Glitterin' Dramaturgy: Tom Harlow @ Southside Fringe

What was the inspiration for this performance?

Glitter and Grind Revue is inspired by golden era cabaret and Burlesque shows. We wanted a mixture of Burlesque and variety along with comedy, skill based performers as well as highly trained dancers and striptease artists.

How did you go about gathering the line up for it?

Myself and Kim both have been performing in Scotland a fair while now so we wanted to have the best Scotland has to offer along with one out of towner as our headliner. Scotland has alot of high calibre cabaret acts and we also know alot of these people personally and as close friends so we found it easy to book for this show.

How did you become interested in cabaret and burlesque?

I have always been a performer at heart from a very young age. I originally trained a singer, mainly doing classical and musical theatre. Then I trained in musical theatre and that's when I ended up in burlesque and cabaret surprisingly enough. I auditioned for Club Noir in 2010 and I won the audition. The prize was to perform at the O2 Academy in Glasgow to over 1000 people on Dec 4th 2010. Before that I had a huge love of musical and golden Hollywood cinema so that was my only knowledge of Burlesque and vaudeville but I had also a love affair with the 20s through to the 50s aswell. So maybe it was fate I've ended up where I am, who knows.


Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

I'm music led usually but I am also inspired by many other different types of stimulus. I have different interest that inspire me diary but mainly for my burlesque acts I am inspired by the women of the golden era of Burlesque. These strong independent women who forged career and exciting paths all while looking glamourous and unapologetically fabulous.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

We are hoping the audience will be entertained first and foremost but also see what  a range of variety and high class acts Scotland has your offer as well as the UK. We want them to leave their troubles outside, turn off the phone and live in the glittery moment with us and create some great memories of a night out that won't be forgotten.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

We took into consideration the shows we have worked on before separately as well as what we've experience as audience members and as performers. Myself and Kim have both performed at many different shows and we can easily see what works and what doesn't from that.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

I see what we are trying to recreate as paying homage to the good old fashioned cabaret of a by gone era. We have songs, dance, comedy, variety and striptease with added doses of camp, fun and glitter. Myself and Kim both have a passion for the traditional golden era burlesque and cabaret so we hope that shows.




LINEUP: 

HAVANA HURRICANE 
Havana is a shimmy shakin' , earth quakin' whirlwind of an international burlesque sensation. She is currently #29 in the Burlesque Top 50 performers of the world and #5 in the UK top 20. Havana has literally taken the world by storm having performed all over the UK, Europe, America and Australia this bombshell will captivate you and have you eating out of her hand, she is a force to be reckoned with!

TOM HARLOW 
This international dirty showboy with be your chanteur and MC for the evening bring his unique blend of showtunes & FILTH! 

KIM KHAOS
The Glass girl from Glasgow and co - producer of the Glitter & Grind Revue will be teasing for your delight. This multi talented and skilled ecdysiast has graced some of the UK's best loved stages and will have you bewitched by her beguiling ways. 

LEGGY PEE & CHARLIE MONTGOMERY 
Cabaret's most glamourous yet odd couple with be soothing your soul with their sweet melodies. Leggy and Charlie are the UK's most loved duo and always add a little sparkle and twinkle to the night that will surely have you singing along all night. 

MARKEE DE SAW 
Cabaret's one woman weimar wonder with a tongue as sharp as her saw and more sass than Mae West could have ever hoped for. She will have you swoon then gasp and finally leave you begging for more. 

JACK SQUAT
From the mouth of Brahma came the 1st puppeteer; from the mouth of madness came Jack Squat. He brings your worst nightmares into full glorious technicolour but all wrapped in a child like whimsy. 

TOOTSIE ANNIE

She is your rockabilly rebel and the perfect pinup just waiting to cause a scandal. She is a rising star on the Scottish scene and beyond and is sure to win you over with her winning smile and sultry yet scandalous striptease. 

