Fantasy, Gypsies and Chickens; Oh My!

Friday, Friday, Friday….would it be Friday if Gunner wasn’t providing the soundtrack to our evening?  Or if Paul wasn’t out front welcoming everyone?  Or we didn’t have nice comfy chairs to settle in to and wait, with anticipation while that big blue curtain just sits there…mocking us?  Nope!  So…thank heavens all that happened and it finally swooshed open, right after the Black Eyed Peas announced that the weekend had officially begun 🙂  Our beautiful pictures were provided by Fuki Ameratsu.

Our opening act for the evening was Goddess Shayna with Oodlemi.  They danced to Florence and the Machine’s “Cosmic Love”.  The set was a very pretty space inspired floaty dream. Shay and Oodles started out dancing on separate clouds, and eventually ended up dancing together on one cloud.  Their costumes were stunning…Fallen Gods has such amazing things, they wore long cloaks that glowed, especially at the shoulders and pretty particles surrounded them.  It was a lovely opener and set the mood for a great show.

Jo was up next with me, Seb and Melvis.  She chose “La Cumparsita” by Omar Khorshid. We were back down on earth in a gorgeous Gypsy camp with a couple of well behaved horses to accent us.  Jo and I started out dancing with our tambourines and then the guys made it up and came and danced with us.  We even did a little couples dancing at the end.  It was so pretty…I could have moved into the set on a permanent basis and been very happy for a long time!

Eva Harley joined us next with Wy Nott.  She chose Debussy’s Reverie.  This dance was so beautiful.  Eva began by dancing by herself.  Wy Nott wandered in and watched from the trees and then she got up and began dancing with Eva.  The ladies were clad in beautiful, flowing white dresses which popped on the evening woods where they danced.  It was like a soothing balm after a long work week.  Very pretty!

Baby was up with Jo, Fuki, Kysh, Voodo Shay and Gunner.  Baby was our foray into silly this week with her choice of Alice Francis’ Shoot him down.  Our lovely ladies were clad in sexy yellow and red with little baby chicks poking out of their corset tops.  Gunner was a big old Rooster resting in his very fance rooster house…replete with chicken leg beams holding it up.  I should have suspected a bad end when I noticed the ladies were wearing guns. Pair that with the lyrics and….our rooster woke up, ambled down and without further ado, our lovely ladies drew their weapons and shot him dead!  FUN!

JenzZa and her Misfits joined us once again as guests and she danced to a custom mix of Cinquo de Julio. She was joined by Dulcikate, Phoebe, Lollin, Cuddlebug and Seb.  When I say joined by Seb…well, it appears our intrepid Seb may have gotten into the tequila and fallen just a little bit asleep….Sexy JenzZa was dancing a wonderful flamenco dance right in front of him and he just kept right on snoring.  The street scene faded away and all of our ladies appeared, dancing and salsaing (pretty sure that I just made that up) on an enormous sombrero….so Seb at least took advantage of his subconscious and got a good dream out of it!  We joked that this set was brought to our guests by Jose Quervo and JenzZa. Hot and spicy and  saucy JenzZa 🙂

Melvis took to the stage next.  I adore Melvis’ mind. It has such fun ideas that spawn really fun sets.  He was joined by Mona, Jo, Ame, Zach and Seb.  The song was Kamikaze and the set was a theme park ride through the jungle.  Our ladies were dropped off on a bridge while the men jumped up on top of the carts they were supposed to be riding in and danced away.  I suspect that the theme park is going to have something to say about this misuse of transportation!  The men jumped down off the carts and the ladies ran to catch up and they all finished up down on the beach  I loved the outfits for this, they had a nice ethnic flair…and the animations were really great.

Lulu joined us for a solo to Sia’s “Breathe”.  This set was beyond amazing.  It was a fantasy landscape with mushrooms and twinkle lights and little ferrets…the whole set looked like it fell out of the Hobbit or some other epic fantasy novel.  Eva was a beautiful fairy who danced out in front.  It was completely mesmerizing.  The song is so haunting and the set was a beautiful counterpoint.  It was masterfully done.  Gorgeous Lulu!

Gunner and his bevy of babes; Dara, Voodoo, Minty, Maia and Nea hit the planks to Nickleback’s “Something In Your Mouth”.  Now…I know what you’re thinking….and yes…they did have something, but they were at the carnival and it appears that they may have gotten into something at the ice cream cart.  The ladies were extremely sexy in their teensy cutoffs and shirts and Gunner…well, he just looked like he was thoroughly enjoying the fact that all these lovely ladies were dancing for his enjoyment.

Ame and Zach were our closing act…and er…well….um….ok…let me preface this review by stating that Zach and I share a love of oreos….and this theory will come into play towards the end of this review.  We started out in a mad scientist lair.  A nice little space that Dr. Frahnkenshtein would have adored.  It appears that a little tinkering occurred and a carnival pops up with Ame as our gorgeously sexy ringmistress and Zach was some malformed little goblin like clown who was walking on a tightrope.  It’s at this point that it all goes bad for Zach…my position was that he perhaps had eaten all the oreos in the house and this set was retribution….well, however it came to pass, Ame kicks Zach’s butt in a little kerfuffle and she then stomps his bum right into the concreted.  I was laughing like crazy.  We were all laughing…I’m not entirely sure what that says about us, but dang it was fun!

Ame also provided our crowd dances for the evening and she set them to 3 Doors Down “Every Time You Go Away”, Alice Cooper’s “I’ll Bite Your Face Off” and Whitesnake’s “Love Will Set You Free”.  What a fun way to end the evening…a great way to end a Friday and a heck of a way to kick off the weekend.  On behalf of all of the staff and dancers at the Empire Room, we hope you enjoyed the show and we can’t wait to see you all next week so we can all see what happens at our Caribbean Them Show.  Hope you enjoy your weekend!