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By Amy Winn
Friday, November 25, 2005
The femme fatale on stage is resplendent, with arresting makeup and a dazzling
costume that’s quite revealing. She dances, she lip-syncs and maybe even
acts out the lyrics. Her appreciative audience claps and hollers.
The emcee, often in drag, tells jokes, introduces the girls and stirs up the
crowd.
Sounds like a typical drag show at your favorite boy bar, right?
Not exactly. This is burlesque. Sometimes called “neo-burlesque”
in deference to the fact it’s a revival and not a wholly new movement,
burlesque combines storytelling, comedy, dance and sex appeal in a style completely
unlike what’s usually considered “adult entertainment.” It’s
naughty-nice, funny-sexy, highbrow-lowbrow.
And more often then not, it’s queer. Not always gay, but almost never
completely straight, burlesque performances inhabit a world of rather fluid
sexuality. What’s more, the shows are often emceed by drag queens.
Rose Wood, who hosts Starshine Burlesque at Rafifi in the East Village about
once a month, says the combination of drag queen emcee and female performers
works because they balance each other.
“Drag hosts represent a contrast to the burlesque ladies, and it’s
better to have a difference,” she says. “There are some straight
male host characters, but some of them are not appreciated by women and gay
members of the audience. It depends on audience’s energy.”
Little Brooklyn, a dancer and promoter for Starshine, says drag humor works
well with burlesque’s over-the-top camp. “The humor of both is very
complementary.”
Specifically about hosting, she says the required skills are “wit, speed,
humor, confidence and the ability to make a quick change based on the situation
at hand. Good drag plus good hosting skills is a combination that has an appeal
I’m not quite sure I can explain. Perhaps it’s because drag allows
everyone in the audience to see a little of themselves in the character? Perhaps
[drag queens] can get away with more because they bend realities? Maybe it’s
just because they look hot?”
In-demand “drag” personality Scotty the Blue Bunny is famous for
his outrageous rabbit-inspired Lycra getups. As an emcee, he works the microphone
as hard as he works his satiny bunny ears, fluffy tail and platform heels.
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| Rose Wood hosts Starshine Burlesque
at Rafifi. |
A veteran of the New York sideshow and burlesque scenes for more than 10 years,
he frequently hosts Saturday night shows at the Slipper Room in the Lower East
Side, among other venues.
Scotty draws close comparisons between female impersonation and burlesque.
“If you are gay and want to perform, you know what to do,” he says.
“You put on a dress and go on stage. If you are a tough-as-nails chick,
you get some pasties, a rhinestone bikini and some feather fans and start performing.
Burlesque gave these girls a nice place. They had a clear idea of what and how
to perform. There are times when I’ll see someone perform and I’ll
say she’s really a comedian. They are called ‘dancers,’ but
there is an opportunity for humor — or horror. Just last week, two girls
‘killed themselves’ in their acts.”
Is burlesque just camp in a different dress?
“Burlesque comes from a gigantic heritage of camp,” Scotty says.
“We might call it ‘camp’ and connote intrinsic gay sensibility.
It’s a co-opted form of camp, but it’s also essentially a straight
scene.”
Or, rather, it is now. Scotty points out the “burley-q” revival
was born, in part, in New York’s gay clubs during the 1990s. (West Coast
burlesque dates back quite a bit further than that.)
He cites Dirty Martini as one example, who was “performing in gay nightclubs
long before she was ever doing burlesque shows, way before there were burlesque
shows every night of the week.”
Scotty also says that many performers are gay or bisexual. But unlike drag
performance, burlesque doesn’t necessarily require a public declaration
of sexuality.
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| Scotty the Blue Bunny |
“The girls are not out. I don’t think they have to be out. It’s
that simple. The symbols of lipstick lesbianism can read as straight. Burlesque
girls are not lesbian performers the way I’m a gay performer. Unless you’re
a gay guy, the audiences are not going to be confronted with that. When they
go to a burlesque show, chances are most of the men they see are queer. Many
audiences don’t know how many gay people they are looking at — and
they are looking at a lot.”
Rose Wood finds this heterogeneous quality appealing. As an emcee, she inhabits
a few drag/TV characters, depending on the venue and evening’s theme.
She portrays a whole range of personas, both male and female, even a closeted
gay nun. She appreciates the inherent variety in burlesque’s performers
and audiences, and believes the theatrical context allows ordinary people to
be more receptive to differences.
“It’s a more integrated audience. I like the possibility that
just about any aunt and uncle from Kansas can walk in, unlike in a gay bar.
Nothing against gay bars, but burlesque is an opportunity to be exposed to wider
range of people. It’s like I’m cutting across to other worlds. Just
exposing people to who you are without getting in their face about queer issues,
you make contact and create understanding.”
Murray Hill, New York’s foremost male persona burlesque host, says burlesque
performances draw a remarkably diverse fanbase, yet satisfy all comers.
“Everybody comes out to the burlesque shows nowadays: the gays, lesbians,
straights, uptown and downtown, you name it.” Hill says. “That’s
what’s so wonderful about the scene — lesbians can goggle over the
gals, the straight guys get worked up, and the gays guys love the outfits. Everyone
comes together, and it’s beautiful. Nobody bothers ya. I love New York
for that.”
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