Grindin' Dramaturgy: Kim Khaos @ Southside Fringe

Kim Khaos and Tom Harlow present The Glitter & Grind Revue, a burlesque and cabaret extravaganza starring the creme de la creme of variety and burlesque. 

Join us as we hark back to the golden era of cabaret with the most glittering acts Scotland has to offer and beyond with the launch of Glasgow's newest and most fabulous night The Glitter & Grind Revue. 

We shall also be having a fabulous raffle, and dressing up is highly encouraged! So bring out your glad rags and find your most fabulous frock because it always pays when you dress to impress. 


What was the inspiration for the evening?

The Glitter & Grind Revue harks back to a forgotten age of illicit cabaret - we are bringing the creme de la creme of the Scottish and international cabaret circuit to the heart of Glasgow. We also wanted to bring a big show back to Glasgow - aside from the wonderful Gatsby Club the large scale productions have all but disappeared from our scene so we're bringing it back, baby!

How did you go about gathering the line up for it?

Tom and I have worked together for a long time and have discussed the idea of a big show a lot, so when the Southside Fringe put the call out, we decided to finally put our money where our mouths were and do it. We've worked with so many incredible performers within Scotland and across the country, so it was really a case of matching up everyone's skills into a cohesive and explosive line up!

How did you become interested in cabaret and burlesque?

I started producing small burlesque shows for charity when I was 18 and just fell in love with the art form. From there, I started producing stand alone shows and hosting them and working at other shows. It was at Dolly Tartan's La Cheetah shows that I felt most at home and on my 20th birthday I stepped on stage with Dolly herself and performed a burlesque double act and lo Kim Khaos was born!

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

I can get inspired by the most bizarre things! A lot of my acts are

based on movies of people - for example two of my core acts are based on the works of Tarantino and Elizabeth Taylor respectively. I also find inspiration in nature and have an upcoming act based on the beautiful Quetzal bird of the Amazon. 

It's all of these quirky elements and inspiration that we have put into the show - no two acts are the same and have their own unique inspirations - what unites everything is the high quality and polish of each performer - they're all incredible.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

We hope the audience experiences all of the fantastic things our wonderful mad, bad glittery world of cabaret has to offer! It's an opportunity to escape from the more mundane aspects of 'real life' and just kick back and be entertained for a couple of hours. We're highly encouraging people to dress up and make themselves feel as fabulous as we know they all are!

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

We have hand picked each performer and the acts that they will be doing on the night, so we have every confidence in the strength of our line up. The performers are all of the highest caliber and will charm and delight the audience with their fantastic skills! We are also putting together some finishing touches to the venue to make it as opulent as we can to add to the atmosphere of grandeur!

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

As Tom has mentioned, we have based the foundations of this production on the old school variety/cabaret shows of the past and hope that we can create a similar atmosphere of excitement, shock and awe held by those kind of shows. Above anything else we want our audience to have a fantastic time and leave with a smile on their faces.

LINEUP: 

HAVANA HURRICANE 
Havana is a shimmy shakin', earth quakin' whirlwind of an international burlesque sensation. She is currently #29 in the Burlesque Top 50 performers of the world and #5 in the UK top 20. Havana has literally taken the world by storm having performed all over the UK, Europe, America and Australia this bombshell will captivate you and have you eating out of her hand, she is a force to be reckoned with!

TOM HARLOW 
This international dirty showboy with be your chanteur and MC for the evening bring his unique blend of showtunes & FILTH! 

KIM KHAOS

kim-khaos-by-mark liddell

The Glass girl from Glasgow and co - producer of the Glitter & Grind Revue will be teasing for your delight. This multi talented and skilled ecdysiast has graced some of the UK's best loved stages and will have you bewitched by her beguiling ways. 

LEGGY PEE & CHARLIE MONTGOMERY 
Cabaret's most glamourous yet odd couple with be soothing your soul with their sweet melodies. Leggy and Charlie are the UK's most loved duo and always add a little sparkle and twinkle to the night that will surely have you singing along all night. 

