Courtesy of DanceOn

Elle Walker burning the floor with Bryan Tanaka

Take a look at Dance Showdown, the first original show created for the YouTube channel DanceOn. This is reality-style, competition dance crossing easily to an online format -- and doing it better than network television, frankly.

It's pretty hilarious.

Launched in April, Dance Showdown is a cross between So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars, with a little Charlie's Angels thrown in (the Charlie character being the show's host, hip-hop crew star D-trix). Individual episodes have topped more than 500,000 views, with series' totals of more than 6 million.

The show pairs YouTube "stars" with a slate of "superstar" choreographers -- best to ignore the hyperbole because there is a lot of youth and inexperience here. But that is part of the charm. You, dear Internet voters, are the judges, and you will determine the final winner of the $25,000 prize, to be announced on May 31.

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All photos by Star Foreman

Dita Von Teese wears a vintage dress from The Way We Wore and bracelets by J. Max.

See also:
*A gallery of pictures from our photo shoot at Dita Von Teese's Los Feliz home.
*Top 10 Strip Clubs in Los Angeles
*Marilyn Monroe's Seven Never-Before-Seen Mostly Nude Photos at Duncan Miller Gallery

Dita Von Teese can't remember the first time she took her clothes off for someone. It was probably early on, before she became the queen of burlesque and undressing became her job. Probably after ballet class, changing in front of other girls.

She does remember the first time she stripped. She was 19, and back then her name was Heather Sweet. She had been working as a scantily clad go-go dancer in the Los Angeles underground scene when, one night, a friend took her to a bikini club. She was fascinated.

She auditioned on a Monday -- amateur night. Rock & roll and blondes in neon bikinis were the name of the game. But she took the stage in a pink corset with black velvet trim, black stockings, long black gloves.

"You're wearing a lot of clothes up there," the manager said afterward. He hired her anyway. "Dita Von Teese" was born that night, a stage name Heather Sweet pulled out of a phone book.

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Blankenship Ballet

Cabaret theater

When the Blankenship Ballet Company performs Saturday, women will pirouette en pointe and fold their bodies into arabesques. Men will soar and spin, and lift dainty dancers onto their shoulders. But it won't be a typical night at the ballet -- far from it. The evening is being styled instead as cabaret theater.

For creative producer Mark Blankenship and his wife, artistic director Bertha Suarez Blankenship, the event illustrates a commitment to time-honored classic technique in a way that is accessible and entertaining for audiences who aren't necessarily ballet aficionados.

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The Box L.A.

Leigh Ledare's Double Bind (2010)

Pacific Standard Time, that half-year, regionwide paean to L.A.'s art history, officially ends on March 31. A show of vintage photographs and one last performance event send it off. Everything else on this week's list is forward-looking.

5. Rebel with a camera
When MOCA staged its big Dennis Hopper retrospective in 2010, it showed glossy, blown-up versions of Hopper's The Fort Worth 400. The exhibit included none of the vintage, 6-by-9-inch 1960s prints of hippies, artists, the Kennedys, Warhol and roadways. Small, scuffed, yellowed and animated by time, these prints by the guy who seemed to be everywhere and know everyone are at Craig Krull Gallery as part of Pacific Standard Time. 2525 Michigan Ave., #B-3, Santa Monica; through April 17. (310) 828-6410, craigkrullgallery.com.

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Courtesy of Red Bull

Two days after Thanksgiving Day 2011, hardcore b-boy fans poured into Moscow's Nikulin Circus for the annual Red Bull BC One Championship. The event is one of the largest and best-known international competitions, tagging itself the "Official Breakdance World Championship." Sixteen of the world's top b-boys traded rounds of headspins, power moves and freezes in front of an amped crowd of 2,000. Just when it appeared as if Lil G from Venezuela might take the title, or last year's champion, Neguin of Brazil, a surprise but repeat contender popped up to take home the trophy.

California native Roxrite, aka Omar Delgado, who splits his time between Los Angeles and San Diego, proved to be the best b-boy in the world that night. It had been a long road to victory. After being beaten in the finals of Red Bull BC One in 2007 and 2008 -- and not being invited back for the next three years -- Roxrite had a lot to be happy about.

Check out Roxrite's winning moves.

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Photocomposition by Reed Hutchinson & Catherine Kanner

Allynne Noelle as that trickster, the black swan

First, a recap. Or as they say on television (in voiceover), previously, on Los Angeles Ballet...

