A woman at one side of the room has a question: “You know those corsets with the built-in garter belts? The ones that are real stiff along the sides? What’s the best way to get those off?”
The instructor bends over and peeks through her legs into the mirror behind her to survey her own scantily clad behind. “Looks like I need a bleach,” she says.
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The class was called “How to Strip for Your Man.” The teacher was GiO, short for LaGioconda. (Her real name, according to press clips, is Lisa Suarez.) An energetic and witty gamine who claims to be 29, GiO will teach two of these three-hour classes at the Discovery Center this weekend. She breaks down the art of the striptease into teachable parts–the walk, the look, the poses, and undoing the various pieces of the female ensemble. At the end of the highly structured workshop, GiO performs a short, well-choreographed, and well-scored strip that incorporates all the little parts. Her students stare in awe.
She paid her dues then in a lot of sleazy clubs, though she eventually studied choreography with Twyla Tharp. Her design background has enabled her to produce intricately staged strip shows with various themes–saloon girl, pregnant bride, space cadet–appealing to a wide range of sex fantasies.
“Stay away from fly fronts,” GiO warns. “They’re too masculine. But dangling lace scares men to death. Sit like your mother told you never to,” she suggests.
But pelvic thrusts are easy. “Put an imaginary basketball in your sacred triangle, aim, and fire.”