MARKEE DE SAW 
Cabaret's one woman weimar wonder with a tongue as sharp as her saw and more sass than Mae West could have ever hoped for. She will have you swoon then gasp and finally leave you begging for more. 

JACK SQUAT
From the mouth of Brahma came the 1st puppeteer; from the mouth of madness came Jack Squat. He brings your worst nightmares into full glorious technicolour but all wrapped in a child like whimsy. 

TOOTSIE ANNIE
She is your rockabilly rebel and the perfect pinup just waiting to cause a scandal. She is a rising star on the Scottish scene and beyond and is sure to win you over with her winning smile and sultry yet scandalous striptease. 

DOORS OPEN 7.30PM 
SHOW STARTS 8PM 

Early bird tickets = £8 
(available till April 30th)
Advance tickets = £10
Price on the door = £12

Three from MC Mad Cyril.

Sorts an geezas, Mad Cyril cummin atcha
Like the re-animated corpse of Margret Thatcha.
Top tips fer the arts and assorted shows,
Got more tunes than Mike Reid's calypsos.

First up this week, wun from the con-serv-a-toire
That's the place gone royal with a capital R.
If ya taste is fer actin motion
The poster's got a pictah of a tasty ocean.

If a night o featre ain't ya fing
I got somefing else might make ya swing.
Classy birds in corsets and a fella eatin fire
Gotta make it worth ya while to visit Ayr-shire. 

Dahn in the smoke, they got a cheeky lil treat
That one off Brookside in a meet and great.
He swings a coupla numbas, champagne, meal and show.
Ee don't look old enuff to be let in a casino. 

FEAST YOUR EYES! A sexy fundraiser for food.

There are two things in life that I can't do without: sexy wrestlers and food. It was only a matter of time before someone brought them together - and added Glasgow's greatest rapper, The Wee Man, as a side-dish. 

SUNDAY 19TH OCTOBER The Admiral Bar
Doors 7.30/Show 8pm

FEAST YOUR EYES! A sexy fundraiser for food.

Following all the excitement of the Referendum, the cabaret and wrestling and burlesque and magic and sideshow and comedy communities have teamed up to ' use all that energy and hope and sexiness and turn into into a fundraiser for the incredible, independently run Greater Maryhill Foodbank.'

I not sure I agree with the next line -  'the words sexy and fundraising don't often go hand in hand' - since fundraising has long been the best chance for activists to meet the non-ideological love of their lives. However, the good cause is matched by the quality of the performers.

IMPORTANT INFO

Entry only 5 SMACKEROONIS adv!

DRESS CODE: BE SEXY! DRESS UP, DRESS TO IMPRESS.

THERE WILL BE A PRIZE FOR THE BEST DRESSED COUPLE ♥

Bring non-perishable food items, we are having a raffle with very sexy prizes, you can swap each food item donated for a raffle ticket!

The GMF especially needs:
Toiletries, Coffee, Sugar, Fruit juice (carton), Pasta sauces
Sponge pudding (tinned), Tomatoes (tinned), Cereals, Rice pudding (tinned) ,Tea Bags/instant coffee, Instant mash potato, Rice, Tinned meat/fish, Tinned fruit, Jam, Biscuits or snack bar....many other non perishable healthy food items. IF POSSIBLE NO DRY PASTA OR SOUP AS THEY HAVE PLENTY AT PRESENT.

STARRING
Morrigan Hel
Lottie Kixx
The Wee Man 

Legendary rapper and comedian, also a bit handy in the wrestling ring.
Miss Hell's Belle

A familiar face and physique on the burlesque scene, mistress of the Gatsby Club and a sinister delight.
Chris Dinwoodie

Once he was a computer programme, but in 2007 turned to the less arcane mysteries of magic.
Leggy Pee and Charlie

The dreamy duo, led by Charles Montgomery, a roue who could tell you a thing or two about what really goes on during luxury cruises.
Snookie Mono

You won't believe what he can do with a balloon or a sword. 
Tom Harlow

He sings, he dances, he is the slim sultan of boy-lesque.
Kim Khaos

Anarchic and darkly sensual burlesque.
Tootsie Annie

As seen at Pride Scotland
Timm Wylie and Mikey Whiplash(PRO wrestlers)
The Owen twins(ICW and British Boot Camp)

All pretty handy in the square circle

Rachel Renegade and Charlie

Glamour and weaponry together at last...

