Several times a year Kamala Derry, a nurse in real life, takes the stage as "Lola Pistola," madam of VivaVoom Brr-lesque, Anchorage's only burlesque troupe.

On this particular September day, in an unassuming Anchorage house, Derry and lead dancer "La La La'mour" worked several performers through the number that would open the troupe's first show of the season.

Dancers dressed in sweaters, jeans and sweat pants posed on chairs holding invisible lipsticks and adjusting imaginary girdles, preening for an audience of one.

"It's supposed to be, like, a little glimpse into the dressing room while we're getting ready" La La explained.

"Like, not what really happens," Derry broke in. What really happens backstage borders on chaos.

"Total fantasy world," La La agreed.

The dancers broke out in laughter.

NEW YEAR'S WHIM

VivaVoom was born at a New Year's Eve party when someone asked: If you could do anything you wanted and money were no object, what would you do? One of Derry's friends said she'd do burlesque.

Instantly, Derry and her husband, Frank Stiner, had the same thought: "Well, why couldn't we?' " she recalled.

VivaVoom was an instant hit. The first public show, at Bernie's Starlight Lounge in May 2004, sold out. Over the years, it's grown to include more people, bells and whistles.

The troupe's first Halloween show, four years ago, saw the debut of the Band-o-Leers. Then came the vaudeville-style humor of the Dirty Little Comics, the brainchild of Derry's college classmate Rodney Lamb. The troupe added a circus performer, "Lucy B. Slack," who combines juggling, slack-line walking and other stunts with striptease.

Eventually the show moved from Bernie's to the Snow Goose Theatre. Derry worried they wouldn't sell enough tickets to pay for the larger space, but the Snow Goose shows sold out and have continued to do so every season.

MORE CLOTHES THAN CHER

What does it take to outfit a burlesque troupe?

"A lot of time and a lot of money," Derry said.

In the early days, Derry would go on buying trips to local thrift stores. Over time, they've accumulated more outfits. Some cost as much as $300, and each performer goes through three to five costume changes per show.

"You would think, for people who take off their clothes, that we wouldn't have very many clothes, but we have more clothes than any other performer, ever," Derry said. "We probably have more clothes than Cher or Madonna."

A key part of the burlesque uniform is a set of pasties, small patches used by exotic dancers to cover the tips of their breasts. They can be ordered or bought locally at The Look. But for performance use, Derry said, "it's best just to make your own if you want them to spin and spin correctly."

VivaVoom dancers used to use special pastie glue. They soon learned that its stickiness was compromised by sweat. VivaVoom's original lead dancer, "Reva Lucion," would "pop a pastie" at every show.

These days, the dancers attach their pasties with carpet tape.

PROFESSIONAL TOUCH

From the time the troupe started performing, women -- often tipsy -- would come up and announce that they wanted to dance too. One night, though, Derry was told there was a burlesque dancer from Seattle in the audience who wanted to talk to her. The woman was La La La'mour.

Adding La La to the lineup changed everything, Derry said. "She was a professional. She knew exactly how to command an audience."

The daughter of a showgirl, La La is a trained dancer who studied with Miss Indigo Blue, a well-known Seattle entertainer. She graduated from Seattle's Academy of Burlesque with "twirling honors."

La La "was really the first person that we were able to get who was really experienced," Derry said. "She kind of brought us out of that amateur stage."

VivaVoom has gone through a number of changes. Personal conflicts -- new babies, new jobs -- led several members to move on.

Such changes alter the group's dynamic. But departures and arrivals open the group up to trying new things, she said.

WORKING THE CROWD

The Snow Goose Theatre was hopping the night of VivaVoom's season premiere in September. A young woman in a shiny polyester blouse, who called herself "Shayna Maideleh," moved from table to table selling "boobie prize" tickets for a raffle later in the show. Someone asked how much she was charging.

"About a dollar," she said. "The math is complicated."

