The Rex & Bella Show follows artist Rex Dingler and burlesque dancer Bella Blue on off-the-beaten-path cultural adventures in New Orleans, meeting eccentric artists, charming musicians, and plenty of other interesting characters along the way. It’s an anti-travel show, encouraging folks who live here to dig deeper into the city’s cultures & subcultures, discovering new things to do, places to eat, and people to meet. Overall, these varied segments form a deeper character study of New Orleans than any work focusing on only one element of the city could.
Bella Blue is one of New Orleans’ most active and accomplished burlesque dancers. She has performed in New York at the esteemed Slipper Room, in Las Vegas for the Miss Exotic World competition, in Chicago for the Twisted Tassel Burlesque Festival, and in various clubs around Los Angeles. New Orleans will always be home, however, and she thrives most on sharing her art on as many stages as possible around the city.
In June of 2008, Bella decided that it was time to start teaching burlesque to the masses and started Burlesque 101. The class is a weekly tutorial on classic (and not so classic) burlesque moves along with light choreography, a warm up, and a cool down. She has taught over 125 women the basics of the art and the class’s popularity grows by the week.
She is also the proud mother of two boys.
Rex Dingler has been a United States Marine, a boat captain, a traveler, and more, but throughout it all he has been drawing and painting. Rex has had artwork on public display in the streets of over 30 countries and 100 cities and his gallery showings have spanned New Orleans, New York, Miami and Tel Aviv.
He is the founder of NoLA Rising, a street art-based grassroots organization that has become an internationally recognized arts activism group currently working to paint the world’s largest sanctioned mural on the Lower 9th Ward levee wall. From New Orleans, Rex has learned to share the message that “art can heal the wounded soul” on the streets of every city he visits.
Believing that arts and activism can actively work together, Rex encourages artists to take an active role in their communities and paint the change they wish to see.
Silent Cinema let us use some of their music for our title sequence and credits. Check out their album in our sidebar, and buy it!