The drama of six months ago, recorded in an L.A. Weekly story, centered on dancer complaints and signs of trouble at Los Angeles Ballet, the ambitious fledgling company started in 2006 by husband-and-wife artistic directors Colleen Neary and Thordal Christensen. The company has been a revolving door of dancers, with an unusually high turnover rate. Neary denied there was anything amiss, saying that because Los Angeles Ballet is a startup company, fluctuations were "natural," and not evidence of a problem.

Flash-forward to this past weekend. Los Angeles Ballet kicked off its sixth repertory season at Royce Hall with a big gamble -- a traditional four-act production of Peter Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.

This production is not the avian nest of sexual repression a la Black Swan.

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Robbie Shaw and Stephanie Nugent

Stephanie Nugent feathering her nest

It's like a reality game show crossed with an MFA program -- to put it crassly.

Dances Made to Order, a pay-to-watch, curated, online, dance film festival, is the brainchild of Los Angeles choreographer Kingsley Irons and filmmaker Bryan Koch. The site, going national this year, features movies created by choreographers from 11 different cities, beginning with L.A. The site will post three original, five-minute movies each month.

The filmmakers gave Irons a list of inspirational creative topics, but then the audience (i.e., subscribers to www.dancesmadetoorder.com, paying $10 a month or $50 for the season) voted for their favorites. The top three themes must be used in each dance, no matter how wacky a combination. This rare interaction between audience and filmmakers is what distinguishes the site -- and makes it fun, Irons said.

The three subjects/themes/adjectives/ for the L.A. films were:

(1) Sugary/salty. (2) A film within a film. (3) Would you be better off if you hadn't...

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Courtesy Margo Leavin Gallery

William Leavitt's set design for "The Particles (of White Naugahyde)"

From a pseudo-sitcom and beachside choreography to feminist nostalgia and midcentury design, this week's list feels particularly well-rounded. (Also check out our preview of Pacific Standard Time's Performance and Public Art Festival, which begins this week).

5. Italy in Westwood
Galleria del Deposito ran for six years, from 1963 to 1969, in an old coal depot in Italy. It showed fantastically geometric, sleekly graphic work and produced a staggering number of limited-edition serving trays (along with ceramics and prints). Eccentric L.A. artist and dealer Eugenia Butler distributed these wares in L.A.; since the nonprofit Los Angeles Nomadic Division is currently bent on proving Butler's brilliance, you can see a selection of work from Deposito at the Italian Cultural Institute in Westwood. The highlights are the brash, fluorescent capes and tunics graphic artist Eugenio Carmi made with fashion designer Rudi Gernreich. 1023 Hilgard Ave., Wstwd.; through Feb. 2. (310) 443-3250, nomadicdivision.org.

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From the new movie Pina

It was 1984. A strange new dance troupe from Germany, unknown in the U.S. -- Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, the subject of Wim Wenders' new documentary Pina opening today -- headlined the International Olympics Arts Festival that spread over various venues throughout Los Angeles and opened the festivities at Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

From that moment, everything changed in the performing arts world as we knew it. There was the company's Café Müller, its stage cast in bleak blue/gray, while Bausch, a wraith of a figure in long white slip, trellised herself against a wall. And then, in gunshot bursts of action, came a terrifying array of human activity -- figures crashing noisily through a maze of chairs and tables, with no care to avoid physical harm. Bausch's blind flailings, either as spasmodic or staccato steps, triggered the chaos, with some characters as caretakers trying to stem the peril, others as beings in a nightmare, one of them an insensate woman wearing a red fright wig whizzing around in her own manic, inner-directed state.

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Kelly McKay

Merry XXX-Mas from Actually Huizenga

I saw strippers blowing Santa Claus, under the dance pole Saturday night!

Sir Ryan Heffington -- MOCA performer, TED talker, and choreographer of Ke$ha's "Take It Off" video -- participated in an evening of dance, music and performance at Cheetahs Hollywood, a strip joint known for sassy tattooed dancers and wild Super Bowl Sunday buffets.

Like several strip joints across L.A., Cheetahs is hosting musicians and performing artists to bring in new crowds. Few programs celebrate the concept to such gloriously pleasurable affect as this past Saturday's lineup: the XXX-Mas Pageant boasted a live musical performance by the inventively arousing Actually Huizenga, leather clad crooner Murphy Maxwell, sweater dress grinders Softness (members of Weave!), and a sequined dance finale featuring high kicks and simulated stripping by Sir Heffington & Co.

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