks.
MICHAEL MONK: How did your role in the film
Stripper come about?
GIO: At the time, 1982, I was traveling in Canada
and a woman from Alberta named JoAnn
was negotiating to put on the first stripper
convention in Las Vegas. Jerome Gary
was auditioning girls in Las Vegas for his
documentary Stripper and he ran into JoAnn,
who encouraged him to come to Canada
because there wasn't much happening in the US.
in terms of striptease. The adult entertainment
industry here was relying mostly
on porn and peep shows. Canada was where
the creative new burlesque stuff was happening.
The girls were being paid with a starting price of
one thousand dollars a week, which
was a lot of money back then. So Jerome Gary
came to Alberta, and they saw me do
an audition without an audience. My audition
was called "A Show of Hands," which
was a costume that had hands crawling up my
legs attached to fishnet stockings, one hand
holding my crotch, two holding my breasts, and
then a hand holding my head.
Stripper was released in 1986 with a big release
party at the Palladium in New York,
during its heyday. Andy Warhol was still alive
and his crew was hanging around. Mikhail
Baryshnikov was there, Robert DeNiro, Matt
Dillon. As a result of the movie, four
of us appeared on Donahue the following
morning and that set a precedent. I'm sure
we were the first strippers on the national talk
show circuit, long before Ricki
Lake or Geraldo.
MONK: How did the film effect your
career?
GIO: It didn't really effect it that much because it
wasn't a porn film. At that point
in the industry the girls who were making the
most money were porn stars. Stripper
was sort of a high grade crossover, so not a lot
of people paid attention. Plus
it was a documentary film and didn't get a lot of
theatrical play. It wasn't until years
later you had Striptease
with Demi Moore and
Showgirls
with Elizabeth Berkley.
MONK: What's your opinion of those two
commercial releases?
GIO: They're really portraits of the business at
that particular time. When
Showgirls
came out I wasn't really familiar with the lap
dancing aspect of the business. I
had barely started doing table dancing. Girls who
were working as house girls at
Rick's in Houston and the Michael Peters' clubs in
Florida were making a ton more
money than I was working on the road. The
press from Stripper
really did me no good whatsoever in terms of
upping my prices as a feature strip
artist. And also at the same time giant tit girls
came out. The giant boobs. You
know, 101 inches, triple E, quadruple, quintuple E.
That killed a lot of the creativity,
although some of the creativity did continue.
Even those girls had to compete with each
other because clubs in the States had to pay
five thousand each for them to show
up. I was an A list feature strip artist without
having my breasts enlarged. I didn't
have my breasts enlarged until '89, after I moved
here.
MONK: What was it about New Orleans that
caused you to move?
GIO: The atmosphere. The mood.
MONK: And how would you describe the mood?
GIO: Decay. There's a great deal of decay.
There's also a great deal of dichotomies
that exist side by side. Go into the neighborhoods
and you will find pockets of blacks
and whites existing side by side. You can have
the muckety-muck big St. Charles Avenue
mansions not very far from the St. Thomas
housing project. What really fascinates
me on a daily basis is the architecture. The
architecture in New Orleans is extraordinary,
and it goes on for miles. You cannot walk
through all the architecture that exists. You ride
down the same streets day after day and see
things that have been totally
renovated and reconditioned next to things that
are falling down. But the decay exists
and there is somewhat of a romantic aspect to
that. The decay happens so quickly
that people can't keep up with it, just by virtue of
the Formosa termites. They're
a lot more aggressive than the regular
subterranean variety. You could take your
finger and put it through the walls in some of the
old buildings. Despite the decay
it's a wonderful place. It's sort of a Banana
Republic feeling. You can go at your own pace.
You don't have to be so frenetic or frantic that
you're driving yourself crazy.
MONK: You moved here, immediately took to
the stage and apparently became an overnight
sensation. What were you doing that caused
you to be named the "Queen of
Burlesque?"
GIO: Well, I'm widely credited with reviving
burlesque on Bourbon Street and making
it possible for upscale gentlemen's clubs to open.
Up until that time Big Daddy's
was pretty much it and they were blue collar.
Everything else was below Big Daddy's,
very pedestrian. New Orleans wasn't the "Big
Easy." It was the "Big Sleazy." The local
paper ran my photo with the headline,
"Burlesque returns to Bourbon Street."
MONK: How exactly do you define
burlesque?
GIO: Old style burlesque often involved the bimbo
woman and the baggy pants comedian.
That's old-fashioned vaudeville style burlesque.
She would take her clothes off in
various skit situations. He'd be the patient and
she'd be the nurse, that sort of
thing. It evolved into the Gypsy Rose Lee style of
burlesque in which she was the comedienne
and she would often get undressed behind a
screen. She always had large bows or things
covering her nipples. You really never saw a
whole lot of flesh. You saw a bit of
derrière, shoulders, legs, that kind of thing.
It was risqué but in a very subtle
manner. The whole idea was to seductively
remove the clothing. In modern erotic or
exotic dancing there really isn't a whole lot to the
finesse and seduction in the
removal of the garments. I've developed a
videotape called How To Strip for Your
Man,
where women can learn how to gracefully
remove articles of clothing. So I incorporate
that as a part of my act. But really modern
burlesque incorporates rock and roll,
where you seductively remove garments, and it
involves a theme of sorts. The costume
reflects the ideas being expressed in the music.
For instance, I dress up like an electric
guitar and I take it off to Jimi Hendrix playing the
Star Spangled Banner. And then
the last song is "While My Guitar Gently
Weeps." I also have a show where I put a
soft sculpture television on my head and I dance
to various themes from television,
like Perry Mason, which is really wonderful for
removing stockings. It is classic.
But I'll also put on a few samples like the Jetsons,
Get Smart and other classic
television themes.
MONK: Do you think the audience gets it?
GIO: I don't care. It doesn't matter to me if the
audience gets it. The audience gets
me. The audience is entertained. They are
entertained like they have never been
entertained before. They actually have to pay
attention because they can't believe
what's going on before their eyes. A real
feature show, a proper burlesque performance,
should be at least twenty to twenty-five minutes.
It should have a beginning, a middle
and an end. These days, the beginning is the girl
comes out on stage with a dress
on. The girl then goes backstage to take the
dress off. Then the girl comes out and dances
another song with the dress off showing her
breasts. I will not take clothing off
behind a curtain. It's removed on stage or it's not
removed at all. I have a certain
interaction with the audience, where I play with
them. I make them feel like they are
really part of the show and it works very much
toward my success. People come into
the club looking for me, like, "Where's that crazy
girl that dances with the beer
on her head?"
MONK: So it really doesn't matter if they
understand the artistry behind it as long
as they're entertained?
GIO: Right. Who cares about intellect when your
dick's hard. You know, the largest
sex organ is the brain, but once the penis is hard,
there's not a whole lot of thinking
going on.