Shortly after 9 p.m., an Ella Fitzgerald song came over the sound system, and the curtains opened on four dancers wearing corsets, fishnet stockings and high heels, elaborately posed facing away from the audience. They moved slowly through their routine, twirling hand mirrors and adjusting one another's stockings.

It was the last mellow moment. La La La'mour took the stage for her fan dance, pulled a middle-aged woman onstage, handed her a fan and got her to shimmy along while La La wriggled out of her brassiere, letting rhinestone pasties peek out from between red feathers. The audience howled and threw crumpled dollar bills at the stage.

The Dirty Little Comics trotted out a politically themed routine, and dancer "Strawberry Stems" frolicked onstage in a bee costume, dusting herself in glitter while Lola Pistola and the Band-o-Leers performed a cover of "Sugartown."

La La La'mour encouraged members of the audience to spray her with juice boxes. "Lucy B. Slack" wriggled out of her dress while perched on a strip of webbing strung across a hammock stand, then juggled lit torches and rubber chickens before disrobing to reveal a pair of rubber chicken-adorned pasties.

INSPIRING CONFIDENCE

Derry knows some people don't see the difference between a VivaVoom show and what goes on in a strip club. But there is a difference, she insisted.

"It's a lot more about glamour, about being demure and, at the same time, being really sexy. The fantasy that we do, we want to leave a little to the imagination. Maybe in strip clubs, there's just nothing left to the imagination."

Nothing against strip clubs. "I just think what we do is more theater," she said. "Because we're not there to make money, we can afford to make fun of ourselves a little more."

"The striptease is more of a tease than a strip," said "Anna R. Kiss," a new arrival to the troupe.

And there's a positive benefit.

"The women that attend our shows are very inspired by us because we're all real women," Derry said. "We have saggy boobs, we have cellulite."

"Stretch marks," Anna R. Kiss chimed in.

"We are not your typical magazine girls," Derry said. "We are live, real women that have minds and feelings and thoughts, and the women in our audiences, they see me get up there, they're like: Oh my God, she's a really big girl. If she can get up there and do that, then maybe I can do that in front of my husband or my boyfriend or my girlfriend or whatever."

Derry remembered being stopped by a fan.

"She says, 'You are such an inspiration to me,' " Derry recalled. "She was kind of a heavy-set girl, but she was dressed really cute, and she was like, 'You make my life easier.' "

Derry said it was an emotional moment. It made her realize the troupe wasn't just entertaining.

"Because of me, maybe someone has a little more confidence, or they feel a little bit more accepting of themselves."

Maia Nolan lives and writes in Anchorage.

HELL ON HEELS, VivaVoom Brr-Lesque's next show, will be Friday and Saturday at the Snow Goose Theatre, 717 W. Third Ave. Cocktail hour begins at 8 p.m.; show starts at 9 p.m. Tickets are $20 in advance at The Look, 570 E. Benson Blvd., or $25 at the door. VivaVoom dancers are also available for private events. E-mail them at vivavoom burlesque@yahoo.com or find them online at

www.myspace.com/vivavoom

Stage names

In burlesque tradition, performers' real names are not revealed to preserve the fantasy aspect of the performance and to ensure separation between the dancers' stage personae and their private/professional personae. For those reasons, only Kamala Derry's name is used in this article. Burlesque: a stripped-down history

Derived from the Italian word for "joke," burlesques -- satires of serious plays -- were popular in America even before the Revolution. After the Civil War, lines of dancing women in tights spiced up the parodies, and burlesque became increasingly suggestive and scandalous.

In World War I, the striptease emerged. Around the same time, the bosses of the top vaudeville circuits attempted to make their acts more family-friendly. Performers who didn't toe the line wound up drifting toward B-grade burlesque shows, which became ever more adult-oriented.

Hard-core burlesque boomed through the Prohibition era when it was associated with gangsters and police raids before finally fading in the 1950s. Its best-known star, Gypsy Rose Lee, was one of the few striptease performers to succeed on the legitimate stage. But, says the Oxford Companion to American Theatre, "burlesque provided a remarkable training ground for great comedians" including Fanny Brice, the original "Funny Girl."