Meeting Dixie Evans—How to Burlesque

<p>As in one of those sentences that starts with a new subject and is followed by composing two parts that are familiar (“Kiwi: strawberry meets gooseberry,” for example), we may be in search of some new character here. Not necessarily entirely composed of existing parts, though.</p> <p>Roosevelt calls. “President Roosevelt?!?” Carolyn jumps up. “Of course, President Roosevelt if you’re Sally Rand!” Dixie pipes up. The phone is blue. The same one that Dixie fell on a floor with in 1962 when Marilyn died. “I fell with a blue phone. When I woke up, people were applauding me.” This is a scene from the first meeting of Marilyn Monroe of burlesque and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev of dOCUMENTA (13).</p> <p>“I’ll show you more than Marilyn. A lot more!” Dixie assures.</p> <p>As a living legend deserves, Dixie lives in Las Vegas. Las Vegas is a living legend in its own right—it draws on a variety of cities. According to Fyodor Dostoyevsky (or that unreliable narrator in Notes from Underground), cities are invented and non-invented. Las Vegas performs both types, including itself as an uninhabited terrain of this habitation. Dostoyevsky in Las Vegas in the 1860s looks like Dixie Evans in Kassel in the 1950s: out of context, strange, like a small catwalk figure cut out by a thirteen-year-old girl…</p>