"She's the hottest pepper I've ever put in my mouth," says Candy Smith, perched high atop a stool on the Gilley's stage. The hoots and hollers—from both men and women—are ear-shattering.
It's just Smith's way of introducing Sandy Delara, a tall, full-lipped brunette, naked except for panties and pasties, all of which are covered in exquisite body paint that transforms her from nude into a hot-blooded flamenco dancer. As she goes through her moves, the yells and applause barely ebb.
It was par for the course Sunday night, especially when that course was littered with nearly naked, body-painted dancers, a neo bo-ho drumming outfit and a thousand food and beverage people fueled with free liquor. The Body Art Ball had arrived.
Started by Smith, a former go-go dancer, and her twin sister Chris in Dallas, the cavalcade of airbrushed bodies and airbrush artists now cross the country, with Las Vegas being this year's second-to-last stop (the troupe packed up its compressors for Philadelphia, the last of its 10-city tour).
The motive behind the whole event is twofold: to share a pretty cool fusion of unrelated disciplines—body painting and dance—with the public and to give thanks to hard-working bartenders, servers, bar-backs and others. Naturally, there are sponsors, and for this go-around, the tour is underwritten by Red Bull and Tuaca, an Italian liqueur that promoters claim is a bartenders' favorite. Frankly, it's not too bad: smooth, sweet with hints of vanilla and orange. But this being Gilley's and with me wearing designer eyeglasses amid the Stetson-hatted staff, I go back to Coronas and hope not to annoy the James Dalton clone who I'm sure is somewhere about.
Weapons of Mass Percussion is the warm-up: six drummers who bang on everything from standard drum kits to metal drums to a broken bed-frame. Once the stage is clear, the show starts, with 15 dancers transformed by a handful of artists into a multicolored menagerie. Opening with Daa-Vlada, a blonde, her ample chest painted to look like a white T-shirt with "Army" emblazoned across, her lean, bare legs looking like skintight camis, she's the solution to any recruiting woes our military is facing.
She's followed, in no particular order, by a butterfly, cyborg, pimp, disco dancer and John Su, a martial arts expert delivering a stunning kata with two chain-whips. The crowd favorite, as decided by vote at the end of the night, is Emily Matkin, "the candy bandit," another in the long line of performers far hotter than you or I could ever hope to be, her body painted in swirls of green, red and blue, her face seductively masked, two candy-cane-striped six-shooters ablaze. Of course, her use of a bullwhip might help, too.
Jenny Durbin, dressed as one of the Andrew sisters (if the Andrew sisters had performed nearly naked and painted to look like a World War II general), dancing to a version of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," is given the third-place honors by a panel of local casino management and bartenders. Coming in second is Delara, and the first-place winner of the night is Gwendolynn Murphy, her body split down the center between Marilyn Monroe on one side and Marilyn Manson on the other.
In other words, just another night in Vegas.