MANILA, Philippines??Can you do that in striptease tempo?? asks Nanette Inventor, rehearsing the disco hit ?Last Dance,? with Monet Silvestre on keyboards, in a Quezon City studio.

Just the thought of Nanette adding erotic moves to the song is funny enough as it is.

?But we?ll be doing straight singing as well,? says Mitch Valdes who, like Nanette, is casually garbed in loose clothes and sneakers.

The rehearsal is for a series of shows dubbed ?Juicy Cat Dolls (No Preservatives),? which opened recently and continues on March 5 at Onstage Greenbelt 1, Makati, and April 17 at the CAP Grand Auditorium, Davao City.

Pilita Corrales and Cynthia Patag complete the ?Juicy Cat Dolls? cast.

No more seasoning

Pilita couldn?t make it to the rehearsal. Cynthia, who?s said to have retired in Iloilo, has agreed to appear as a guest.

?The whole point of the show,? Mitch explains, ?is that we, as women of substance and experience, have so much to give vis-à-vis the trying-to-find-their-way nymphets.?

Nanette offers her own view, playing around with words: ?I feel that we?re in the season of our lives na we don?t need seasoning anymore, because we have been seasoned by our experiences and we have earned respect for our craft ? But although hindi na namin kailangan ng seasoning, there is no such thing as hindi na kami juicy as performers.?

Mitch says the show was conceived by Maximusic (formerly Maximedia, local concert promoter in the 1980s and ?90s), which believes people would like to watch musical comedy revues following the depressing mood caused by calamities last year.

The inclusion of Pilita excites Mitch. This is their first time to work together in a show.

As a young singer in night clubs on Roxas Boulevard in the 1970s, Mitch recalls that her problem then was finding the right clothes. ?I was a macho-looking hippie and had no long gowns and other costumes. Pilita?s brother, Fyke Corrales, lent me clothes. ?Yun lang ang aking emotional link kay Pilita. Ngayon kasama ko sa isang show ang Asia?s Queen of Song.?

Mitch adds that her performing style was patterned after vaudeville stars like Katy de la Cruz, whom she used to see in the company of Pilita.

Nanette and Mitch first worked together in 1984 in the musical comedy show ?Tit For Tat.? Before that, they were in the cast of a local production of ?Three Penny Opera? at the Metropolitan Theater. And way before that, Nanette sang backup for a whole range of pop stars including Celeste Legaspi, Basil Valdez, Carmen Soriano. Anthony Castelo, Rico Puno, Imelda Papin, Eva Eugenio and, yes, Pilita.

Training ground

Nanette loved singing so much, that while studying Foreign Service at the University of the Philippines, she joined the UP Concert Chorus. ?Performing around the world with the group was my training ground,? she recounts. ?Immediately after graduating I landed a job in a government agency pero nag-moonlight ako sa gabi as a backup singer.?

Along with Babsie Molina, Nanette was in a group of singers called Filipina, which was hired as the regular backup for Basil Valdez during concerts.

She became more famous, though, as Doña Buding ? the fictional comic character created by writer-director Jose Javier Reyes.

The eternal mistress

Mitch, on the other hand, came to be known as a different kind of character in her club act. ?I was forever typecast as the eternal mistress,? she says. ?So in ?Juicy Cat Dolls? we have a segment na the mistress of then and now. Ang audience na maghusga ? and of course with the matching songs.?

Nanette says Mitch is an ideal performing partner: ?She?s a good motivator, talaga naman, ang aming adrenalin tumatapon yan. With our goal of making a show beautiful, we motivate each other.?

As she joins Nanette at the rehearsal, Mitch gives a few more clues to what the audience is bound to see in ?Juicy Cat Dolls?: ?I think the lament of people in my generation is that the world out there is so focused on [selling] to the youth market. To keep up means you have to keep up with implants. Parang it never ends. We will poke fun at such scenarios, and show that women of substance have so much to give. That?s why our show is sub-titled, ?No Preservatives Added.??