Lexee Smith dances alone in a bedroom, with all the grace and sensuality of Cyd Charisse in her iconic slinky Singin’ in the Rain performance. But unlike the theatrical artifice of the musical’s “Broadway Melody” sequence—a magnificent feat of soundstage magic—this moment, captured and posted in a several-slide carousel on Instagram, feels intimate. A woman, playing dress-up with a fringed scarf wrapped around her hips, a hat she might’ve found at a vintage store, and heels from the back of her closet, moving the way her body wants her to. This is the type of post that makes Smith an internet It Girl—aside from her considerable accomplishments as a dancer and choreographer; her friendship and close creative partnership with Addison Rae; and her appearances in music videos for Lady Gaga, FKA Twigs, and Billie Eilish, it’s this sense of raw, playful expression that captivates her online audience. Smith credits such solo exploration as a way of nurturing her personal relationship with movement, after her teenage rebellion against the often exploitative competitive dance world she’d come up in.

Joining Smith in conversation is her idol, the queen of burlesque, Dita Von Teese. Like Smith, Von Teese forged her own way by following obsessions and instincts cultivated in childhood. Though she never counted herself as good enough to pursue the dream of becoming a professional ballerina, she tapped into a lifelong obsession with the glamour of Old Hollywood and ballet to dream up the image and performances that made her a star. “If I had been a better dancer, I would have never taken this path, and I wouldn’t be where I am today, which is looking out my window here in Las Vegas with my residency,” Von Teese comments. “It was trying to find a way to perform in my own way, which started in strip clubs. I always tell people that what you think are the things that you’re not great at, or your downfall, can sometimes lead to an amazing life path you didn’t expect.” The creative potency and potential of imperfection and insecurities is a guiding refrain throughout Von Teese and Smith’s discussion as they trace their trajectories from small towns to Southern California, show business, and beyond.

Dress and shoes by Balenciaga. Tights stylist’s own.

Maraya Fisher: You both moved to Southern California at quite a formative time in your adolescence. Could you each discuss what that move represents in your lives?

Dita Von Teese: I grew up in a very small town in Michigan, like 2,000 people small, and I moved to Irvine with my family when I was about 12. It was a big change to move to somewhere like Orange County, which was so close to LA, and all the girls my age were way more grown-up than I was. With regard to dance, I always took ballet classes in my small town whenever there was a ballet teacher who was there, which was not always. Suddenly, [in Irvine] I tried to take a ballet class, and I was like, Oh, wow, I have been doing this wrong.

I still feel like Orange County was this amazing place, especially in the ’90s, when I became a young adult, and I’m really grateful I had that experience of childhood in a small town in Michigan.

Lexee Smith: I relate. I grew up in a town outside of Houston for most of my time in Texas. It was tiny too, like a farm-to-market road. I grew up riding around on my friend’s pastures and four-wheeling and being really wild. Being somewhere with so much emptiness and landscape allowed me to have so much room for play and curiosity without even being conscious of it. But then I moved to Toluca Lake in the North Hollywood-ish area when I was 12, too.

I grew up going to this small-town recreational dance studio, and I kind of had that same experience. With my teacher, we never did anything on the left side. I was so imbalanced; I could only pirouette and leap on the right. So when I started going to more intense studios and training, I was like a lost fish for a second. In LA, I got more into the street, jazz, and the commercial world, and it was a complete flip. I was in these rooms with all these adults, and I was just this little girl trying to keep up with everything. But yeah, the juxtaposition of nothingness and then just mania is so me.

Maraya: Speaking of those early moments with dance, were there ever any important objects, pieces of makeup or clothing, that had special significance to you as you began performing?

Lexee: What’s coming to mind is those really typical plastic diamond earrings that are like $3 at any beauty supply store. My entire studio was required to have those and a diamond choker. I remember putting it on when I was 4 or 5 years old and feeling so glamorous. We were also all required to buy these makeup kits. I don’t know if it was like Avon or something, but it had a blue eyeshadow and the brightest red lip, and I just loved it. But my mom wasn’t really good at doing my makeup, so at an early age, I became really obsessed with it, specifically eyeliner.

Dita: I was only a ballet girl. I shunned all other forms of dance for some reason. I was more obsessed with the ballet imagery than anything. I had this vintage 1950s Tchaikovsky record, and it had a ballerina on the cover. She had nude fishnet tights, pale pink pointe shoes, and the intense ballet makeup. I was obsessed with this record, the imagery of it. I remember I begged for a pair of pointe shoes. I couldn’t wear them, I was too young, but I used to sleep with them like a teddy bear.

