Prop: Lighted hoops
Appearing in: “FemmeTV,” Lavender Cabaret
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For more than a year, Michelle “Toots” L’amour did a dance using a small hoop in a Lavender Cabaret burlesque show she co-founded. But for a new production called “FemmeTV,” she told Franky Vivid, the company’s other co-founder, that she wanted lights on the hoop. “At first I wasn’t sure because I thought it would look like a UFO,” says Vivid. But when L’amour said the number would be done in the dark, Vivid became a believer.
Not everyone agreed. “Our lighting director at first hated the idea because he had been lighting the piece so that the lights reflected off the silver sequins of Michelle’s costume,” explains Vivid. “A lighted hoop meant he wouldn’t have anything to do.”
But soon everyone was on the same wavelength and Vivid started to tackle the challenge of lighting the hoop. He even considered lights used on bumpers and dashboards of customized cars (unfeasible because they had to be powered by a car battery).
Then he found some short segments of the same flexible tubes of continuous light, about 3 feet long and powered by a pair of AA batteries. Eureka! There was drawback, especially when L’amour added two other dancers to her number: Each light segment cost $40; each hoop needed three. But the company’s bean counters gave the go-ahead.
Clear electrical tape holds the ropes of light around the inside of the hoops. Three battery packs per hoop are taped to the outside.
Since “FemmeTV” parodies cable TV shows, the dancers appear during a “telecast” of a show called “Our Foxy Cosmos” about the discovery of rings around the planet Venus. “The hoops don’t give off a lot of light but just enough to create the illusion that the dancers are nude,” says Vivid.
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“FemmeTV,” open run, Lakeshore Theater, 3175 N. Broadway, $20 (18+); 773-472-3492.