Diablo Cody isn't the only exotic dancer with her eyes on the prize

DIGS GOLD Diablo Cody kisses Oscar (Photo: Steve Granitz/WireImage)

Could more exotic dancers, so willing to shake it for your dub, actually be using that money to finance artistic pursuits? Perhaps, through the haze of cigar smoke and beneath the layers of makeup, clubs are full of dreamers with well-developed left brains.

To investigate, Radar infiltrated some of New York's most popular strip clubs and found out what artistic aspirations strippers pursue when the lights go up and the clothes are back on.

ASSET COVERAGERandi Newton

Randi Newton was working as an analyst for Morgan Stanley before she quit to become a waitress at Ten's Cabaret. One night, she got drunk and tried her hand at stripping—she hasn't looked back.

Arguably, Newton made the right choice—she made $100,000 last year and now wants to teach her colleagues across the world how they can do the same. She recently left Ten's and now has a literary agent to shop her book, Wall Street Stripper, which she compares to The Game by Neil Strauss. The book will provide business advice for exotic dancers, including how to invest their money and how to file taxes.

"At the end of the day, this is a sales job," says Newton. "It involves more than fake boobs and looking hot. There are no educational books on how to do this well—so I wrote one."

Newton is also a card-carrying SAG member, having appeared in movies such as Mona Lisa Smile and on television in The Sopranos. (She played Donna, a "big-busted" bartender at a strip club—not the Bada Bing.) She's also currently writing several of her own television show treatments to send to major networks and studying at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. "I have a lot to write about," she says. "I have seen some crazy things."

WE THINK HE WORKS OUT Damon Gasparine

Saturday nights at Meatpacking District club Duvet, Damon Gasparine is not supposed to take off his clothes. He usually does anyway. He says ladies love his "great ass," which, as the result of a dare, comes complete with a tattoo of a My Little Pony and Care Bear embracing on his left cheek.

However, if he had his way, Gasparine would dedicate himself full-time to abstract art. He's also working on a stand-up comedy routine.

"My paintings are very stream-of-consciousness," he says. "I also work as steel fabricator during the day, so I'll occasionally do a steel sculpture, if it suits me."

Gasparine says the hardest part about pursuing his art is getting intimidated by others he thinks are better. "I am definitely my own worst critic, but I was just at the Borgata in Atlantic City and was looking at the art on the walls, and I thought mine was better," he says.

He also thought about a career as a tattoo artist, but says it didn't pan out. The problem? "I couldn't erase," says Gasparine.

RUSSIAN DESCENT Ekaterina Sknarina (Photo: Dan Howell)

Ekaterina Sknarina, 29
Katyasknarina.com

2007 was a busy year for Ekaterina Sknarina. She was named Miss Coney Island and the UK's Erotic Performance Artist of the Year—honors that celebrate her skills as a contortionist.

A regular burlesque performer at hipster haven The Box, Sknarina has recently been focusing on styling photo shoots for an array of top publications in the United Kingdom, Europe (including Spanish Vogue), and the United States, as well as commercials for Lysol, Sprint, and everyone's favorite plastic contortionist, Barbie.

"I've always been interested in fashion and costumes," she says. "My mother was a seamstress for ballroom dancers and I watched her work growing up. When I sustained a knee injury and needed a plan B, I knew what I should do."

Last December, Sknarina received her master's in general art from Central Saint Martins in London, and, as long as her body holds out, would like to continue both performing and styling. "I draw inspiration from both, and one helps the other," she says. "It's easy to function in both worlds. It's all staged reality."

RICK'S PICKS Inside Rick's Cabaret. (This rear view does not belong to Beth Aucoin)

When Beth Aucoin—who splits her time between working as an exotic dancer, yoga instructor, and life coach at the Urban Retreat Center—wants to indulge her artistic side, she takes herself out of her 21st-century job at the strip club and into the roaring '20s, '30s, and '40s with swing dancing.

A lifelong jazz music fan—Aucoin recalls repeatedly playing the swing classic "Sing, Sing, Sing" at age eight—it wasn't until a friend convinced her to go to a swing dance club in Pittsburgh in 2000 that she discovered her passion for all things Lindy Hop. Standing on the dance floor, Aucoin realized "this was a place where you could show up by yourself, leave by yourself, and where boys respectfully asked you to dance." She fell in love and kept going back.

In 2003, Aucoin competed at the last minute with a random partner at the U.S. Open Swing Dance Championships and placed ninth, a feat Aucoin considers one of her biggest artistic accomplishments.

She now tries to teach a swing dance class once a week, and says a benefit of her hobby is adding new grinds to those erotic performances: "I'll dance all night onstage—and no one has any idea I'm doing swing dance moves."

ALL THE WORLD'S HER STAGE (POLE OPTIONAL) Lee Ann Patterson (Photo: Karise Allen Photography)

Lee Ann Patterson, 33
HeadQuarters "HQ" (552 West 38th Street)

Most aspiring actresses dream of their big Hollywood break, but for Lee Ann Patterson, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions are where she'd ideally like to hone her craft. "I'm too big for the camera," Lee explains. "I enunciate with my hands and I like hearing the audience reaction. I'm theater-trained, not camera-trained."

Though Patterson received her bachelor's degree in interior design, after entering the field she decided she wanted to refocus her life and perform instead.

"Acting is a linear transition from dancing for me," she said. "I enjoy making an agreement with an audience to not be in this terrible world for a while and to take them somewhere else for a bit."

Having trained at the Ward Studio and Walnut Street Theater, and working as an extra in films like American Gangster, Patterson would like to act until she can fulfill her ultimate dream of opening a youth theater company for boys ages seven to 15 in Camden, New Jersey.

The mother of two sons, Patterson says she would "love to give young men another outlet rather than a gun. I would like to be a light at the end of the tunnel for them, to make the choice easy when it comes to wearing a color or going to college," she says.