Dancing at the Blue Iguana

2001 • 123 minutes

About this movie

Dancing at the Blue Iguana offers a rare glimpse into the often misunderstood world of the strip club, which is much more than the sum of its voyeuristic offerings. The Blue Iguana, in the heart of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, is a club where the glamour is tinged with decay, a crossroads where lives intersect and personas are donned and shed with equal abandon. Dancing at the Blue Iguana explores the stories of five dancers and those around them whose destinies converge over the course of one week. In this brief interval, one of the dancers, Angel, attempts to qualify as a foster mother; another, Jasmine, is a clandestine poet and finds love at a coffee house poetry reading; the least likely of the dancers, Jo, faces an unplanned pregnancy; another, Stormy finds her bewildering past looming before her in a familiar car parked outside the club; and Jesse, the newcomer, attempts to negotiate her survival without losing sight of her dreams. For Eddie, who runs the Blue Iguana, an anonymous, plaintive phone message of a woman crying propels him for a moment outside his unexamined life. Meanwhile a Russian hitman checks into the motel next door and fortuitously finds himself staying over a bit longer – long enough to construct a fantasy about Angel, whom he observes from his motel window. Yet despite the cataclysm of events and the prospects for change – not only for the dancers, but for the men who work in the club as well – one has the sense that the dance continues. Behind the scenes, we are able to glimpse the tears and laughter that make up the dance: at times darkly absurd, at times heart-breaking, forever human.