“Fashionistas”

Saturday night, John Stagliano could do no wrong. His sex video empire, Evil Angel, won 18 Adult Video News awards, the porn industry's version of the Oscars.

Stagliano took home another Best Director, Video award for "Fashionistas Safado: Berlin," the third in a hard-core saga of fashion industry intrigue.

And the cast of Stagliano's "Fashionistas" live show at the Harmon Theater/Krave nightclub treated the Mandalay Bay arena audience to a politically themed dance number that eventually will turn up on Showtime.

But that was Saturday. The Thursday before, "synergy" was not the operative word at the regular performance of "Fashionistas." If ever there were a week Stagliano's show might get a needed bump, it could have been when the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo was in town.

But it was a typically slow night at the challenged club. The porn crowd only filtered in toward the end, early arrivals for an industry party following the show. The large cast soldiered on, as it does nearly every night, in front of a sparse audience whose reactions ranged from genuinely enthusiastic to utterly perplexed by this audacious mix of theatrical dance and fetish fashion.

And on the Tuesday after the awards, Stagliano said he's facing the reality of an early March end to his bold Las Vegas experiment, which he has subsidized for more than three years.

Worse, Stagliano says his labor of love distracted him when he should have been on the competitive edge of Internet opportunities for his main business, which now is suffering as a result. Add it all up, and "Fashionistas" will finally close unless he can sell it to a casino or figure out how to stage it on a periodic or weekend schedule instead of six nights per week.

That may not be all bad. "Fashionistas" was a worthy experiment: If a show could be freed of normal market forces which allow just a few weeks to prove its appeal, would it eventually succeed on word of mouth?

But eventually, the answer is clear. For a ticket vender bucking for commissions, "Fashionistas" is just too hard a sell. It's based on hard-core porn, and kinky niche porn at that; not your frat-house Jenna Jameson stuff. And while it's erotic, it's not topless and more like a ballet than the girlie shows it competes with.

"I thought I could make jazz dancing more entertaining if the choreography worked better with the music and moved the story forward, which made the dance have more impact," Stagliano says. "Maybe for some people it does, but certainly not enough people are attuned to that."

Granted, anyone who hangs in for the first hour probably counts themselves among the converted. If not, the sight of four guys in jackboots, silver codpieces and black hoods engaging in rough flirtation with our heroine (usually Marceea Moreno, but subbed by Holley Steeley at this performance) might send them running.

But this comes well after attempts to establish the framework of a story, both through choreography and text crawls on side screens. Jesse is the quiet force behind the fetish design company fronted by the dominating Helena (Kelly Adkins), and the combined duo are irresistible to Antonio (Alin Campan), the famous designer they seduce through a surprising fashion show fake out that opens the story.

Moments of genius -- such as the comic vignettes to illustrate four different fetishes -- emerge against sequences that are either overearnest (the Evanescence songs haven't aged well in three years) or belabored. And it all goes off the track at the end, when we're no longer sure what's literal and what's metaphoric in a story that's played by some well-grounded rules until then.

But even this far down the line, the show features costumes and choreography never seen on the Strip. Some of the departures, such as dance set to the dark alt-rock of Tool, still seem radical.

And no ticketed show tries harder to tap the nightclub market that's hurting overall business for conventional titles. "Fashionistas" is a perfect fit for its venue and a singular experience when the action suddenly leaves the stage, engulfing the audience with aerialists performing on fabric in and above the tables and sofas.

If not this show, could there ever be such a hybrid? Does the failure of this one prove people like to keep their clubbing and their show-going separate? If Stagliano can continue the experiment, perhaps a later start time than 9 p.m. would draw different people and create a livelier preshow atmosphere.

But I think the real answer lies in the same director but a different product. Something more easily comprehended -- perhaps even with one of those conventional girlie show titles -- that would allow Stagliano to sneak in his more innovative ideas on the sly.

It's one thing if we lose "Fashionistas" in March. The marketplace has spoken. But it would be another thing to lose Stagliano. The man may have bought his way to the Strip, but he deserves to stay on his own merits.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0288.