Lexee: It’s crazy to be fascinated with [ballet aesthetics] at such a young age. When I was little, I was just dancing and not so much thinking about that. I kind of rebelled against the beauty of it. I was more tomboyish. As I got older, I unconsciously went so street, hip-hop—like rugged. I was 15, dancing to Lil Jon. But I also became fascinated with the way that ballerinas look, the poise and everything, because I never felt like I could be that. I always had a curve, and I always felt a little bit out of place. As I got older, I was like, this actually seems like the most beautiful, meditative, elegant, swan-like practice, and I never really got to experience it. You’re kind of unlocking that within me as well, because I even feel the way I dress reflects a ballerina going to rehearsal with maybe a glamorous fur coat on top of disheveled layers. But I never really was that girl. I really wish I could have been.

Lexee wears tops and shorts by Miu Miu. Tights stylist’s own.

Dita: One time, someone posed the question to me about something that I’ve never gotten to do that was a childhood dream. And I said, ‘Well, I wanted to be a ballerina.’ And they said, ‘What was it about it that you liked?’ And I went into all of these reasons that I liked it, but that I wasn’t ever good enough. And they said, ‘All these things you listed: the clothes, the dramatic makeup, the beautiful theater with the velvet curtains, the flowers, the champagne. Don’t you think you got everything you asked the universe for?’ He goes, ‘You never once said, you just want to dance.’ I thought that was so interesting because I did get what I asked for, but in a very different way.

“The inner child is the most magnificent tool ever. If we can just get back down to those little girl things and thoughts, that’s where all the truth lies.”

Lexee: As a little girl, you were like, I’m trying to keep up, but you were secretly manifesting this whole other side of yourself in that struggle. I relate to that as well. I never felt like the best one. I was never the girl front-center, I was always the girl to the right. The girl next to the girl, and I felt like, why am I always second place? It made me form this angst. I was 17, smoking a lot of weed, like, I’m over this. I started to really isolate myself within the craft because I got so exposed. I was in LA when social media started to happen, and they were filming every dance class. It felt like I was being exploited and not being represented how I wanted to be represented. I feel like rebellion is always what guides you to your truest form. So then I started to be with myself and just dance alone for hours and trance out, and finally, get to what it all really meant to me.

It’s always been really abstract, the type of dancing I like to do. I feel like you probably relate—it feels like you tap into your inner deity, and everything else goes away. From a young age, it always felt very sexual. It was hard to express that when I was younger, so maybe I had to go this other way for it to come out. But I do feel very tapped into my sexuality when I perform. And I was wondering, at what age did you feel your sexuality and your love for dance conjoined?

Dita: I would say that it was when I was 18, 19, 20. I was working as a go-go dancer in the LA rave scene. My boyfriend at the time took me to a strip club, which was just, like, a bikini bar. I went in, and I was like, ‘these girls are making a ton of money.’ This was kind of the golden age of strip clubs, mind you. The girls were all PlayboyF playmates, and they were in all the rock-n-roll videos in the ’90s, like, dancing on the hoods of cars. I didn’t look like that, but I thought, ‘Maybe I should do this for a little while.’ I was known as a fetish model, the modern Bettie Page in the early ’90s. I had the first pinup girl website that ever existed on the internet. That was really the time that I was tapping into that, taking bondage photos, getting into fetish clothing like seam stockings and leather gloves, and kind of playing this damsel in distress or dominatrix part.

As a ballet dancer, I never ever thought about dance and eroticism at all. The ballet world was different when I was growing up. So I kind of brought them together. One of my first stripteases was done on pointe. I did a feather fan dance and took off my clothes on pointe. Most of my shows in the ’90s were all done on pointe. Like, I’m going to come out of a big powder compact. Should I do it in pointe shoes? Yes. I was never doing amazing dancing, but I was very good at using them like high heels.

Lexee: I love that braveness of using something that you’re fascinated with untraditionally. Especially in ballet culture, it’s very, like, this should be done correctly.

Dita: I think most things good come from childhood obsession, because it’s authentic. I grew up watching old movies when I was a little girl, and that imprint stayed with me my whole life. I don’t pay attention to what’s happening in fashion or whether I’m relevant. I just love vintage style and burlesque. This is my world, and I have not dipped out of it. Sometimes people move from thing to thing, to try to find themselves, but I always remind myself of what got me here, and how it’s been with me since I was like 6 years old.

