Flirting with the Crowd

It began humbly in a 150-seat bar in Sydney, Australia. Hundreds of thousands of tickets later (from Europe to Canada), The Empire Strips Back celebrates its one-year anniversary in residence at the Rio Hotel & Casino/Las Vegas. The night we attended the show —billed as a “Star Wars burlesque parody”— it was a full house and a rowdy, enthusiastic crowd: Part die-hard movie fans, part burlesque fans. All electrified by the stage lighting and the out of this world choreography and the outrageous comedy.

We sat down with Nathan Kara, who plays Han Solo in the show, and chatted about the art of the tease and the joys of live entertainment. Nathan has done it all: Hip hop, male revue, Cirque du Soleil, burlesque… He has mastered the art form, faced the challenges, reaped the rewards.

Playgirl • May 2026.

This journey of yours began in a galaxy far far away. Tell us about those early days.

I grew up in New Zealand –Auckland born and raised. There I started dancing when I was five years old. I think my parents got sick of me just dancing around the house, so they put me into a local dance studio that had a boys-only section called ‘boys dance too.’ At the time, New Zealand was a very sports-orientated country: If you kind of did anything outside the sports, it was a little shunned and so, I think I got really lucky that I got put in with a bunch of these boys. We all learned tap, hip hop, jazz, all the different dance styles and so I did that program from when I was 5 until I was 12. And then I was lucky enough that the boys that I was dancing around got involved in the hip hop dance crews, and hip hop became a lot more common in New Zealand and big hip hop competitions came out as well.

I saw a lot of the older boys kind of formed these dance crews to go and compete and I was like, man I want to do that. So, I got together with my friends, and I formed my first dance group when I was 16, went and competed as well. At first, we weren’t that great, but we had fun doing it. By the time I was 20, we’d end up at the World Championships, winning some gold medals. I got featured on TV shows and TV commercials, I even booked a character role in a feature film. After all of that, I felt I needed to expand my horizons and sort of push the boundaries a little bit more. I lived in Australia for a bit: I booked Magic Mike Live –the first Australian tour. And then Cirque du Soleil decided to book me as a performer and got me out here into Vegas. I’ve been in Vegas for the past four years now.

Speaking of Magic Mike Live, what are the specific challenges of a male revue?

I think there’s an understanding that when you go to a female show or a female strip club or a revue show that men have to behave in a certain way. You’re not allowed to touch the women, you’re not allowed to say anything inappropriate. With Magic Mike we did say, hey don’t yell anything profane, they’ll ask for permission to touch you and if you want to touch them, you also ask permission. But I saw so many times women just assuming they could do whatever they wanted. And so, that was eye-opening to me. I just wasn’t expecting that behavior, you know –especially when alcohol is involved. We weren’t doing lap dances, because it was COVID time. We stayed distant, but they still made the attempt to grab us: Some of the boys were touched and licked… That was different for me to experience, especially because I’ve never done a show that had any crowd interaction.

Let’s talk some more about The Beatles’ Love: You were cast in 2022, were you there when the show closed in 2024?

I was. I was hired as ensemble as well as a backup performer for a solo in the show called ‘The Crazy Lover,’ which was a solo to perform to the song ‘Something.’ Come 2023, unfortunately, the guy who was full-time ended up getting injured and so they gave me the full-time contract for that solo, which was amazing. I’ve never had a solo on that scale before. And then being able to put my own choreography into the blueprint of what was already there on stage. When the show came to close, I was sad because I was really enjoying the role. But it was cool seeing the amount of support. That show had been there for 18 years, I think. We had so many people in those last few months, they would wait outside the theater and we would come out and they would say, oh my gosh, thank you, this is my fifth time coming in 10 years…

The final night, they gave friends and family tickets to everyone who was with the current cast, but also with the previous. So that final performance, the entire theater was packed to the brim—I think it was 2300 seats. All the old performers that had been there before me were there to watch and support. Doing that number and knowing that they were out in the crowd that night watching me do it, the nerves really kicked in. But I’m told they all liked how I made that solo my own. It was a beautiful show for the dance acrobats, for the music, for the lighting. Being able to close it out –maybe I’m biased in saying that– maybe we had the best iteration of the show, just because we had time to iron out those wrinkles after 18 years.

Did you perform any acrobatics in it? Or was it ‘just’ dancing?

When I was hired, they wanted some dance moments, they wanted some theatrical moments, where it was more acting, and then they did want me to include the flips and tricks that I do already. I’m a self-taught acrobat in the sense I can do tumbling and breaking stuff, so they wanted me to include moments like that, and then take it back down to a more of a sensual, emotional connection with the girls.

Finally, American burlesque, which has seen a resurgence in recent years. How would you define burlesque in your own words?

I do have to credit my girlfriend Max. She was a part of Dita Von Teese’s show and prior to watching her, I hadn’t seen a lot of burlesque. Obviously Magic Mike was a revue show and I knew that we’d take off our tops and we’d strip down. But the thing that I learned from Max was the tease element. The tease of ohh, you can’t quite get that and then we have an interaction with this part of the crowd, so that it slowly builds up to the point that then OK, everything’s off and then the lights are gone. The comedy was something that I sort of had to come to understand: Playing this [Han Solo] character, you get to interact with the crowd and he’s supposed to be this raunchy badass kind of dude, but you want him to be appealing to both men and women and so, finding a way to blend the comedy with the tease and the strength in the movement is something which I’m coming to understand and appreciate.

