The Middle of Nowhere:  Sibbald Session

I had a week off when my agent called with a proposal that sounded like a punchline.

“Do you want to go to Sibbald?” he asked.

“Where?”

He started laughing. “It’s a speck on the map right on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. Population: ten people and maybe a cow.”

He explained that because there wasn’t another town for three hours in any direction, that this tiny outpost was a goldmine. The local pub brought in dancers as a rare treat for the farmers in the surrounding area. My adventurous spirit—the same one that landed me on a yacht in St. Maarten—didn’t hesitate. I packed my bags and said, “Bring on the cow.”

Prairie Magic

He wasn’t exaggerating. Sibbald was a skeletal collection of a few houses and a single, weathered building that served as the community’s heartbeat and literally, one cow. But what the town lacked in infrastructure, the people made up for in soul. The owner and his girlfriend greeted me with that immediate, unpretentious warmth you only find in the deep country. I even made a four-legged friend—a black lab cross who became my shadow for the weekend.

Word of a “Feature” coming to town moved through the farmhouse telegraph faster than a summer storm. It was Easter weekend, usually a quiet time for the industry, but the pub was banging. Farmers and ranch hands rolled in from across the plains, their dusty trucks lining the gravel road.

I’ve said it before: I love country boys. They aren’t looking for a “monkey dance.” They are generous, genuine, and they appreciate the female form. I went through so much promotional material in two days that it felt like I’d worked a marathon week in a big-city club.

The Law of the Land

The trip wasn’t without its “contributions” to the province, however. On the long, flat stretch of highway leading out of town, I let my foot get a little too heavy. The road was a grey ribbon disappearing into an infinite horizon—the kind of “boring” that practically begs you to fly. They say it’s so flat that you can still see your dog running three days later if it ran away.

When the cherries and blues flashed in my rearview, I tried the classic move—a little eyelash-batting and a winning smile.

Result: Zero. The officer was a true professional. “I know what driving these roads are like,” he said, handing me the ticket. “But there are a lot of deer out here, and we wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

I looked at him, thinking about the packed house waiting for me back at the pub. “Of course not,” I thought. “I’m the entertainment!”

I didn’t get out of the fine, but I couldn’t resist a parting shot. “You should stop by the pub for a beer later,” I told him with a wink. He didn’t promise he would, but I’m fairly certain he knew exactly where the party was going to be.

Reflecting on the Contrast

There is something so grounded about going from the biggest high caliber venue in the big city to a gravel-road pub. It keeps the “sparkle” real.

Awesome din time show! The rockin audience is an indication that people are in the mood to parteee! Had this wild bunch of business men clapping along to each song just gets me even more into my show and entertaining such an enthusiastic audience. Now taking a lil break before my evening shows, gonna have a hot bubble bath, do some deep stretching and rest up for 2nite! Feelin feisty and ready 2 rock the stage at the Budoir and even get in some hot n steamy dances! 2nite’s one of my fave night’s…alll the lasers, smoke and lighting is off the hook, 2 main stages with showgirls, LOTS of sexy go-go dancers all over the bar and male dancers! The energy is SO SEXY and hedonistic…nakedness and sparkles everywhere and for all audiences XD

It evolutionary in strip clubs…feels like a club in Vegas or Europe. Also working with a concentual motoboatist this week LOL She’ll only motorboat beautiful breats with permission…as I found out 😉

How polite…te-he-he!

Working in Oz this time around definitely has been my most successful trip to date on every level. Reconnecting with my absolutely amazing, loyal and enthusiastic audiences, deepening some of my previous friendships and creating some new ones. The energy in the changeroom was a lot more positive and fun compared to my last trips. The girls were a riot to hang out with and kept me entertained most of the time with their light hearted playfulness. Of course there was a little drama..not always gonna escape that,but it’s book material, not blog material so I’ll leave it at that.

I had three new costumes made by the amazing, Julian Dean! So exciting!  I’ll post pics soon. And these new shows are already receiving an enormous positive response…especially Catwoman. I performed it for my last show at the Crazy Horse and it was off the hook! Two regular customers who were going out for a cigarette stopped in their tracks when they saw me on stage and stayed to watch the show. Afterwards the one gentlemen said that was the best show he’d seen in a long time…and he has seen a lot of great feature shows. He actually said it was right up there alongside one of my friend’s, Dinah Might’s burglar show! Loved that!! Yep, there is nothing better than a show that brings down the house! It’s that moment (remember, I call it the sweet spot-where you are completely connected with the audience) that I live for, that energetic exchange throughout my display of creative expression; Drawing the audience in and making them feel like they are a part of my show. I had many shows like this which was incredible cuz the Aussie audiences are so much more reserved then Canadian audiences BUT I broke them outta their shells! lol It only took a ‘few’ trips!

