Famed pornographer's dance show closing

Yesterday I met with John Stagliano to discuss the future of his Vegas erotic dance revue, "Fashionistas." He confirmed that after more than three years in Vegas, the show will be closing by either the end of February or the beginning of March. 

Stagliano is best known to the world as a pornographic director and owner of the adult distribution company Evil Angel. At the AVN awards last week, he took home an AVN award for best director as one of the 18 awards that Evil Angel won. The directing award was for the final part of the "Fashionistas" trilogy that originally inspired the Vegas revue.

Stagliano's idea of a Vegas show as a modernist dance interpretation of an epic (4 1/2 hour) adult film was such an unlikely venture that I went behind the scenes to document its creation. The amazing thing to me as I reported the story and everyone in the local entertainment community was just how great "Fashionistas," the Vegas dance show, turned out to be. From the costumes to the choreography to the dark metal soundtrack, Vegas had never seen anything like "Fashionistas." In a risk-averse town, this was a show made not to please an audience but by an auteur hoping that if he made something special, people would then arrive to view his work. He did make something special, but he was wrong on the other point.

There is a reason: Vegas entertainment remains conservative. Critics like myself, my colleague Mike Weatherford at the Review-Journal and blogger Robin Leach were all blown away when "Fashionistas" opened in 2004 and wrote glowingly about what Stagliano had accomplished. We all also realized the chance of the show finding an audience in Las Vegas was slim to none.

Yet, it is safe to say the staying power of "Fashionistas" surprised all of us. The show wound up lasting more than three years, thus beating out far more costly and high-profile ventures like "Avenue Q" and "Hairspray." On the other hand, this is because none of us knew just how many millions of dollars Stagliano was willing to lose from his porn fortune to keep "Fashionistas" going in Vegas. In fact, changes in the adult industry are a major motivating factor in Stagliano's decision to pull the plug on "Fashionistas" by spring.

According to Stagliano, he let his day job suffer from his attention to the Vegas show. Not his movies (as of last week "The Fashionistas" is now the most award-winning trilogy in adult-movie history), but his company, Evil Angel.

"The industry has changed in the past few years so much because of the Internet," Stagliano says. "It has changed the volume of porn, the way porn is being manufactured and, mostly, how it is being delivered to people. And I have been too slow to adapt Evil Angel to dropping DVD sales. I hate closing the Vegas show, but I am glad we went as long as we went. If I had closed the show earlier, I would have always had questions about what would have happened if I gave it more time to find an audience. I am glad that I have had all of this time to do the show. Of course, I had no idea how much I would wind up spending to keep this going."

And Stagliano hopes he is not done in Vegas yet. He would still love to create a new show in a casino venue, having proved his talents. "I now have a team in Vegas and I hope to do more," he says.

One interesting synergy that emerged over the last couple of years was how well segments of "Fashionistas" as spectacle worked in a nightclub environment. Stagliano demonstrated this a few times by breaking off single routines from the show to present to nightclub patrons at Krave. He even brought his "Fashionistas" dance cast to the AVN awards to do a new routine (a pointed warning about the dangers of being caught by the government viewing Internet porn, as opposed to the anonymity of buying a DVD).

Stagliano gets how the theatrical vignettes of erotic dance, costume and music he does so well can fit with the nightclub scene. As Vegas nightclubs look for entertainment besides hard-drinking celebrities and Jeff Beacher's little people, they could do worse than have Stagliano's dancers heat up a crowd with wild choreography and costumes. In that environment, Stagliano's art would be less pushing the envelope and more riding the wave. After all, adult stars are already now regular hosts at Vegas nightclubs. Imagine how many would show up just to be there when the owner of Evil Angel is in the house. Then there is the  more important fact that a wild 15-minute routine like Stagliano's dance numbers can really pump up a club audience. I hope this happens, and that Vegas has not seen the last of Stagliano after "Fashionistas" closes (except for his annual January pilgrimage to collect AVN awards).

Mike Weatherford offered a view similar to mine in the Review-Journal this morning, in which he concludes: "But ... to lose Stagliano. The man may have bought his way to the Strip, but he deserves to stay on his own merits." Well said.