Who are they?

The Pussycat Dolls are an award-winning American music, dance and burlesque ensemble founded by choreographer Robin Antin in 1995. It began as a dance troupe based in Los Angeles, was "re-cast" as a music group in 2003, and expanded in 2005 with a parallel troupe at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The group released their first single in 2004, and have gone on to international commercial success.

Biography

1993–2003: dance-troupe beginnings

Sources claim that Robin Antin began exploring the idea of a modern burlesque troupe in 1993 with her friend Linh Le and Christina Applegate (both friends since middle school); the troupe's first performance was in 1995. During this period they performed with numerous guest vocalists (see list below), with a repertoire of '50s and '60s pop standards and dressed in lingerie or old-fashioned pin-up costumes.

They secured a Thursday night residency at Los Angeles nightclub "The Viper Room", where they stayed from 1995 to 2001. In June 1999 Playboy ran a Pussycat Dolls pictorial, featuring at least contemporary members Kasey Campbell, Kiva Dawson, Antonietta Macri, Erica Breckels, Katie Bergold, Erica Gudis and Lindsley Allen. In 2002 they moved to The Roxy. The group became internationally popular and was featured in magazines, television specials for MTV and VH1, ad campaigns, and movies. Some of the Dolls appeared in the 2003 film Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle dancing to "The Pink Panther Theme".

Carmen Electra was the group's lead performer for many of their shows. She said: "I was part of the Dolls for two years and did every show with them... but financially, I couldn't become part of their new music project... It was a financial sacrifice I couldn't make."^[1] She did, however, make a cameo appearance in the music video for "Don't Cha".

With the involvement of music producers Jimmy Iovine and Ron Fair, the Pussycat Dolls were re-cast, transformed into a Pop / R&B recording group, and signed up as employees of Iovine's label Interscope Records.

In 2003, Electra formed another burlesque troupe called The Bombshell Babies, which included ex-Dolls Staci Flood and Nadine Ellis.

(text from Wikipedia)