Las Vegas Weekly

November 12, 2009 · 1:52 PM

Exclusive Photo Gallery: Fantasy’s sexy new routines

By Robin Leach

A sneak peek at some of the new numbers to be performed in Fantasy at the Luxor.

Photo: Tom Donoghue/www.donoghuephotography.com

Former Baywatch star and redheaded beauty Angelica Bridges was forced to quit her headliner role in Fantasy at the Luxor on the very night of its re-choreographed 10th anniversary celebration last month. That meant all the planned new routines and songs were scrapped due to her sudden and unexpected resignation.

Click HERE for our first story of how she left Las Vegas to return to Hollywood to fight an international child custody battle when her ex-husband threatened to keep her two young daughters with him in Canada if she didn’t resign from Fantasy. Then click HERE for how Angelica solved the ugly confrontation and returned here to rejoin the sassy topless burlesque.

Now producer Anita Mann has added back all the new routines that were dropped in Angelica’s absence, and Vegas DeLuxe received the first sneak peek, with our contributing photographer Tom Donoghue capturing all the sexy highlights during a late-night rehearsal. In fact, Tom’s onstage antics for us at an earlier exclusive session gave Anita the idea for the girls’ new “Photo Shoot” choreography!

Seven dance routines have been added to the production, along with additional songs and a super-sensual cabaret number for Angelica. She even goes behind the see-through screen in “Photo Shoot” to re-create her Playboy cover and pictorial.

Late night after a rehearsal, Angelica told me: “I’m one week back in the show. My problems are over. I’ve settled into my new Vegas home. The kids are with me. It all feels great and really comfortable. I should be here. It feels second nature to me. You know how some people you can move to a new place, and you wouldn’t get adjusted for like a year, six months to a year? Well, I feel like I have been living here my whole life. It’s really strange for it to feel so natural living here and making this my home.

“For the few days I was in the show before the real opening night, which became my closing night simultaneously, it was almost like a dress rehearsal. Now I’m back, and we’ve actually become a whole new show. We’re getting really comfortable with the new numbers, and we’re now going full force. The audiences are loving all the new material, and I love being the emcee and going into the audience to interact ad lib with them. I feel we’ve got a long run ahead of us.

“The ‘Photo Shoot’ routine has already become my favorite number. I think it’s super sexy, and it’s just fun. It looks good, and it is different because the rest of the show, you are seeing dancing, singing and comedy. But this just leaves something to the imagination, and that’s why it is so sexy, enticing and intriguing. People are loving it because it is not a typical dance number at all.”

I asked Angelica what the reaction from her Fantasy dancers had been to all the turmoil.

“They were so supportive of me. They cried when I came back. Nobody believed it was all really happening. Anita kind of explained what was looming, but nobody knew the extent of it until the big blast. They were really supportive while I was gone. When I came back, everyone just said, “We are so happy you are back.’ We didn’t have a group hug, but every dancer came up to me individually to give me a welcome kiss for strength. They said that whatever happened in the past didn’t matter. Let’s just go from here. That was really cool to get that from each girl.”

Angelica said she wished she’d moved to Las Vegas earlier in her career, but she chose to go elsewhere after high school. “It’s been really good for me -- amazing -- but being here now I realize this is where I should have been all along,” she told me.

Named one of the sexiest women in the world and one of America’s Top 100 Models, Angela revealed that she’s put her group Strawberry Blonde on hiatus while with Fantasy. However, she’s using a hit single and video in the production, bringing the images to life through a cutaway, slashed screen onstage, with two backup singer-dancers stepping through it.

Angelica continued: “The show needs me. It can’t be something part time, something I do four days a week. It needs to be something six or seven days a week, and I need to be here. Just having that experience of being taken out for that week and a half really put what’s important to me in perspective, and that is being a part of the show and doing it full time and doing it long term. That means putting everything else on the shelf and really focusing.

“This is not something I can come in here and wing every night, rehearsals and getting comfortable with the numbers and really putting my heart and soul in the singing and dancing and feeling the dialogue when I am talking about the number to the audience and getting them involved in participation. It’s really about heart and soul, and it’s not something you do flying by the seat of your pants. I am kind of an all-or-nothing girl.

“I’d always dreamed of being a showgirl in Vegas like Ann-Margaret. This is what she would have done, so I’m doing the same thing. I love Ann-Margaret. So this is definitely a dream come true, and I really want to rock this and do my best.”

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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