Bold & Beautiful: Baby Gorgeous

Amidst a bustling Main Street – filled with TRAX screeching by and street performers juggling, SLUG Community Development Executive Rosalie Wasser, AKA Baby Gorgeous, sat down to share her passion for all things burlesque and to finally answer the question: What’s the difference between a SLUG Mag employee and a burlesque dancer? “I love feeling like a baddie in my stilettos,” Gorgeous beamed.

Gorgeous captivates crowds with her unique grunge-meets-showgirl aesthetic at Prohibition and Why Kiki, but Baby Gorgeous wasn’t always Baby Gorgeous. Wasser grew up a jazz and ballet dancer, as well as an enthusiastic theater kid. As a child, Wasser dreamed up her own fashion designs by listening to her favorite songs and drawing outfits to match. Clearly, her love of music has been around long before her burlesque stage persona. Wasser’s singing talent blossomed at a young age, alongside her dance skills and love for music; however, she claims to have been a shy kid. Fortunately, theater broke Wasser out of her shell, and now Baby Gorgeous is singing, dancing and dazzling crowds.

In 2020, Wasser took up heels classes where her adoration for the risque was unearthed. “I’ve always loved the raunchier things,” Wasser adds, “like Chicago, Cabaret, Pippin: the kind of dark, sultry vibes.” However, it’s only after Wasser moved from Vermont to Utah in 2023 that her burlesque journey began. A chance to perform onstage was right around the corner for Wasser after her dance teacher sent over an audition for a residency at Prohibition in Murray. 

Though Wasser had never done burlesque before auditioning, she booked the residency. Dancing burlesque at Prohibition would be completely new territory for Wasser, and with new territory comes a new stage name. Wasser chose the name Baby Gorgeous, inspired by the pet name her girlfriend lovingly gave her.

Prohibition has encouraged a lot of growth from Baby Gorgeous: “There’s a lot of very intimate audience interaction,” Gorgeous recounts, “which was really scary at first.” Since beginning her residency at the fine dining restaurant in Murray, the sensational performer remarks she has become much more confident in her dancing and singing skills and in the audience interaction aspect of the performance. Additionally, with the unique setup of the restaurant, Gorgeous is urged to improvise with the crowd, which makes pre-choreographing dances difficult. Alas, Gorgeous is able to expertly feed off the audience’s energy to create entertainment that draws the crowd into her rock and roll burlesque world. 

Between dancing, singing and even a little acting, Baby Gorgeous is never resting. After building confidence at Prohibition, she is ready to throw a new opportunity into the mix. Recently, Gorgeous has been competing in lip-sync battles at Why Kiki in Salt Lake City. “I’ve gained my confidence at Prohibition, but at Why Kiki it’s a new challenge of having to plan things out, getting to choreograph in the studio more and actually come up with concepts rather than improvising everything.”

With only four days to prepare for the lip-sync battles at Why Kiki, Gorgeous says a lot of the preparation is mental. “Going into it, I had no idea what was going to happen. I had never watched one before, beyond watching RuPaul’s Drag Race on TV.” Gorgeous speaks highly of the importance of improvisation and the age-old wisdom: “Fake it until you make it.” 

During the hours when Baby Gorgeous becomes Rosalie Wasser, she works as a Community Development Executive at SLUG Magazine. When asked if there is any sort of similarity between her day and night jobs, she chuckles, “The skills I’ve learned from marketing with SLUG and having to promote myself as a performer definitely have a direct correlation.” So maybe there isn’t such a big difference between a SLUG Mag employee and a burlesque dancer after all? 

Read about other local burlesque performers:
Bold & Beautiful: Violet Ends
Bold & Beautiful: Kolumbia Monroe