My last day Madsion Cue and I went to the beach to soak up some beautiful sun and became quite a spectacle. It all started with a group of footy players coming over and wanting their picture taken with us. We thought it was cute so we obliged. But then two Asian guys came over and they wanted their pictures taken with us….and then a dude brought his baby over! Umm, yes, his baby! He asked me to hold the lil guy for a picture and it didn’t stop there….two other boys came over with their sister followed by a group of guys from Amsterdam! And of course we get on the topic of who has the better pot. LOL I personally don’t smoke pot but I heard ours is better. When I was in Jamaica and cab driver was trying to tell sell me some pot (yes, really) and then he asked me where I was from. When I said Vancouver, he replied, “Ohhhh…iry mon, nevermind, this is noting compared to your gonga.” LOL Anyway, Madison and I were killing ourselves laughing at the spectacle we had become on the beach. Then she looks over at me and says, “It’s cuz you have big boobs.” I burst out laughing! It reminded me of the same comment a wise old crab says to me whenever I tell him how much I love a place and how nice the people are. “It’s cuz you have big boobs..” Just to ruffle my feathers….really, I’m a nice person and that’s why everyone’s nice to me 😛 But then I turn to Madison and say, “Maybe it’s cuz your wearing a thong…AND you have a great butt” LMAO These Adelaide peeps don’t see much T N A out and about like that! I told her just to use her French accent like she doesn’t know people in Adelaide don’t wear g-strings on the beach! “What do mean..monseur?” :*

It was a nice farwell dinner with a group of lovely ladies, including my bestie, Candi, who I was gonna pack in my luggage and bring her home with me. All of who I connected with along with one ol gent, Rob, who was my own personal chauffeur turned friend. It was margaritas and Mexican fiesta at one of my fave restaraunts to end the trip on a high note. And of course, watching Vonni’s show which entailed not only her amazing performance but performances from a couple of up and coming drag queens, who by the way were great!! Another trip down, many more to go! Up next, home for a week then Miami! Until we meet again, my fave Aussies! Thank you for making this trip above and beyond my best visit yet!

WhooHoooo! Was pleasantly surprised to see that my pic was selected to appear in the Keystone’s Calendar 2013 and it’s one of my most fave places to grace the stage! Georgie’s Pub in the Keystone Motor Inn located in Brandon, Manitoba. And alongside me are two of my good friends, Dinah Might and Madison Cue!! Exxxcellent calendar!

I’ve had some issues with my website so haven’t been able to update my blogs but looks like everything’s been sorted so am back 🙂

Well, been touring my butt off this year and had some new bookings that I’d experienced that were truly amazing, such as X-Static in Red Deer, Alberta. There was a bit of drama with a girl who unfortunately had a drug problem, a serious problem…on hard stuff, which you really don’t see too much in the clubs I work. Not to say there aren’t girls ‘partying’ but honestly, if there’s a girl with a serious drug problem she won’t get booked. The other girls in the change-room actually had a bet with how long this girl would last through the week till she got fired…she made it till Friday! lol Only cuz she had to work enough in order to pay off a fine she owed the club for damaging her room at the dancer house. Crazy!

I’ve had the BEST time here in Oz, my best trip to date for sure. I have been completely showered with gifts,  home baking (yummy cupcakes courtesy of Rose and Nick!) appreciation and enthusiasm from my fave favorite Aussie audiences, I Feeeeeeel the love! I’ve had to work xxxtra hard after all those boxes of my fave chocolates!! lol It’s been such a pleasure performing here! Next time I’ll bring out my aerial hoop and silks. This time around with all the connecting flights through the States it would’ve cost me an additional $300.00 to bring my hoops on top of the $150.00 I’m already paying in extra luggage, so decided to leave it behind. BUT, seeing that so many of you would like to see the new elements I’ve been bringing to stage and expressed how much you want to see them, I’ll definitely bring it for next time. An appreciative and generous audience will always inspire me to bring out the big guns 😉 Plus, I love requests! When peeps really favour a theme or element and connect with it, it inspires me even more.`

Enjoying all the fun displays of devotion

SOOOO…you all have been eagerly awaiting my perception of the Miss Nude Canada contest and how I did. WELL…I didn’t place. But before some of you start a riot (some of my hard core loyal rowdies lol) let me just say that this was one of the most high caliber contests to date; this could easily be compared to a Miss Nude World competition. The competition was fierce, every girl brought her A game and there was no room for error, which unfortunately for me, was my downfall.