Does this matter in 2014?

After ten years of revival, has Cabaret finally gained critical legitimacy?

FEATURE BY GARETH K VILE.

PUBLISHED in the shimmy 06 AUGUST 2010

Coming from a circus and New York City Live Art aesthetic, The Wau Wau Sisters are tired of the burlesque tag. "Originally, a burlesque was a three act play, satirical and political," they say. "Now, it just means women taking their clothes off."

The cabaret revival is now in its fifth year - tenth according to the sisters, from an American perspective. Crippled by a lack of critical respect, and sometimes appearing to be self-supportive community rather than a challenging art form, most critique consists of bland statements and lazy truisms.

The Wau Wau Sisters, inspired by Obama but grappling with the reality if slow change, have added the Last Supper as a theme for their Assembly show as a dynamic theme alongside their mixture of rigour and mayhem.

"The train wreck is our friend," they insist as they prepare to provoke the tasteful tassel-twirlers who dominate UK burlesque.

Ahead of Sarah Louise Young's plot to give cabaret its own section in the Fringe brochure, an explosion of shows are claiming its influence, and the definition of cabaret becomes complicated. Whether it is Luluat the Zoo, with a cabaret band and a defined period drama, the variety assault of the Bongo Club, the polished finesse of Blonde Ambition’s Ghillie Dhu take-over or the twisted irony of flame songstress Camille O’Sullivan, cabaret has become a buzzword.

It can be a by-word for sloppy technique and feel-good exhibitionism, historical revisionism, a genuine interest in relating the past to the present, a variety show format, anything involving nudity, knowing satire or talented artists reworking traditional vaudeville. British, American and European strands combine and fuse: sometimes it is fundamentally sexy or saucy, other times it is funny or spectacular. The original burlesque revival, as pioneered in Scotland by The Academy of Burlesque and Cabaret, has divided into a rump of night best described as “community orientated” and a powerful professional cadre of excellence.

The producer is increasingly vital: a good cabaret is often defined by intelligent programming and not a wishful evocation of atmosphere through vintage clothes and corsets. Blonde Ambition and Itsy’s Collective prove how a strong editorial vision coalesces into a bracing evening. The battle between cabaret as a token influence and a distinctive genre will be fought across this year’s Fringe.

The best cabaret merges diverse traditions to expose social, political or personal ideology through technical skill, satire, sexiness and slapstick. The worst panders to audiences, repeats a limited movement vocabulary in different costumes and stereotypes, excusing lack of imagination with a vague rubric of self-empowerment.

The variety format contains both: only visionary production and a skilled compere can resolve the tension. Blonde Ambition thrilled the Voodoo Rooms last Fringe with Ministry of Burlesque’s High Tease: this year, their Vive Le Cabaret is the Pleasance’s flag-ship, promising a rich lineup. Held together by Des O’Connor’s musical theatre showmanship, and plucking a cast from the best of the Fringe, they cater to the high end of the market.

Kitty Cointreau’s Brahaha is a comedy-vaudeville hybrid. It collates both classic acts and new blood, and is the first Zoo venue variety show. Against this youngster, The Bongo Club Cabaret, designed by Glasgow’s Rhymes With Purple, is the godfather, guaranteeing a rotation of top notch acts. 

For a tougher edge, try the Free Fringe’s Kabarett at the Voodoo Rooms. Amanda Palmer is a former guest, while Itsy’s Collective promise a new format and an opening show that includes the Tiger Lilies. 
These shows all share rotating casts: not about scenes or individual artists, they depend on overall atmosphere and creative booking. They also offer great value, as performers sell their own shows through a rapid-fire guest slot. 