Lexee: The inner child is the most magnificent tool ever. If we can just get back down to those little girl things and thoughts, that’s where all the truth lies. I love the idea of being expressed like an overgrown child. Even the way that I get dressed in the morning, it’s really intuitive and sporadic. I feel like my style is like a 7-year-old girl getting dressed for school. As I get older and have more taste, it still has that essence, just in a more chic manner.

“One of the things I’m so fascinated with is the in-between, and that’s where I think the magic happens. Like, you can watch either of these dancers, and they’re doing these incredible feats of dance, but some of my favorite parts are those stop moments: the breath, the thought, the feeling.”

Maraya: Dita, you’ve spoken about how your audiences these days are primarily members of the queer community and women, and maybe some straight men come along. Could you both talk about your approach to the performance of sensuality that’s sort of dissociated from the male gaze, and why that’s something you’re drawn to expressing?

Lexee: I was trying to unpack this recently. I feel like I don’t have much romance in my life. I’m not going on dates with boys and having a lot of sex and being explorative in that realm. Creativity and sexuality, they’re both sacral chakra; it’s all happening in that womb area. I think I have a lot of repressed or unexpressed sexual energy that comes out in a weird admiration for self or searching to be embraced by another, and trying to understand what that feels like within play, within myself. That’s always been something that came out through movement and the way I dress. It’s something really natural. It just, like, oozes out of me. I think the root of wherever it’s coming from is the same place.

Dita: When I first started, I was a Playboy model. I was performing at the Playboy Mansion. I was definitely beneath the hetero male gaze for a long time. And then that shifted in the early 2000s. With regard to dance, instead of doing sensual moves so much, it’s more playful. It’s more in the mind, because I let the striptease do the erotic parts for me. It’s the thoughts attached to everything. Like, taking off a glove, there are always thoughts in my head that convey what I want. I’m trying to always change people’s minds about what striptease is and what a burlesque dancer is, and balancing the elegant and the erotic, the playful and the sensual. It’s fun—the sense of humor with all of this stuff. I mean, it’s funny to be in a giant champagne glass. It’s ridiculous and really a bit absurd.

Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire are my favorite dancers of all time. One of the things I’m so fascinated with is the in-between, and that’s where I think the magic happens. Like, you can watch either of these dancers, and they’re doing these incredible feats of dance, but some of my favorite parts are those stop moments: the breath, the thought, the feeling. You see this sometimes with certain dancers or performers, where they can stand in their power and do less, and it’s magic. I’m so into capturing those moments because that’s when people can really see you. As an audience member, when I go to see a show, I love to zero in on my favorite person. What are they giving?

“Sometimes talent and skill can be a mask. I want to feel drawn in. I want to feel under a spell by you more than I care about four pirouettes.”

Lexee: I love to do that as well, and agree that it is when you can see the soul—in the breath and the expression—when you know that the things they’re doing are really intentional and conscious. When people are onstage and they’re actually taking it on as an experience of play, maybe like predator and prey, very animal—I love that feeling. I was never drawn to the girl who just had her leg by her head. I was always like, Who is really connecting with me?

I wanted to ask you if there was an animal that you felt most like when you perform.

Dita: I’m sure everybody says ‘cat,’ but I’m mostly thinking about the funny parts of cats. Not like, super feline and sensual, but the inquisitive part, the part that stops and looks at something and reacts. How they’re a little bit on psychedelics all the time. When the curtains open and there’s, like, a big pink cowgirl set, it’s psychedelic. That’s the imprint of those ’40s movies; some of the sets and the dance dream sequences are super out-there. That’s the part of the cat that I like. Yes, elegant, graceful moves, but mostly the sense of humor and that feeling that they’re always seeing something that not everybody sees. I’m laughing at stuff through my numbers all the time. I’m having a great time, whether people are in on the joke or not.

Maraya: What about you, Lexee?

Lexee: Wait, that is hard. I actually feel like a peacock. In the way that cats have an unexpected comedic timing, a peacock is maybe less fascinating, and then the feathers come out, and it’s like, whoa, but the timing of it is always unexpected. Maybe you’ll see it if you’re meant to, but if not, he’s tucked away. It’s a tease because maybe you’ll get to see these feathers, but maybe you won’t.

Bra and underwear by Claire Sullivan. Tights stylist’s own.

Maraya: Do you guys draw a distinction between the performed self and the private self?

