I have been extremely lucky to work with some of the best musicians in burlesque. I've been performing, or at least dancing, to live music all my life, including one glorious night with Spinal Tap, but most of the time I was just dancing along to the music.

In burlesque with live music, there's real collaboration. The dancers rehearse their numbers with the bands, and the musicians watch the dancers to see if they need to give them a drum hit when a glove drops to the floor, if the music needs to be sped up or slowed down, or if they need to repeat a form until the dancer is ready to finish her number.

In New York, we have live music at the Slipper Room every Wednesday night with amazing musicians, including Brian Fisherman, with whom I've been performing for over 10 years. Le Scandal has featured The New York City Blues Devils and the Le Scandal Orchestra; Big Apple Burlesque features a live band every week.

Brian Newman produces a burlesque show with his trio at Duane Park, and there's more, including pianist and arranger Albert Garzon, who seeks out old burlesque music and creates shows based on burlesque legends like Lydia Thompson, Georgia Sothern, and Gypsy Rose Lee.

We have a wealth of live music in our burlesque. Most cities that have a burlesque scene have a swing band or two that will collaborate with dancers in some burlesque shows, and more and more shows are working with their own bands.

In this city, we have long had a wealth of extremely talented and devoted musicians that are specifically interested in collaborating with burlesque shows and doing music intended specifically for burlesque dancers.

At the moment, we're fortunate to have our own native son, Brooklyn-born Ronnie Magri, in his hometown. While living in New Orleans, he helped to create a scene that fostered dancers who would become The Atomic Bombshells of Seattle, who recently performed in Shanghai.

I know Ronnie from another life, when he was in a rock band called The Throbs. I also showed my photographs in a group show about burlesque with his amazing and beautiful wife, painter Charlene Lanzel.

More recently, I've had the privilege of using his music on my instructional DVDs produced by World Dance New York, and of discussing a long-term project I have in mind to promote appreciation of the music historically used in burlesque striptease and the musicians who choose to collaborate with burlesque dancers today.

Several months ago I interviewed him for this blog, and we decided to save the interview for the release of the DVD. So here it is, at long last, an interview with one of the legends of the burlesque revival!

At Tease-O-Rama 2002, I had a front row seat for Dita Von Teese's performance with her giant moon prop, and you may well resent me for that.

It was a gorgeous performance, with Dita obviously having a good time, and at the end of the number, a cannon shot a shower of silver mylar stars over us, hundreds of which I carried in my camera bag for at least a year after the show.

In her book Burlesque and the Art of the Teese, Dita describes Liberace as the ultimate showman, whose art "is creating spectacle and inspiring dreams." She surely succeeded in her goal that night, and I'm sure on hundreds of others. Fifty years from now, people will still be talking about the stupefying glamour of Dita Von Teese.

Whenever someone tells me they're a Dita fan, or they're fascinated by burlesque costumes, but they've never joined Dita's website for even a month, I am completely baffled. I doubt that they are truly fans.

Even if they join for only a month, they'll get to see amazing video, spectacular photos, read her archive of journal entries, and can ask Dita herself for tips on how she does what she does.

One of the things I find most fascinating about her is her entrepreneurialism and her ability to make perfect decisions. In many interviews, she talks about how carefully she selects her jobs, her costumes, even her lighting (she has even begun bringing her own lighting gels with her).

And she has run the business of being Dita in a way that makes me think of the career of Gypsy Rose Lee, while her style onstage refers perhaps more directly to Lili St. Cyr.

But really, knowing there's an interview with Dita coming up, do you want to hear any more from me? No? Smart cookie! Let's get to it.

When you began modeling and performing, there was little if any burlesque community and not much notice of burlesque in the media. Did you ever expect your career to take off like this? Was there ever a point at which you thought your career might be based in anything else?

I never, ever expected any of this to happen. And it was a very slow climb, a snowball effect of sorts. I feel like one thing led to another since I was in high school.

Well, maybe even before, if you get into my childhood and being a middle child that went unnoticed, blah, blah blah…but that's one I should tell while lying on a sofa in therapy maybe!

Anyway, let's not go back that far for now! My first job was as a lingerie salesgirl at age 15 at a chic little boutique in Orange County, California. I had been obsessed with lingerie my whole life.

To me, it was this secret among women, like the most feminine thing that existed, a rite of passage. I was always sneaking into my mother's lingerie drawer and secretly wearing her bras from a young age.

And so when I was about 15, I was desperate to work in this little pink and black shop that was near the beauty salon where my mother worked, so I just kept on going in there and offering to do any kind of work they had for me in that little shop.

When they finally gave in and let me work there as stockgirl, I immersed myself in the job, and I got really into learning about lingerie, and even the history of it, and that was one thing that sparked my interest in vintage style lingerie.

Of course, I became a sales girl, eventually a buyer, and a few years later, I managed the lingerie department of a big department store.

Make sure to read Part One if you missed it.

