In his book about New Orleans called “Feet on the Street,” Roy Blount Jr. offers up a hilarious and devastating critique of modern strip clubs that is best summed up in this wholesome family newspaper with its first line, “Call me cranky, but I don’t understand a lap dance’s allure.”

I have always thought that part of the reason burlesque was resurrected in the 1990s as an art form is that “exotic dancing” had grown so crude and artless.

Where “exotic dancing” seems to be a dancer’s celebration of a man’s desires, burlesque is a dancer’s celebration of self.

Two area burlesque troupes formed in 2010, the first of those being Scarlet Fever.

Its founder, New Haven dance instructor Holly Dodane, says she got the idea to form her own troupe from watching YouTube videos of other troupes.

“It sounds horrible, but I watched them and thought, ‘I can do this,’ ” says Dodane, who goes by the alias Cherry Bomb.

She put out a call on Facebook and Craigslist for like-minded “can-do” women, and the response, she says, was “crazy.”

Almost a year has passed since then, and Scarlet Fever – after a few growing pains and performance pangs – is a fixture on the local entertainment scene.

The term “burlesque” confuses some people, especially people who are old enough to remember the last gasps of the original burlesque craze in the ’50s.

The members of Scarlet Fever are not strippers in the contemporary sense, Dodane says.

“In a town like this, I think that is equated with having no talent,” she says. “This is a performance.”

If you go in looking for “The Full Monty,” you may walk away feeling as if you’ve been teased.

Eventually, you may come to realize that walking away feeling as if you’ve been teased was the whole point.

Clothes do come off in a Scarlet Fever performance, but the reward for a true fan is not the skin but the disrobing.

“Burlesque is the art of the tease,” Stella L'Amore says. “We go down to pasties at the end of the song, say ‘tee hee’ and we’re gone.”

“It’s just a little bit naughty,” Baye LaRouge says.

“It’s cheeky,” Dodane says.

And sometimes it doesn’t involve any disrobing at all.

“We want to make sure every routine isn’t about taking something off,” Dodane says.

Contemporary burlesque can encompass many things: comedy, juggling, circus elements and vintage social dances (the lindy hop, Charleston and shag).

This resurgence is partly rooted in nostalgia for a form of adult entertainment that now seems relatively innocent (and featured better clothes).

After a Scarlet Fever performance, Dodane says, female spectators are just as likely to approach the performers as male ones (another thing that differentiates what the troupe does from strip club fare).

“Women say, ‘I can do that,’ ” she said.

“And some of them say, ‘I want to do that,’ ” LaRouge adds.

L’Amore says Scarlet Fever is composed of “real women from the real world” – moms, nurses and teachers.

She says she was so scared to walk into the audition that she hid in her car for a while.

“I had to call friends to get me in the door,” she says. “But once I saw the boas, I was a happy camper.”

L’Amore says she has spent her whole life in dance and theater but some then-recent weight struggles made her a little apprehensive about participating in the routines she knew she would be called upon to do.

“When I started, I had just gotten out of a serious relationship,” she said. “I had been to hell and back. We have become a support group for each other.”

Indeed, all the women say the troupe has made them more confident with other people and more confident about themselves.

“I always avoided making eye contact with people,” L’Amore says. “Now I look them right in the eye. I don’t give a (expletive).”

“It’s just another way to express myself,” Eva St. Vincent says. “I like to throw myself into things I am terrified of.”

The troupe hopes one day to help empower women in the way the Fort Wayne Derby Girls have done, with successful fundraisers and other outreach programs, Dodane says.

But they are eager to find a corporate sponsor or some other dependable outside funding source.

“We make many of our own outfits, and we don’t have the resources to buy a lot of stuff out of pocket,” L’Amore says.

It’s a struggle, Dodane says, but “the benefits outweigh the stresses.”