Dita: I definitely feel like I don’t have an alter ego on stage. Paulo Coelho, the writer of The Alchemist, pointed out that the magic of what I do is that people can see the Heather Sweet from the farming town of Michigan at the same time as the persona that I have created. It’s all creation; it’s all what I’ve decided to make for myself. But he explained to me that, a little bit like if you watch someone like Marilyn Monroe, the interesting thing is the combination of the vulnerability and the playfulness along with the eroticism. I realized a long time ago to let people see me and not feel like I have to put on a sexy thing and be my alter ego person, that ‘Dita Von Teese’ character. It’s like, no, this is still me. There’s a difference between the glamour, the glitz, and the performance onstage and who I am offstage, but it’s letting people see the real me and creating numbers that reflect my sense of humor and the things I like to convey. Especially in different phases of life, too. The numbers I wanted to create when I was 25 are different than what I want to create now.

Lexee: I totally see that within you, because you’re just a truly authentic being.

Dita: Thank you. I’m sure you know about this, too. I just did a big casting in London, and we saw like, 600 people, and I was just like, there are incredible dancers, but I need to see people’s personality, and not everyone knows how to do that.

Lexee: Sometimes talent and skill can be a mask. I want to feel drawn in. I want to feel under a spell by you more than I care about four pirouettes. I can look that up on YouTube, and I’ll probably feel the same way.

Dita: I’m always kind of at odds with the choreography team, because I’ll see somebody that I really love, and they’re like, they’re not as technically good as these people. And I’m like, I don’t care. I can’t stop looking at this person, so we’re going to cast them.

Lexee: Presence is everything. If you can really plant your feet and open your eyes, it’s like, how do I not feel a burst of wild energy going through me that I want to express and yell out? I actually struggle sometimes, because I get a lot of adrenaline [while performing]. I’m really good in rehearsal, because I thrive in a really isolated environment. Sometimes, with the energy of a crowd, I feel like I black out completely. That’s something I really want to work on right now, staying really centered whenever I’m in front of an audience, because it becomes an ecstatic exchange and an exciting thing, and I wish I had more control of the moment. That’s something I really admire about you, because you do have that innate stillness and groundedness about you. In rehearsal, I sometimes feel a sense of safety. And when I perform, I feel like I let it all go.

Dita: There’s an acting teacher that I follow, and she says, ‘You do all the work, and then you have to just let it go.’ That always stayed with me. You’ve done the work, you know the music, you know the steps, you know all the stuff. Now just let it go. I find amazing things happen when you let it go. Some of my best moves, the most imitated moves in burlesque, came from my mistakes on stage.

Maraya: Lexee, you said in a recent interview for Nymphet Alumni, that oftentimes the best art comes from the dirtiest parts of yourself, from places of shame and insecurity. Could you expand on that?

Lexee: I was journaling about this the other day. If you can have so much awareness to find the parts of yourself that you don’t find as beautiful, or you’re not confident in or there’s insecurity there, but you learn a way to present it or cover it in a really innovative and beautiful way, because there’s so much intention and soul friction there, it can become something so true to you, like a signature thing. We were talking about it in the fashion sense, because [Bob] Fosse would always wear gloves because his hands were small. But I’m a southern girl who never wore braces, and I sometimes am insecure about my teeth. I’ve gotten Invisalign like a million times, and I try to follow through, but something about my soul won’t let me fix my teeth. Maybe one day I’m going to play a role where I need to have those crooked bottom teeth. And I think that is something that will make people feel like, ‘damn, she made it there, and she has teeth like me.’ It can be something that you can use as a master tool of your own glamour, because mystique is everything. But I also think it can be something that, if you’re brave enough to flaunt, people can really find a way to connect to you.

Maraya: I know the French have a saying ‘avoir du chien,’ and it’s kind of the idea of the beauty found in those sorts of imperfections, like crooked teeth or not being symmetrical.

Lexee: Totally, asymmetry is more appealing than perfection.

Dita: In one of my books, there’s an old quote from the 17th century that says, ‘There is no beauty that hath not strangeness in proportion.’ I always love that. I lived in Paris for five years, and that was one of the biggest takeaways, that the imperfections are part of what makes someone special and beautiful. It’s not always easy to remember that, but it’s the truth.

Hair Michael Forrey at Forward Artists. Make-up Kali Kennedy at Streeters. Set Design Kelly Infield at Walter Schupfer Management. Production Penny Projects. Production Director Lisa Olsson Hjerpe. Shot at New Theater Hollywood.