“Mickey” songstress keeps close Vegas ties

Leila Navidi

Toni Basil poses during The Showgirl Must Go On VIP red carpet event after Bette Midler’s show outside Pure Nightclub at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas Wednesday, February 20, 2008.

By Sarah Feldberg (contact)

Thursday, June 18, 2009 | 1:53 a.m.

Homegrown: Toni Basil

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Las Vegan Toni Basil became well-known for her 1982 Billboard hit, "Mickey." Today, she's the choreographer for the Bette Midler Show at Caesar's Palace and in July will receive the Legends of Hip Hop honor from the World Hip Hop Dance Championship.

Twenty-seven years after Toni Basil’s chant-song “Mickey” reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts, the homegrown Las Vegan still has the red, white and blue cheerleader’s uniform she wore in the iconic music video.

“The Hard Rock Cafe asked for my cheerleader sweater, but I’m not ready to give it up yet,” says Basil, and she’s not just holding onto it because she likes the cut of the skirt.

The famous outfit that Basil paired with pigtails and pompoms for “Mickey” has sentimental value for the Las Vegas High grad: It not only helped launch her career, it was her high school varsity cheerleading uniform.

While she’s not on the top of the charts right now, Basil is never far from the spotlight. The petite performer is an expert choreographer who did Tina Turner’s most recent tour and has worked on films like “Legally Blonde” and “That Thing You Do” and on a spate of music videos.

While many people don’t realize it, Las Vegas audiences have spent the last year and a half admiring Basil’s work. She is the dance director and choreographer of Bette Midler’s “The Showgirl Must Go On” at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

“Bette and I have worked together since the mid-‘70s,” Basil says, “so we kind of know our process.”

For “The Showgirl Must Go On,” the old friends searched through footage of diverse styles of dance to create a production that jumps from ballet to street dance sometimes within the same song.

“We just start researching ideas and going through old MGM musicals and their clips and all sorts of crazy things we find on YouTube. ... I think we took over a year to develop (the show) and rehearse it.”

While Basil names Ed Sullivan, Moms Mabley, Busby Berkeley and the Nicholas Brothers as influences on her choreography for “The People’s Diva’s” Las Vegas show, her work is a more of a melding than an homage.

“As the show evolves, it never looks like what our first inspiration was,” Basil explains. “It’s just a push that sends us off.”

In Basil’s own life, the push that sent her into music and dance came from her parents, both Las Vegas performers who instilled in her a love for show business from a very young age.

Before Las Vegas was the entertainment mecca it is today, Basil grew up in what was essentially a small town. “It was just the Sands and the DI (Desert Inn); it was desert,” she said.

Basil’s father was the orchestra leader at the Sahara and her mother’s relatives were “comedian acrobatic dancers. They had about a five-minute act, and they did a lot of backflips and comedy.”

As such, even before she was old enough to go to school, Basil was comfortable performing. Hanging out at her father’s shows at the Sahara, performers like Pearl Bailey would pull the tot on stage.

“I grew up in show business, so I always knew I was going to be a dancer or a performer. I knew that was my business,” Basil says.

In 1982, business took off. As music videos approached their heyday, Basil was signed to a European record company to do a video album: seven songs and seven videos, one album ready for radio play and MTV rotation.

“I was looking around for ideas, and I just always remembered the sound of (the cheerleaders and I) in the gymnasium stomping on that floor and chanting and the echo.”

After donning her Las Vegas High uniform and inserting a chant into the playful song, “Mickey” was born.

“The record company wasn’t so sure it was such a good idea to put a chant into a song, and I said, ‘Let’s use it in the video and then if you ever release the song and you don’t like the chant, you can take it out.’

“Now, everyone knows the chant and hardly anyone knows the song.”

While cheerleading was a huge influence on Basil’s choreography circa “Mickey,” her passions run more toward the ever-advancing world of street dance.

Basil still takes daily dance classes from instructors like the Jabbawockeez’s Jeff “Phi” Nguyen and choreographer Lil’ C, and follows the development of street dance closely via YouTube clips (“Thank you, YouTube!”), shows and friends in the dance community.

This August, the former member of pioneer locking group the Lockers will receive the Legends of Hip Hop honor from the World Hip Hop Dance Championships, which will take place July 28 through Aug. 2 in Las Vegas.

For Basil, another trip to Las Vegas is a welcome homecoming. Regular visits have been an added benefit of working with Midler on “Showgirl.”

“My friends are still my friends,” says Basil. “[Las Vegas has] grown and changed, as all of us have, but it’s still the same. I stay in a house when I’m here that’s three minutes from where I used to live and five minutes from Las Vegas High.”

And decades after graduation, LVH cheerleading still defines Basil to people who think of her rah-rah persona in the “Mickey” video every time her name is mentioned.

While some performers would try to shrug off such a legacy, Basil, totally enamored of dance and her work, doesn’t let it bother her.

“'Mickey' is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a one-hit wonder,” she says with a smile. “I don’t mind having a one-hit wonder as long as I have a career in show business, which has been fabulous.”