With a wink, a shimmy and a seductive glance, the burlesque dancer knows how to work a crowd. From va-va-voom vixens such as
Tempest Storm to modern day pinup Dita Von Teese, burlesque is back, baby! The
trend has been sweeping across the nation over the past couple of years and now
it seems everyone wants to get in on the act. I checked with some of the
hardest working girls on the burlesque scene coast to coast – just to give you
a "tease" of what it's all about.
It’s a Saturday night at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles. An eclectic crowd is gathered for one of the most anticipated shows of the year: the Velvet Hammer burlesque. Decked out greasers with tattoos peeking out from their finest vintage threads, film production stylists, downtown loft artists, Silver Lake rockers, and rockabilly girls fully coifed and red lipsticked into Bettie Page look-a-likes create a crowd as fun to watch as the show itself. The lights go down over the catwalk and the jazz band starts to play. With a brief introduction by a campy vaudeville-style comedian, the first girl is introduced. The crowd explodes with whoops and hollers as she shakes all she's got under a fringy little number that is removed piece by piece until nothing is left but a G-string and pasties. Then she ducks back behind the curtain. A constant stream of dancers follows leaving in their wake: men's hearts a-breakin' and women wanting to join this cool pack of brazenly brave striptease queens.
City by city the burlesque revival is booming. Women are joining troupes to strip down in the style of the early 1900s striptease starlets. Take a look at Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle where the three Angels go undercover as burlesque dancers and it’s clear that the trend of stripping down and camping it up has hit the mainstream.
Once Upon A Time
The roots of burlesque go back to the early 1900s and
reached a frenzy of popularity from the 1930s to the 1950s. It was an art form
based on the tease – a seductive strip, a slow peel of layered-on glamour gear
that was sensual but in a tongue-in-cheek way – seductive yet playful. It was a
lethal combination guaranteed to work gentlemen into a lather. Burlesque was generally known as part of a variety
show, growing out of vaudeville and including a live side band, ribald
comedians and dance numbers as well as striptease. Burlesque starlets rivaled
movie stars in their popularity and self-made glamour. Theirs was a world they
created unto themselves, where ladies such as Tempest Storm and Lili St. Cyr
draped themselves in furs, jewelry to strip down to the finest lingerie in the
country's most opulent theaters.
Burlesque's popularity afforded its stars a lavish lifestyle
well into the '50s until the advent of television, when the population
virtually vacated the theaters to stay home and watch the blue glow of a tiny
box in their living room. It wasn’t until the mid-‘90s that burlesque began to
reemerge, given a boost from the lounge and swing scene that captivated pop
culture and made young America look at its past for kitsch appeal and
inspiration.
"I'm Not A Stripper, I’m a Dancer"
While burlesque is about stripping, it is far different from
the grinding, money-hustling pole dancers thought of in strip bars today.
Burlesque is an art form, pure show biz and most of the originators admit when
hardcore strip clubs began to appear on the scene, they retired from the stage.
Velvet Hammer/Lucha VaVoom producer and dancer Rita D'Albert
makes the distinction between the two types of dance: “A stripper is honed in
separating a man from his cash. It stops being about entertainment and becomes
only about money and turning on the man. Burlesque is about wearing a costume,
expressing yourself and living out a glamour fantasy. It's fun not only for the
men in the audience but also for the women because they can sense it's
empowering."
They may prefer to be known as a "striptease artist" than a "stripper," but there's no doubt burlesque stars of today work hard at their craft, making their own costumes and props, coming up with clever themes that reflect their brazen alter-egos. Some are strict in their presentation, following the exact path of early burlesque starlets, others take it more into the cabaret and modern dance arena. But for any newcomer to striptease, the only place to do research on the history of burlesque is by taking a trip out to the California desert to a little ol' place known as Exotic World.