But honestly, for the first time, this was a contest where there was no contender going in, it was anybodies game. All of the girls were SO good and all had special skills from aerial acts to acrobatics to choreographed routines. And props galore..even a harpest on stage!! It made me proud to be Canadian and in a line up of such fantastic talent! It was like being in Vegas!

My theme was from Hell to Heaven. I had special effects, smoke and lighting. I was a devil that conquered heaven and captured two angels. I came on stage to the Undertaker theme song then went into Dragula by Rob Zombie, Fire by Scooter, Heaven’s On Fire by Kiss at which point my angels turn into sexy little devils grooving to the music, Firewoman by the Cult, then the transition begins….Unforgiven plays by Metallica and I perform my aerial hoop routine and I begin to ‘see the light’ and a white light shines through a white shimmering sheet, I slowly dance over to it, Knocking On Heaven’s Door by Guns N Roses begins to play, I go behind the white backdrop creating a silhouette, I am now asking forgiveness and becoming an angel.

I come out from behind the white sheet, there’s a cloud effect on stage, I’m now an angel and I sing live on top of some white stairs to, ‘Heaven’ by Bryan Adams. Start off wild at heart and finish with finding true love. That was the deeper meaning of my show 🙂

There are so many stories within my story…where do I begin! I’ll start with my demise. My show for the semi finals was going amazing! The audience was off the hook and I was nailing every element to my show and then it came time to sing…and my sound was DREADFUL! It was terrible. The levels were off, the base was so high you couldn’t even make out the melody of the music, I couldn’t hear myself sing at all-it was like I was in a dark room looking for a light switch trying to find the notes, and the feedback everywhere was brutal.

NOW, when I decided to sing I had my ducks in order. I hired the best sound tech in Calgary cuz I knew that this would be a new element to bring to an exotic dance contest. I knew that the club’s djs wouldn’t be experienced in sound for a live musician. But the owner was extremely peticular about who was touching his sound equipment and after many emails, management guaranteed me that their sound tech could do it easily and was experienced.

On the semi finals night the sound guy ‘couldn’t get my mic’s frequency on the right channel’ gave me the MCs speaking mic and was forced to go on stage to do my show. I wish I would’ve been more of a diva but can’t turn back time now. After my show I wanted to stick my head in the stand like an ostrich LOL Seriously..I can sing, I’ve sang for Jay Leno and performed in Vegas and Toronto, as well as many live shows…blah blah blah. I wasn’t sure about making it to the finals on Saturday BUT I did! WhooHoo! Now it was time to get things sorted for Saturday.

First thing in the morning I went down to the venue and spoke with management. I also emailed upper management and called my agents. I wanted to bring in my sound tech but they reassured me they’d get it right this time and send in their tech early to fix the problem. And he did. It was a bittersweet moment to see him pull out a sound board that they had all along and plugged my mic into it with no problem. I couldn’t believe it. It was disheartening BUT the show must go on and if anything, time to redeem myself.

AND…my sound was amazing! Vocals were clear and everything sounded beautiful and on perfect pitch. I was SO proud of my show on the eve of the finals. I had customers throwing up $100s, $50s and full rolls of looneys as I serenaded the audience! The doorman came up to me after my show and said, “All this money is for you! The owners said we could keep any looneys or $5s thrown on the stage but I can’t keep all this, you deserve it, that was truely fanastic!”I then was booked with dances for the rest of the night 😀 I felt amazing, I did the best I could, with what I had from where I was, and that is that. I even had another competitior tell me, “WOW, you are a real singer…not even like karoake but a real singer!” Ummm thanks?

You see, they add the scores from Friday and Saturday together so it really didn’t matter how good I did on Saturday if I scored low on Friday. But that’s OK! From what I hear the girl who one, Onyx, was absolutely incredible and had the judges on their feet-you can’t argue with that! This one just wasn’t in the cards for me…at all. I had a lot of issues going into this comp, like not being able to do pyro or fire (took the pyro course specifically for this contest just to be told I coudn’t use it the week before the contest) my lil angels kept flaking out, leaving me to scramble at the last minute to find girls to help me with my show, my special effects didn’t work for the first show and then the singing.

