Dancin' Dan here to play a bit in the lusty month of May, with our favorite pseudo-lesbian "dancers".
Yes, there are no two wilder, lustier girls in recent memory than Cristal Connors and Nomi Malone.
I often try to figure out why I like Showgirls so much, especially since I'm not one of those people who think it's a misunderstood masterpiece (I think it's too at odds with itself for that). I think it's because in its heart of hearts, Showgirls is a (not-so) secret musical. Except instead of songs, it only has dance numbers. So, really, the best kind of musical.
In the old days of Astaire & Rogers, it was said that the dancing was a stand-in for sex. It would be easy to say that the dancing in Showgirls is meant to stand in for sex, but that's not entirely true. I mean, it IS true, but each number is standing in for a different aspect of sex, a different kind of lust...
The first time we see "Goddess", the show at the center of the film's world, Nomi is deeply in lust with the glitz and glamour of Vegas - as many are when they first see the lights of the strip. Then later, when she's dancing for Cristal and Zack at the Cheetah, she's not so much in lust as performing lust - making her audience, and on some level, herself, believe that she wants them.
It's here that we run into some trouble, of course, because Elizabeth Berkley - God love her - commits a tad too much to Nomi's dancing. Or "dancing". For all that she keeps insisting she's a dancer, not a stripper, Nomi is kind of hilariously not very good at either. Watch her on the floor of the Crave Club (where she meets the even worse dancer/choreographer James, who somehow danced with the Alvin Ailey company), and you could be forgiven for thinking she was having some sort of epileptic fit as opposed to actually dancing. And when she's stripping at the Cheetah, she adds all sorts of high kicks that have no business being on that stage, and commits to the least sexy ways possible to actually, you know, STRIP.
But then we get to Nomi's big audition, and we can see that she actually is a pretty passable dancer when given the chance, although gay Marty is right when he tells the director that she's "all pelvic thrust". But then, when you have a gay ginger screaming in your face to "THRUST IT!" after a long day of dancing, maybe you'd be all pelvic thrust, too.
But this is when we get to the heart of Showgirls. The "Goddess" numbers are a reversal of all that's come before: Instead of Nomi doing the seducing, here she's the one getting seduced - by the intoxicating life of a professional showgirl dancer, by the niceties of performing for a "reputable" business, and most (in)famously by the show's lead, Miss Cristal Connors herself.
The only time when the dancing in Showgirls is explicitly about sex, and ONLY sex, is when Cristal and Nomi dance together. Part of this is because, ironically, Cristal might just be the only person who wants Nomi as more than just a sex object. Their relationship is complicated from the start, as they use each other in ways that aren't always apparent (possibly even to themselves), but it's always clear that Cristal's desire for Nomi runs deeper than she lets on. How deep exactly, we don't know, but despite treating Nomi like a plaything at times, you can always see the lust in her eyes. She wants her. And when they dance together, it becomes even more clear. And despite their heated verbal confrontations, Cristal and Nomi are never battling each other when they're dancing together. Instead, they're seducing each other, releasing their pent-up sexual energy from a show that can't be entirely explicit (but might as well be) on each other in the language they both speak best: dance. They're the Astaire & Rogers of the twentieth century. And THAT'S truly wild.