Did you have close friends in burlesque, and do you still have them?
For some reason, I really got along great with all the girls, and I don't remember having any friction. If you featured, you traveled a lot and had your own dressing room, and the locals and chorus girls hung together more. I usually didn't get to know them well, but I did make friends. I still have friends that I write to from way back. I would say it was a very wonderful comaraderie among the women.

There may have been more conflict in the big eastern theaters. When I lost my scrapbook in Miami Beach, I put an ad out to help me find it, and I got fourteen letters from young people saying they wanted to hear about mortal combat backstage! It wasn't like that. I would say every once in a while there would be two redheads or two very famous dancers, and we'd expect conflict because of what they had in common.

Sometimes at 9 am we'd be downstairs for rehearsal with the piano player, and girls would argue over who used harlem nocturne; I say they fought about music the most. I used songs like "Hooray for Hollywood" and "You Oughta be in Pictures," so I didn't have those conflicts. My songs were tailored to my acts. Girls would be fighting over songs — serious business — but not with me. I didn't understand some of that fuss. Once you hit that stage, they're thinking of you, not the last person who used that song.

Once [Margaret Sullivan] said to me, "Did you check out the basket on that new sax player?" … There's always one or two [performers] that are totally raunchy, and I love that.

Tell me a little bit about the history of Exotic World/Burlesque Hall of Fame.
I got involved through Jennie Lee. I had known her off and on through working with her. After our burlesque careers, she had a little bar called Sassy Lassie in San Pedro, and a lot of us girls would go down there in middle of June and have a reunion. She printed up little cards for us. It was mostly us older ones who lived in the LA area.

Her husband Charlie was a bartender and they'd work together. During the last part of her life, they moved to the Mojave on an old goat farm, and we'd do the reunions there. She died of breast cancer [in 1990]. Sometime afterward, Charlie called me up and said that the girls from the reunions were calling. I never got into Jennie's business, but I knew that before she died, she was still trying to do articles for magazines and keep track of everybody.

I was the only one of her old friends around who was able to quit my job and run out there. I was taking care of elderly people for a living, which was very profitable, but I quit my job to go out there. Being involved changed my life entirely. I always had the hankering to have a little place to hang my memories, and I knew that the industry I was in was worthy of attention.

When I saw what Jennie had started to do, collecting the memorabilia and costumes, I picked up that trail and it took off. By writing to a lot of fans, all of a sudden items started to come in the mail, like programs for shows, signs, autographs, and photos from people who had collected a lot of them. They'd say, "I've had this in a shoebox for years!"

Some things I paid for, like Gypsy Rose Lee's trunk and so on, but people were willing to work with it and they knew why I wanted it and what I was doing. A lot of people have huge collections but haven't opened them to the public. I guess I was the first one to make it available like that.

Things came, and then the girls came, and I'm so blessed with all the honor of this. Here I am, 81 years old, wending my way! I'm grateful and honored that I was able to come out with no income and do this thing. It really was the faith I had when I was doing it. I'm so happy to leave it in the hands of girls like yourself that are interested in this American tradition.

What is happening with the museum now?
A couple of years ago we had to leave the old farm, and we came to Las Vegas. The mayor is totally flamboyant and very supportive. He shows up with two showgirls everywhere instead of the secret service!

What I look forward to next is having a permanent location. Right now we have a temporary location at Atomic Todd's. We had a great opening this month with 150 people in the museum. We have items there like Sally Rand's original fans, Gypsy's trunk, and lots of pasties, posters and playbills. I loved having the pageant in Vegas. This year I loved Fremont Street with the World's Longest Boa, and oh, all the people there for the pageant spilling out of the elevators. Wonderful!

What else would you like to add to the museum experience?
I have a list of fun facts about burlesque as well as a list of music I like to give out. Tunes like "St. James Infirmary," "The Mooch," — that kind of raunchy music that really makes you move. When those saxophones wail, it's the music that drives us on. We'd hear that and work like crazy and not want to stop.

In San Francisco, I worked with Margaret Sullivan, who strutted with that gorgeous burlesque swagger. She'd say to the band, "Drop it to a solid four and drive me home!" and that sounded so great to me. I could hardly wait 'til I could get to a theater and say that; I thought it was so raunchy and cool. Once she said to me, "Did you check out the basket on that new sax player?" It took me a minute to catch what she meant. There's always one or two around that are totally raunchy, and I love that.

Anything you want to say to the newest performers?
People always thank me for what I'm doing, but I have to thank them for keeping this alive. I don't put down the girls that work in porn or on poles, but for girls that want to express a little more story or something cute or funny, this is their opportunity. I'm happy for all the groups that have cropped up all over the country. By teaching and sharing secrets, they are helping to keep it alive.

You can keep up with Dixie and what's going on with the Burlesque Museum by visiting their MySpace page: www.myspace.com/exoticworld

- Jo Weldon

Jo Weldon is Headmistress of the award-winning New York School of Burlesque and is a regular burlesque performer. Visit burlesquedaily.blogspot.com to read her daily blog.

Image credits: Java's Bachelor Pad (first) and Tanja Tiziana (second)