The other cabaret strand consists of performers who come from a theatre, dance or comedy background, but take up cabaret as a motif. Bryony Kimmings was slipping between genres, before deciding that although “the word was laden with almost negative expectations, in its purest sense it fits for me.” DespiteSex Idiot being a one-woman show, and leaping across Live Art and comedy boundaries, the combination of styles suggested cabaret.

This adoption of cabaret as a definition is more explicitly stated by Company Chordelia. Best known for radical dance, they follow the footsteps of The Featherstonehaughs and Cholmondeleys with a cabaret inspired performance. From the other direction, the ubiquitous Des O’Connor teams with Sarah Louise Young and Mr B to forge a show from their vaudeville stylings.

O’Connor was involved in The Mating Ritual, one of the strongest shows to merge narrative and variety: adding a company feel, and linking each routine, as echoed in more theatrical offerings like Dramaten’s Freakshow. But even a solo show- like A Picture of Dusty Limits - can unite material towards a common end, while drawing on the cabaret tradition.

Quite often, the word cabaret just means that the company fancy hitting a zeitgeist, or have incorporated different techniques into their script. A desperate attempt at the fag-end of last year saw a random burlesque shoved into a mediocre play, while this year, Tales From A Cabaret sees The Creative Martyrs reveal a mastery of both physical theatre and twisted vaudeville. And, of course, The Wau Wau sisters will be exploring the territory between laughter and terror, for audience and performers. 

Burlesque- it is a concrete response to false ideas of glamour and taste, isn't it?

FEATURE BY GARETH K VILE.

Previously published in the skinny, 25 MAY 2010

Yeah, baby, I like it raw. If there’s no blood on the stage by the end of act two, I’ll slit my own wrists and flick the bleeding at you. If it doesn’t have a moment where I’m scared half to death, feel intense personal guilt or expect the dancer to fly off into the orchestra pit and shatter their ankle, I’m disappointed.

Burlesque presents me with a contradiction: even at its roughest and most amateur, it celebrates a degree of artifice, of pretence and control that denies my need for authentic emotional connection and challenges my feminist worries about the exploitation of the female body. There is always a residual guilt when I watch burlesque that it romanticises degradation and poeticises a vulgar male gaze. When I watched the recent video of the Crazy Horse Club in Paris, the drilled, emotionless chorines were an object lesson in how dull titillation can be. The choreography pandered to the laziest of assumptions about the value of nudity and the 'artistic' lighting is a fig leaf for a lecherous decadence. By the time Dita Von Teese was paddling around in a champagne glass, my male guilt was hitting the ceiling.

But this wasn’t what I had thought of as burlesque: I’d heard about it from American reviews and performers like Dirty Martini, who snapped together striptease’s ambiguous glamour with a sharp, even political bite. There were the Dragon Ladies, leering from the cover of Headpress magazine. My first Scottish burlesque shows included a stunning transformation from devil to angel from Cat Aclysmic, Vendetta Vain’s tortuous foot-binding routine and a melancholic fan dance by Beatrix Von Bourbon. The audience was predominantly female, supportive and communicative – itself a far cry from the male-dominated spaces of strip-clubs.

Vendetta’s foot-binding piece – one of many wherein she works classic moves with an austere intelligence is a sharp contrast to Kalani Kokonuts’ oriental burlesque. One of the stars of Immodesty Blaze’s rather self-important Burlesque Undressed, Kalani talks new age psycho-babble before incorporating old fashioned stereotypes into a routine. Kalani seems to revere the classic burlesque to such an extent that she has forgotten to ask questions about the stereotyping of nationalities. Vendetta, on the other hand, retains the glamour while unearthing a bitter truth about the beauty myths behind it.

The trite defense that burlesque is feminist because there happens to be some male strippers these days doesn’t bear close examination: it is in the rough play of the edgier acts that the debate heats up. The association of burlesque with striptease is an accident of history. Throughout its history, it has been about parody and the erotic content is one aspect of its aesthetic arsenal. As Live Artists like Annie Sprinkle can testify, it’s a powerful weapon. Like loud music, sexuality cuts across polite responses, polarizing opinion and offering an immediate, visceral thrill.