Even still, the singing may have been a little too off the wall for an exotic dance contest, too. What I do know is that this was an amazing experience, it was a well run contest-HUGE KUDOS to Ken and Independent for running such an excellent, fair, no drama contest and I did get a lot out of it in many other ways. Does it suck to walk off stage empty handed, yes but I gained so much on the heart level that it more than makes up for that…well almost lol 🙂 Deepened some friendships and created some new ones, I got to sing my heart like a rockstarr, I got to watch my vision unfold before my eyes, my lil sis came on stage with me and show her support in the biggest way (THAT’S another story) and ALL the people who came together to help me out and be a part of this. YAAAY! Lots to be thankful for xxoo

So my stories within this story are to come over the next couple days 🙂 And a video of my show!!!!

So tonight was the big night, the first cut from 24 girls down to 12 for the semi finals for Miss Nude Canada. I just want to say that I had an amazing time performing in the contest and this year each girl has brought her A game. The competition’s been stiff but have to say, a positive vibe so far and everyone’s been helpful and fun….def not the norm for one of these contests. Surprising since 16 contest girls are staying in the dancer house lol Thought some craziness would surface but nope, everyone’s been pretty mello. Regardless, I have completely enjoyed my trip here in Calgary, the people and working at the BuDoir Rouge, which is the most beautiful club I’ve worked in.

SO…..they call each contestant up one by one till all 24 of us ladies are on stage, then they begin calling out the 12 semi finalists. As each person’s name is being called my heart skips a beat. Then the MC announces, “These are all of your semi finalists for Miss Nude Canada, give them a round of applause!” Yes, my name wasn’t called. A couple of girls, one being my friend, Dinah Might (who made it through btw-WhooHoo! Congratz babe) looked at me and pouted and I shrugged my shoulders and said, “It’s alright. I’m ok.” Sure a lil disappointed but I was ok, I did my best.

THEN someone says, “You’re missing one girl…there’s only 11.” So the MC says, “Missing one girl, well then, everyone give me a drumroll please!” So all the customers start pounding on their tables and the girls on stage start banging their hands on their knees and he yells out, “The final contestant going through to the finals is…JANINE JEEEEERRRICHOO!”

YAAAAAAAY! I wanted to kick their asses for that one LMAO but YAAAAAAAY! Going throught to the semis, my showtime is 9:40pm and now I know exactly what I need to do to smooth out show and change a few things that didn’t work previously. OH YES…and my voice is back!!! Thanks everyone for sending me positive, healing and supportive vibes-they worked! 😀

Myself and my fabulous good friend, Dinah Might will be doing a radio interview at 9AM Sharp on www.cjay92.com tomorrow August 9th at 9AM sharp!! Tune in peeps!! XD

Back in Kelowna working one of my fave places, the Liquid Zoo. So far it’s been a busy start to the week, seeing lots of my fave familiar faces in the audience 🙂 And yes, it’s been rockin so far! Excellent enthusiastic and generous audiences and a great line up of girls. Myself and Natalia are going to practise doing a routine with silks and potentially bring it to stage for Saturday night as a X-TRA SPECIAL DUO performance; Cirque De Soleil striptease style! And seeing that we both have Russian in our backgrounds we’ll call ourselves, From Russia With Love LOL Shaken….not stirred…a whole lotta shaken! 😀 But always fun to have someone to monkey around with and practise circus skills on stage.

The other dancer working this week, Miss Tygra Banks is an amazing pole dancer, flipping around that pole looking like a drops of water flowing so naturally and smooth she’s definitely inspired me to expand my skills even more. I LOVE it when I can get inpired by watching another entertainer. She’s gonna help me with polishing off a few moves and I will return the favour in another area that she could evolve in. Did I say GREAT line up….oh yes I did! Great when you can work with girls, exchange tools in evolving new skills, inspiring each other and feeding off of that cooperative energy wanting everyone to succeed rather than push each other down which happens far too much in this industry. Plus it makes for a week full of fun and a lil mischief in the change room 😉

Funny moment: We opened the curtain and the window in the change room due to all the hairspray fumes lol and the window faces a back alley. It’s getting a little darker outside and there was a car in the back alley. It looked like no one was in it. The one girl who was naked stood in front of the window and said, “Oops, I have to bend over and pick this up.” and she bent over pretending to pick something up on the floor. “Then she giggled and said, “Is that a cop in there….haha could you imagine..” WELL, a moment later the car drove away!!!! There WAS somebody in the car! We all laughed our pants off…literally! So funny. And the phrase that pays for the night, “Even if you pinch it a little, it’s still loose.” (Talking about a hair weave LMAO)