Signs of Vancouver's waning exotic dance scene are showing in a charity event to benefit breast cancer research.
The 7th annual Exotic Dancers For Cancer is happening at Cecil Exotic Show Lounge Wednesday night for one last time before the developer's wrecking ball demolishes the downtown strip club.
"We are losing another strip club in Vancouver, which is tragic," said Ryann Rain, who's coming out of retirement for the cancer benefit. "That means more girls will have to go to Alberta to pay rent."
Fewer dancers are able to donate shows because more women are opting for paying gigs or touring neighbouring provinces, Rain explained.
This year's show features 20 performances of which eight are burlesque shows compared to last year's event when two burlesque dancers contributed to cast of 30.
Rain, however, exudes optimism in tonight's spectacle that promises to entertain both men and women.
"The dancers that are dancing are here because they love to dance," she said.
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- Reporter
- Dharm Makwana currently serves as a web editor at The Province, British Columbia's best read daily newspaper. For more than four years he wrote on issues affecting the Lower Mainland for the province's third largest daily newspaper Vancouver 24 hours. Before arriving in Vancouver in January 2007, Dharm won the John Lott Scholarship for outstanding journalism at Centennial College. Since then Dharm has developed an interest in municipal and provincial politics, crime and policing and social issues including immigration, prostitution and trafficking. He is currently working on a series of stories involving Vancouver's sex workers.
Wisdom
I don't want to be that guy mumbling into his drink at a bar.
-Bill Murray
-Bill Murray