Now I’d watch other burlesque performers across time and I’d notice things that they’re doing in terms of the comedy that leads up to that final moment. Sometimes I see other performances that are supposed to be burlesque and I go, is it really? Because it just seems like you’re dancing and then you take off your clothes and then you just carry on dancing and it doesn’t leave you wanting for more. Because they’d do that reveal and they’d leave and then they’d come back and just kind of do the same reveal in a different song. So now I have more of an understanding and appreciation of that sort of art form –like slowly building up to that final moment and then letting go. You’re taking the audience on a journey with you, rather than just throwing everything at them, if that makes sense.

You mentioned Max. Let’s talk about your relationship with her: How does it work? I mean, being in the same show.

She was doing Magic Mike Live prior to me, here in Vegas, and then she opened the show in Berlin and then with us in Australia. So, she had been with Magic Mike Live for five years. I joined the company, did the tour, we met and once the contract finished, we stayed together and we moved to America. We did different contracts separate from each other: I was doing Beatles’ Love, she was working with Dita. Finally, The Empire Strips Back allowed us to work together again.

We’ve been together almost five years and I think we have an understanding now of how some days you have to leave your personal stuff at the door and go perform. Some days you don’t have a great day and you know the audience doesn’t need to know: They just need to be entertained and so you have to leave it at the door and put on a face and entertain and then pick that problem back up again, when you go back home. But it is really nice to be on the same schedule, because that one can be a little tough when you work the night shift and maybe your partner is working the day, so you just completely miss each other. Or they’re gone for six weeks, six months doing that contract and then they come back into town and then you have to shoot off to do a contract over here.

Han Solo is such an iconic character. Tell us about YOUR Han Solo.

My dad introduced me to Star Wars, so I knew stepping into this role that I wanted to do it justice for all the movie fans. Anyone who comes to see The Empire Strips Back they’re either a Star Wars fan or a burlesque fan and then sometimes they just happen to walk by and they don’t know anything about either thing. But for the Star Wars fans I knew that I wanted to do it justice. You gotta be that space cowboy that is going to flirt with the crowd regardless of whether they’re a guy or a girl. We have people coming to the show in their favorite Star Wars costumes, so I always keep that in mind and since booking this, I’ve gone back and rewatched the films, just to like remind myself of certain mannerisms and characteristics.

You’re the first male dancer to come out on stage. What does that mean in a show driven by female dancers?

A little bit of pressure. In the sense again of the Star Wars fans who want to see Han done well. Then you also have the burlesque fans who maybe came expecting just to see women and then you also have the men who just wanted to see the ‘titties,’ as we say backstage. But then I come out and, you know, I’m dancing in front of them and taking the attention away from these women… I take it as a challenge to try and win those people over. There are some raunchy moments, but then there’s also the comedy moments –especially when I come out with Chewy and we have a Han and Chewy number. We want to try and find the guys in the crowd and see if we can make them laugh, because there’s a lot of guys who will just be sitting there deadpanned or just trying to look away from us. Different people want different things. That’s why we have so many different looks and heights and body types on stage, because you’re never going to be able to appeal to every single person. Some people are going to like you for the way you look or the way you dance, some people aren’t going to like you and there’s nothing you can do about that.

Looking back at your journey in showbiz—hip hop, male revue, acrobatics, burlesque— what stands out?

It’s kind of proven to me that people still enjoy live entertainment, you know. In a world where we’d have a lot more entertainment on our phones and on TV and you have the opportunity to stay at home, the fact that people are coming out to fill the theaters and having a couple drinks with their friends means that the theater is very much alive. We spend our entire careers, our entire lives since 5 or 15—I just turned 30 and so I’ve been doing this for a little while: I went pro at 16, so it’s been 14 years of professional dance work—and as much as our ego wants to get involved you need to remind yourself that the crowd doesn’t really care, they just want to have a good time. And so, no matter how you’re feeling that day about yourself, you just have to go out there and try and entertain. Those are two things that I’ve kind of learned being in the live theater space. Here at Empire the crowd is so close to us that you can see people’s reactions in real time—they’re reacting to what you’re doing and you connect with them and make eye contact and let them know that you see them. We are here in this live theater where I see you and if you’re going to give me a good interaction, then I’m going to keep coming back to you.

What’s next for Nathan?

I just turned 30. When I was living in New Zealand, we didn’t have a massive industry there. You didn’t have a consistent job as a dancer and so, I always thought that my career as a dancer would be over by 27. I ended up booking Magic Mike when I was 25 and then I came here and I was doing Beatles’ Love into the end of my 20s and so now I have a different understanding of the fact that my career can continue as a live performer, especially living here in Vegas.  Vegas is unique: Like New York and maybe London, they’re the only places that I’ve experienced where performers can have long term careers, you know, up until their 40s. They can have children, because you have consistent schedules; you’re able to support a family; you’re able to look after your body a lot more than if you’re jumping on the road for six weeks and then you’re on the tour bus and then you’re on a flight.

That being said, I might be looking for a possible change of pace, maybe something where I do go on the road for a little bit and then come back. I’m definitely going to be here at Empire for the next little while, because Max is still going to be here and I’m enjoying what I’m doing. But coming up to my 31st birthday, I think I do want to try and shift the lifestyle a little bit. And then at some point I would like to get into acting and the screen stuff.

As much as my body could still keep going , my knees and my back are starting to remind me that hey, you know, there’s a lot more maintenance that goes into it, if you still want to keep doing those flips and tricks that you were doing 3 or 4 years ago. The thing that Max and I say to each other is that you have to take it one day at a time, one week at a time in this industry. I thought I had a set job with Cirque du Soleil and then we found out three months prior to the show closing that it was going to close and it was like a whole lifestyle change. And then I was fortunate enough to be offered this contract, and I’ve been here a year now. We love it and obviously the audiences seem to enjoy it, but you just never know.

Full backstage on PLAYGIRL+