The New York Times takes a peek backstage at the Hustler Club in Manhattan with an interactive panoramic shot of the unglamorous dressing room that lies beyond the stage lights.
In any act of fantasy – from a feature film to a political campaign – there is a hidden place where the dirty work gets done, where the make-believe is made.
In Hollywood, this is the editing room; in Washington, the spin room. At Larry Flynt's Hustler Club, a strip joint on Manhattan's West Side, it is the dancers' private dressing room where the image of available sexuality and the naked facts collide.
Tucked behind a closed door upstairs from the dance floor, the dressing room is a shrine to female beauty – to the tireless attempts to tease the hair into a proper state of sultriness and adjust the bosoms upward at just the right incline. It is a small piece of the contemporary demimonde (strippers nibble take-out food in thongs and gold lamé). Near a plastic bowl of pretzels, a topless beauty steams the wrinkles from her ball gown with an iron. A tall brunette in nothing but a G-string wanders by. She is brushing her teeth.
"Where the Dancers Dress to Undress."