Immodesty Blaze points out that she is not empowering merely by stripping: performers less obsessed with the expense of their head-dresses use striptease to gather attention, before delivering a sharp point. Cat Aclysmic suggest a third way between uptight conservatism and literal bar-burning – her Suffragette routine incorporates her considerable fire-handling skills to present a wry message.

It is inevitable that any collision with the mainstream will privilege the simplest aspects of burlesque. The mainstream is, after all, obsessed with celebrity. Fortunately, burlesque has had long enough to create its own communities, which are generous and inclusive enough to exist outside of commercial strictures, at least to some extent. Their strong connection to events like Torture Garden gives it a dangerous, visceral edge and allows space for talent to evolve and make good on the promises of empowerment.

At the same time, the growth of burlesque writing gives the community the power to define itself, to deconstruct notions of taste, ideology and genre. Artists like Marisa Carinsky have the intellectual fire-power to draw on academic theory and settle burlesque’s status as a serious performance art, one that can achieve those same moments of emotional recognition as the best of Ibsen.

Burlesque: it's just a bunch of women posing on stage, isn't it?

Previously published in  the Skinny

FEATURE BY GARETH K VILE.

PUBLISHED 25 MAY 2010

Yeah, baby, I like it raw. If there’s no blood on the stage by the end of act two, I'll slit my own wrists and flick the bleeding at you. If it doesn't have a moment where I’m scared half to death, feel intense personal guilt or expect the dancer to fly off into the orchestra pit and shatter their ankle, I’m disappointed.

I loved burlesque when I first encountered it, over the back of the head of my ex-girlfriend who had banned me from even mentioning it for eighteen months. It was a community – the performers, the promoters, the audience, were the same people. It lacked the legitimacy of Arts Council Funding, it turned up at fetish clubs and every theatre company was trying to quote it for a moment of street credibility. Besides, there was plenty of naked flesh, male and female, and acts like Vendetta Vain’s footbinding routine were firing off in about eight directions at the same time: she just had to walk on stage and assumptions about sexuality and power were hitting the ceiling.

Eventually, I got around to watching an undisputed legend of neo-burlesque, Dita Von Teese. Her recent DVD, Live At the Crazy Horse, was incomprehensible. Apart from exposing her limited range as a dancer – she just floats around and poses – it smacked of bourgeois entertainment that seeks to hide eroticism behind taste. And the Girls of The Crazy Horse came across like some bizarre nude comment on mechanical reproduction – identical, disciplined and wearing their nudity like a suit of armour.

It got worse when I saw Modesty Blaze’s Burlesque Undressed. Apart from featuring a bunch of modern stars of burlesque, who were adrift in some parallel fantasy world of incense and good vibrations, the whole performance came down to the size of Modesty’s budget. It’s what the Japanese call “cosplay”: all costume, no content.

Then we have the theatre critic of the Guardian reviewing the All New Hurly Burly Show. Apart from the dubious attempt to categorise burlesque as striptease – has he been to a stripclub lately? – it fails to notice that these large scale burlesque shows are tamed erotica, a conflation of celebrity worship and glamour excluding burlesque’s satirical spirit. Only whereas the best burlesque has a bite – Cat Aclysmic’s Suffragette throws up questions about feminism’s relationship to striptease, even if it refuses to answer them definitely – this cosplay is posing in flash outfits.

In the film, Modesty says that she is empowered by performing, but not stripping. Fine: but it is where she gains her power that is the problem. Rather than using the medium to make points, or connect to the cabaret tradition that has a strong engagement with ideas of decadence and normative behaviour, she just laps up the audience’s adoration. By doing this, she establishes a dominant ideal of burlesque – it’s cheeky, but harmless. Its heritage is made safe, contained.

