On the Aerialistas, Pity Parties, ticktock dance, & the Cleanest Dirty Bar in Ballard

Tuesday night just past seven, I wandered into Ballard's Copper Gate, a 64-year-old Scandinavian bar on 24th Avenue NW. I'm no doubt late to this, but the Copper Gate's an odd but incredibly charming place: immaculate and well-lit, with a copper-topped bar built into a replica of a Viking boat, the relaxed, mostly middle-aged crowd of diners sat sipping wine and eating Scandinavian classics, surrounded by classy erotica. The walls are covered in places with vintage nudes and tame fetish shots that are somehow sexy but not dirty. It turns out that when new owners took over several years ago, they found the former owner's wife's stash of pictures, and took that as inspiration. A painting of a pretty young lass on the main wall, I was told by a helpful bar manager, has been there since the bar opened, and is supposedly the erotica-collecting woman herself back in the day.

The point is, as pretty much everyone who's written about it has noted, the Copper Gate, for all the naked ladies, is still the sort of place you could take your grandma (and I'm pretty sure there was one there). And much like the main bar, "the Pussy Room" in back is not nearly so dirty as it sounds. That said, you get to it by walking through a narrow, rounded passage painted deep red that leads to a room blocked off by red velvet curtains. Ahem. Pussy Room, indeed!

This is the new salon of the Aerialistas, Seattle's much-beloved aerial-burlesque troupe, who are continuing even though their partners, Circus Contraption, have closed up shop. Starting in December, they've been hosting a once-a-month "Aerial-oke and Twister" fundraising party, preparing for future projects. The Pussy Room, a converted laundromat the new Copper Gate owners took over a few years to turn in to a private party space, has soaring ceilings, red velvet seats, an electric organ, and a stripper pole. When I entered, Lara Paxton, the head of the company, was sitting around with a couple friends and regulars drinking wine and getting ready to play a round of Uno.

Next month, Paxton's launching the first show up at the Copper Gate, a Valentine's show for singles called Pity Party (Feb. 10-14, tickets $20), with Sari Breznau--otherwise known as Circus Contraption's Pinky d'Ambrosia. And she's serious about the show being for singles: couples who show up together or alone who can be identified will be subjected to some rough treatment (bags of small pebbles to throw at the intruders were suggested, and Paxton made a half-joke about "poop hats," the half-joke part being that it was still to be determined what a "poop hat" was, exactly).

Also on hand were fellow Aerialistas Jill Schaffner (who also performs with DASSDance) and Elizabeth Rose. At the end of the month, these two--along with dancer Bridget Gunning, who's worked with Manifold Motion, among others--are presenting a new aerial dance experiment called ticktock No. 1 (Jan. 29-30, tickets $15, at the Emerald City Aerialdome). Writing in The SunBreak yesterday, Rose explained the three had come together because "[We] all found we were drawn to aerial and circus because of its extreme physicality...but had a hard time finding most contemporary circus artistically satisfying because it lacked choreographic depth and seemed to be an art form based on 'tricks' and archetypal character portrayals."

I got a taste of what ticktock dance is trying to accomplish back in November, with Gunning's contribution at Manifold Motion's Miscellanea II revue, with musician Evan Flory-Barnes. Aerial performance as done by the Aerialistas is a circus act, or a burlesque (as Paxton's showstopping sex romp in Circus Contraption's The Show to End All Shows demonstrated). In "Immutable/Tensile," Gunning consciously sought to move beyond the sideshow angle and apply the vocabulary of contemporary dance choreography to aerial work. Flory-Barnes played an improvised (and impressively harmonics laden) line on the upright bass as Gunning expressively worked the aerial silk, eventually moving onto his shoulders as he played. It's definitely an idea with potential, pushing the artists' skills as both dancers and aerialists.

As for Paxton, after Pity Party she plans to launch a regular "surreal strip club" cabaret at the Copper Gate. And for those in search of more family-friendly aerial fare, Paxton did the aerial choreography for Seattle Children's Theatre's upcoming In the Northern Lights, a collection of adaptations of Nordic myths, featuring performances by actors Hans Altwies, Amy Thone, and Emily Chisholm among others (Feb. 12-March 14, tickets $15-$34). Finally, for a bit more background on the Copper Gate itself, check out Bethany Jean Clement's review in The Stranger.