Gerard
Malanga coordinated the dances for the Velvet Underground and invited Mary
Woronov to be his primary partner onstage. Other dancers would come and go—Ingrid
Superstar, International Velvet, Ronnie Cutrone, Eric Emerson—but Mary and
Gerard were the dance couple that embodied the Velvets’ look. Gerard had
thought about dance routines since the high school days of The Big Beat and more recently when he and Baby Jane Holzer had
danced with the Fugs, introducing a dance called the Gobble. Since early
adolescence he had self-consciously tried to create a “look.” For the Dom shows
he wore skin-tight black leather pants, a Marlon Brando T-shirt, and bleached
hair, and his favorite prop, a whip, became a Velvet signature. One afternoon
at Kenneth Jay Lane’s jewelry studio, Malanga saw studded leather arm bands. “Help
yourself,” offered Lane, and Gerard grabbed several, along with a Celtic cross
and the silver snake choker that John Cale would wear onstage. “The Velvets wore
all KJL jewelry,” said Malanga. “It was very chic.”