I can't forget that the current neo-burlesque revival was inspired by some hardcore riot grrls, and calls up the ghosts of an era of vicious exploitation. It grew from a grassroots movement, made its own space. Modesty and Dita may have been there at the start, but they are diluting the product. Worse than that, by entering the mainstream, they are defining burlesque as something glossy.

Back to the Guardian review:, Michael Billington says “this isn't burlesque”, before delivering a cheap line about the celebration of the female form. I am sure he is trying to be post-modern and hip, but in telling a performer what she is doing, he crosses the line between critic and school teacher. And when he says that “it makes a change from Ibsen”, he is missing the point that both Ibsen and cabaret have the potential to evoke that precious moment of recognition in the audience.

Daughters of Lot, Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2012

Answers by:
Alexis Roblan
Playwright/Producer - 
Synaptic Nerve Coordinator - Brain Melt Consortium

I was very enthusiastic about the burlesque revival about three years ago - right up until I saw the Wau Wau Sisters at the Fringe. Not only were they brilliant, they seemed to remind me that most burlesque had degenerated into ironic striptease and lacked the energy or verve that it was supposed to embody. In your press release, you explicitly mention feminism and have an interesting angle on gender politics. But can burlesque be rescued from the sort of shows it has become - tassels and male stand up comedians re-enforcing stereotypes?

One of the initial inspirations for Daughters of Lot was an interview I saw with Robyn Antin, founder of the Pussycat Dolls, in which she claimed that they were a feminist group. It was the sort of statement that made me, a young woman in my 20s who’d always considered myself a “feminist,” ask: “What does that word mean to someone like that? What does it mean to any of us at this point?”

Certain forms of burlesque can empower, and certain forms can do the exact opposite – and yet western culture has somehow begun to accept the word “burlesque” as a synonym for funsexual empowerment, as something which can do no wrong (unless you’re a prude). I set out to write a direct critique of the type of Girl Power “feminism” that continues to measure women by the exact standards our mothers and grandmothers fought against, and call it empowerment because “we’re doing it to ourselves.” 

Daughters takes the form of a burlesque show both because of what burlesque really can offer (fantastic theatricality, engagement with the audience, humor, and yes, titillation), and as a means of criticizing the cultural messages that young women receive about their own power and sexuality when “burlesque” groups like the Pussycat Dolls become our symbols of female empowerment. My ideal theatre is one that mixes raw emotion and socio-political anger with a healthy dose of humor and spectacle, and I think the best burlesque performance really has the potential to embody that. And theatre could do well with an infusion of that “energy and verve” that great burlesque brings with it.

While I acknowledge that sexuality can be an interesting tactic on stage, it seems to be used to titillate rather than provoke. is it possible to avoid this?

If you’re able to catch Daughters of Lot, I think you’ll have your answer. There’s no question that we use sexuality to titillate, but that wouldn’t be worthwhile if it weren’t provocative as well. I think my director, Rachel Kerry, is really talented at finding that balance. 

As a writer, I’m incredibly interested in sex and sexuality. It’s such a fantastic window into the psychology of both individuals and societies – and even the suggestion of different kinds of sex can draw almost immediate physiological responses, both positive and negative. I think you avoid using sex as a merely “titillating” tool when you make the sexual situations provocative – something that’s not that difficult if it’s what you’re actually interested in.

Now the Bible - - I am interested in how theology seems to be reduced to a branch of theatre studies these days... where does the name come from and how do we get to Bible burlesque?

Old Testament stories are bizarre and wonderful, and I personally think they deserve more play in secular society. As a storyteller and lapsed Catholic, I find myself going back to them a lot for inspiration. Daughters of Lot starts off with a burlesque retelling of the Sodom and Gomorrah story—not too much of a stretch since even those of us who know nothing about the Bible probably know that this story involves lots of sin and, well, sodomy. But it also seemed to me like a really appropriate starting place for a conversation about female sexual agency. In the story, Lot is the only righteous man in Sodom, and he has two virgin daughters. 

