For two nights in late October, the Ice Bar at Chilkoot Charlie's turns into something closer to a haunted castle. Tasselvania, billed as an all-new dark and spooky show from Frostease Burlesque, promises "a haunted night of nerdlesque, where temptation is immortal" — which is a fancy way of saying the troupe's pop-culture-obsessed striptease is getting a Halloween coat of paint. Doors open at 7 p.m., the show starts at 8 p.m., on Friday, Oct. 23 and Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026.
The headliner is the reason tickets are moving. Lola LeSoleil, billed as Burlesque's Lady of Leg-itude, comes north from Atlanta, where she is an award-winning performer, host and instructor. Her resume is not a local-scene resume. She has been voted one of the Top 100 Burlesque Performers in the world by 21st Century Burlesque Magazine. This year, per the show's announcement, she headlined the What the Funk?! Fest in Seattle and BurleskCon of the Carolinas.
Her origin story has a pleasingly Alaskan-adjacent irony: she traces the whole thing to a childhood trip to Las Vegas, where she watched the dancers of Bally's Jubilee floorshow come down the staircase "glittering from head to toe like living starlight" and wondered whether she could buy one of the 30-pound chandelier headdresses in the theater gift shop. Ten years later she enrolled in burlesque classes in Atlanta and graduated, in her words, "in a cloud of pink feathers, white satin, and applause." She joined the Syrens of the South roster soon after and went on to perform with The Dresden Dolls and Rhinestone Gorilla Burlesque. She now teaches at the Atlanta School of Burlesque and Metropolitan Studios and performs with The Candybox Revue.
Around her, Tasselvania stacks a deep bench of Frostbites — the troupe's name for its members — doing spooky striptease: Busty Sinclair, Ella Haute, The English Muffin, Fallon Thyme, Farley Beefcake, Honey Maybe, Nova Stardust, Panty Cakes and Scotch Rose. There is also a guest turn from Babes Flaming, described in the announcement as "your fiery fever dream."
Frostease describes itself as Alaska's premier nerdlesque troupe, with a philosophy of "nerdy is the new sexy." The distinction matters. Nerdlesque is burlesque built on fandom — comic books, cartoons, video games, sci-fi — and Frostease's performers lean hard into character work and story-driven striptease rather than the classic fan-dance register. The English Muffin, whose tagline is "Your Triple-D Cup of Tea," has been bringing characters to life and getting them naked for more than twelve years, from coast to coast and up and down the Mississippi, including appearances at the North Star Nerdlesque Festival and the International Booklovers' Burlesque Festival. Scotch Rose, "Our Lady of Smoked Sass," is known for original song parodies and smoky slow-burn numbers; Busty Sinclair blends torch singing with vintage glamour. The troupe is a fixture of an Anchorage burlesque scene that has been visibly expanding for a decade — the Anchorage Daily News was already writing in 2016 about the city's "growing number of burlesque groups" and "a tease for many tastes."
The venue is its own attraction. Chilkoot Charlie's opened in 1970 in the remodeled husk of the Alibi Club, the creation of businessman Mike Gordon, who conceived it as an Alaskan theme bar. It grew into a hive-like complex that, as the Daily News put it in 2014, "contains a world of Anchorage history, cultural ephemera and a serious collection of Soviet and czarist memorabilia." An Anchorage Times profile in 1984 called it a "wild and legendary local nightspot" and "a roaring Anchorage late-night tradition." The 60-foot white windmill out front has never actually pumped anything; general manager Doran Powell told the Daily News in August 2026, as the structure came down for restoration, that "here at Koot's, the only thing it ever pumped was money." He added: "Some love us, some hate us. But everybody loves the windmill." A burlesque show in the Ice Bar is, in that sense, squarely in the Koot's tradition — maximalist, a little absurd, and proud of it.
Tickets are general admission at $25 in advance and $30 at the door, with seating first-come, first-served. VIP tickets, which include reserved front-row seating and a special gift, were $40 and are listed as sold out for both nights. For anyone who can't make it in person, there is a live-stream option on Saturday night for $25. LeSoleil is also teaching a workshop in Anchorage on Oct. 25 at Studio 49, the day after the show closes — a hint that this is a full weekend of burlesque rather than a single night out.
What Tasselvania offers, ultimately, is the collision the troupe has built its reputation on: a Las Vegas-polished headliner with a Burlesque Hall of Fame credential, a cast of Alaska performers who take fandom seriously enough to build entire acts around it, and a bar that has been Anchorage's most gloriously overbuilt nightspot for more than half a century. The show is new; almost nothing else about the night is.