The newest entry in Atlantic City nightlife is aimed right at the gay male audience with a sexy burlesque show each week at Revel Casino. “Le Male Burlesque” is hosted by the owner of Royal Jelly nightclub, Ivan Kane. On each Wednesday night after 10 p.m. he turns Royal Jelly into a nightclub blowout of gorgeous and talented hot male dancers strutting their stuff in a rhythmic, athletic revue. It’s a one-of-a-kind Atlantic City evening.
Royal Jelly’s go-go Catwalk Lounge gets the show started from 8 to10 p.m. and features $4 U-Call-It drinks. Doors to the nighclub open at 10 p.m. with a $10 cover. You can complete your night out with the “Big Package,” a unique VIP bottle service that consists of $125 bottles served by your own personal male go-go dancer.
Ivan and his wife, “Champaign” Suzy Kane, had met years ago in New York and brought the straight burlesque show scene up and down the East Coast. Ivan did the choreography and “Champaign” Suzy was the star. “Years later after I was in the nightclub business she was my muse,” he says, “to kind of reinvent burlesque and put it back on the map.”
Shortly after they were married, Suzy got him thinking in Los Angeles that nightlife had become very predictable. “It’s four walls, lights and sound.” Says Kane, “And we wanted to bring performance back into clubs. We wanted shows, music and dancing, something really special, and we opened our first burlesque nightclub.”
Soon they added a club in Las Vegas and brought Latin, jazz, rock and all the other musical genres into the burlesque style of nightclub for which Ivan Kane was rapidly becoming famous. He worked with many of the stars and then branched into all-male burlesque while on the West Coast. “To me it’s the hottest of the hot,” he says. “We did it in L.A., we did it in Vegas at Mandalay Bay. And I wanted desperately to bring to the East Coast. The time just seems right.”
With the latest news on marriage equality galvanizing the LGBT community, it really seemed to Kane that New Jersey and the rest of the Eastern Seaboard was ready for “Le Male Burlesque” at Revel.
The Royal Jelly nightclub itself is incredibly well thought out. The design by RKIT architect Jason Volenec is superb. The DJ and stage is on one side with the circular bar and catwalk in the middle and the dance floor all around the center bar. The VIP areas are a few steps up on three sides of the large room with great views of the show from every angle.
Ivan Kane says,”The dancers are so committed to everything in the moment. They are so enthusiastic and so in demand that it was time for the best of the best.”
At the grand opening last week, the crowd reacted with the enthusiasm that Ivan Kane had expected. The surprise guest last week was Steven Andrade with his always spot-on impression of Cher, and the guest DJ was Jason E.
The dancers are found from throughout the world including searches in London and Argentina. “Le Male Burlesque is the best dancers from around the country doing erotic striptease in a highly produced show with DJs and dancing all night,” Kane says.” We go all over the country too, including, Miami, Hollywood and New York. We just get the best that we can find in the extensive audition circuit. We sometimes see 100 to150 dancers a day and if we find just one, we’ve had a really good day.”
Many of the dancers are regularly touring and on Broadway and perform as dancers for major recording artists, so it is difficult to find them available for the show. But he always gets the best of the best. They love to do his shows because in Le Male Burlesque they, the dancers, are the stars, says Kane. “I have such respect, love and admiration for them. The [show] is something that they need and want and deserve. The choreography and the level of talent and costuming, the music and the crowd is what they are reacting to.”
“The goal is to be outside the box of conventional nightclubs.” says Kane. “There are a lot of nightclub experiences out there. But I know that if you come to Ivan Kane’s Royal Jelly Burlesque Nightclub you are getting a nightlife experience that is completely unique from the nightlife throughout the country.
“It’s a difficult decision for people to spend hard-earned money nowadays,” he says. “So my goal is to give them a much bigger experience than the usual elements of a nightclub. With shows with beautiful boys doing incredible technical and athletic moves with exciting choreography on stage and right in front of them on the catwalk and on the bar creates a different and unique experience.”
The preshow starts at 8 p.m. outside the main club at Revel every Wednesday. The Royal Jelly doors open at 10 p.m. and the music and party goes till dawn.
For more information and to sign up for updates, go to www.lemaleburlesque.com
The newest entry in Atlantic City nightlife is aimed right at the gay male audience with a sexy burlesque show each week at Revel Casino. “Le Male Burlesque” is hosted by the owner of Royal Jelly nightclub, Ivan Kane. On each Wednesday night after 10 p.m. he turns Royal Jelly into a nightclub blowout of gorgeous and talented hot male dancers strutting their stuff in a rhythmic, athletic revue. It’s a one-of-a-kind Atlantic City evening.
