IN AN ERA when video games are overtaking music sales and leaving their mark on movies, it's little wonder that gaming – be it PlayStation, text-message crowd control, or fantasy baseball – is becoming a serious business. Too serious, no doubt, if you ask Double Dutchess, a four-girl gang who transform their double Dutch rope tricks into skits that send up pop culture and spoof women's roles in particular.

These ladies are breaking out of those preordained positions as observers, supporters, and girls on the side, relegated to the sidelines of cultural – particularly music – scenes and other major productions in life.

Think of D.D. as leaping high and busting through the resistance of art snobs, who don't think kiddie games and performance should mix, or rock 'n' roll fundamentalists, who believe you must play guitar, skateboard, or otherwise "bro out," as put by D.D.'s Valtronic, a.k.a. Valerie Hurysz (who also pounds the keys in Coachwhips), to earn your spot in a scene.

So it was a perfect fit when, two years ago, the Dutchesses staged a faux jailbreak at their first show, opening for Bride of Ozzy and Nate Denver at the San Francisco Motorcycle Club. Outfitted in orange jumpsuits and sleeved with temporary tats, they jumped out of a white van to run through their rope tricks, before being apprehended by a pal costumed as a bicycle cop.

And that was D.D. staging an Esther Williams routine at the Bay Guardian's Best of the Bay party earlier this month, and dressing up as the cast of Cats at this year's Ladyfest Bay Area, complete with a rendition of "Memory" and a hair-ball chaser courtesy of Erin Dougherty, alias Little Girl (who also performs with D.D.'s Jill Herrera/Switchblade in the soft-rock band Cool Nights). Those were the girls gussied up as Depends-clad grannies and passing out Werthers candies, chilling out as frigid bitches for a holiday show, and playing bad Catholic school girls who guzzle tabernacle wine with one hand and molest priests with the other.

"We like to make it more raunchy and funny than, like, sexy and proud," Hurysz says, while Kate Hupp, alias Kate Rock, adds that some of the hardest double Dutch tricks aren't necessarily the most entertaining to watch.

Oh yeah, and there's double Dutch, the impetus for the group to form a scant six months before their first appearance and learn the sport from scratch. It began as a fun, cheap way to get some fresh air and exercise – that, and break dancing demanded far too much muscle tone.

Judging from their witty Flextasy DVD – a parody of sexy aerobics videos, furnished with cheesy beats, skimpy leotards, and pot bellies – it's only a matter of time before their kind of real-girl, real-world game playing becomes as cool as music making, and the simple joys of no-tech entertainment like jacks, hopscotch, and jump rope catch on, encouraging girlie bonding eons away from isolated incidents of tween consumerism and a certain cutthroat and competitive world out there. Who needs to join a band when you can skip and bond? MTV's already on the phone with the Dutchesses. So jump on it.

Kimberly Chun

Double Dutchess's favorite A&E kicks

Music: Anything by Shania Twain

Event: Smoker Tournament (Thai kickboxing or Muay Thai) at Fight and Fitness (fightandfitness.com). The next one is Sept. 25.

Performance: San Francisco Gay Men's Choir

Band: Mirage at the Tonga Room and Hurricane Bar, Wed.-Sun., 8 p.m.

Sports: San Jose Sharks!!!

Entertainment: Watching drunken people make out at the Outlaw Monster Truck Nationals 2004!!!

Visual art: The ladies at the Gold Club

Film: One Night in Paris

Theater: Movin' Out, with the music of Billy Joel, at the Golden Gate Theatre