All strip, no tease

No doubt, X: An Erotic Adventure is hot. On show at Harveys Casino Cabaret Theater in South Lake Tahoe, this show delivers on its tease with erotic dance numbers performed by wickedly sexy women. There’s even a half-time bonus of standup comedy to cool you down. This show doesn’t raise the bar, but it achieves its end: It’s erotic entertainment.

X came to Lake Tahoe via Las Vegas where it enjoyed a one-year run at the Aladdin with good-to-mixed reviews. That’s exactly what you’ll find here. Overall, the show is good but not great. It hits high points, but they are sprinkled among run-of-the-mill sexually alluring dance routines and some duds.

X is a collection of dance numbers performed to a variety of popular songs, including Brittany Spears’s “Slave,” Madonna’s “Justify My Love” and Lenny Kravitz’s “I Wanna Fly.” The nine core dancers move well, have fantastically hot bodies and know how to play up the erotic angle with provocative looks and girlish smiles as called for.

But much of the show is repetitive with the most interesting changes in songs and costumes. The dancers come out in barely-there outfits that are as hip as they are hot and perform highly suggestive synchronized dance moves. (All right, so a few of the moves weren’t exactly executed in perfect unity, but did anyone really notice? Or care?)

It’s like a series of rap videos, but topless. This was especially prevalent in the beginning. The opening numbers drop like a skin bomb as dancers strip down to thongs while bending, undulating and eventually touching each other. This apparent attempt to shock or wow the audience—these days, it takes something more than, or rather, different from toplessness and girls caressing each other to be truly stunning—leaves the performers with little more to give. Within minutes of this hour-and-a-half long show, we’ve seen them be “bad,” and we’ve seen them stripped down to g-strings. Now what?

Thankfully, on numerous occasions, the show does stray from this in-your-face, strip-club-style approach. A creative girl-on-girl bathtub scene performed as a series of stills has the lights going off and on while the performers move from one position to another. There’s a vertical girl-on-girl bed scene, the routine of a stunningly flexible contortionist. A shadow dance number performed to Kid Rock’s “Cowboy” is fun and imaginative.

The show, however, does have those flat points, like a solo performed by Playboy Playmate Angela Little. Yes, she’s beautiful and sexy, but she’s not known for her dancing talent, enough said. The comedy number in which the dancers talk about their favorite presidents is more ludicrous than funny.

X does find some success by touching on just about every fantasy, from schoolgirls to cowgirls to an after-hours women’s prison scene. The dancers run the spectrum, too. Everyone’s sure to find her or his type in this group. If girl-on-girl eroticism is your thing, you won’t be let down.

X is erotic. It entices you along with requisite naughty dance routines, a few artistic high points and some less-than-stellar, but still sexy, moments. Is X breaking new ground in theater or eroticism? Don’t bet on it. But was anyone disappointed? It’s doubtful.