The daughters don’t have names, their father offers them to be raped by strangers at one point in order to protect his house guests, and by the end of the story, they end up getting their dad drunk and basically raping him in order to repopulate the earth. It’s interesting how the Bible seems to insinuate that incest was the correct course of action in this case, but simultaneously absolves Lot, the righteous Man, from any responsibility for it—just in case we still find it icky. I wanted to track the psychology of Lot’s daughters in that story, and I also wanted to ask: if this were a modern story, would it play out in the same way? Would the motivations be the same? So the play follows Lot’s daughters as they learn about modern men and women from the burlesque dancers, resulting in something that I think is really entertaining, funny, and sexy, but also disturbing, provocative, and possibly tragic.

cabaret to be added, destroyed

The exact line that connects cabaret back to dance isn’t always clear: since dance itself is so easy to spot yet difficult to define, throwing your hands in the air and everything into a genre marked “physical theatre” seems the best answer. However, there are times when a piece of physical theatre would have done well to employ dancers rather than healthy, fit actors, and the contemporary cabaret revival owes at least something to the aesthetics of dance.

Like physical theatre, cabaret includes a healthy mixture of talents: strippers, magicians like Piff the Magic Dragon, singers like Dusty Limits, rappers like Mr B alongside those indefinable performers like Tricity Vogue, the Blue Lady. The variety format, notably reinvented by Blonde Ambition at Vive Le Cabaret!, welcomes this diversity. Yet aside from wild cards like Scottee’s Eat Your Heart Out, it is rare to see short-formed choreographic dance in this programmes. Circus skills, even aerial acrobatics transfer easily enough – but why a magazine dedicated to dance now includes cabaret is still not clear.

The simple link, at least for The Shimmy, is through the neo-burlesque revival. Dance Base, which houses The Shimmy offices, has offered burlesque classes for years: the pioneering work here of Gypsy Charms and Viva Misadventure could be seen as seeding the current burlesque scene in Scotland. And burlesque, and striptease, are clearly forms of dance. When The Shimmy kicked off in 2009, burlesque was riding high in Edinburgh – both Blonde Ambition and Itsy’s Collective offered regular evenings – and most variety bills were burlesque heavy.

Ironically, just as cabaret was insisting on its own section in 2010, the neo-burlesque revival was waning. Less burlesque was appearing in the clubs – even the Bongo Club, godfather of Fringe cabaret – was booking fewer striptease acts. Confusion is Sex, the nightclub that had always had burlesque was diversifying into pole-dancing and idiosyncratic live art influenced routines.

Finally, an article in The Scotsman attacked burlesque as anti-feminist, leading to Edinburgh’s most glamorous street protest and a dynamic debate about whether the assumptions of feminist intention behind neo-burlesque were valid. Meanwhile, some burlesque acts were heading back to a raunchier tradition, abandoning the knowing wit for a more erotic emphasis. Kitty Cointeau launched the Brahaha, which got back to the comedians and strippers format. Unlike last year, when the superb Wau Wau Sisters rocked the Assembly through stripping and swinging from the ceiling – and aiming a scattershot satire at the heart of modern America, there are no burlesque only shows this year.

It has become fashionable to attack burlesque, either on aesthetic grounds or feminist. Nevertheless, the cabaret revival owes a great deal to neo-burlesque. Despite its controversial association with striptease, burlesque reintroduced parody to cabaret. Variety had been moribund since it had collapsed into a mush of insipid light entertainment and lazy comedy. Burlesque brought back the sex and satire.

Dusty Limits, the “dark prince” is not a dancer, yet his exotic blend of sexuality and mockery owes much to the style of burlesque. The association of burlesque with vintage fashion gave cabaret a style, recalled classic eras of vaudeville and cabaret, such as the Weimar Republic. Even a duo like The Creative Martyrs – Gustav and Jakob are unlikely to be cutting a caper between their mimes and songs of bleak decadence – draw on the influences burlesque rediscovered. The cabaret audiences were built by burlesque nights. 1927 honed their skills at burlesque evenings, adopting the style and format for a theatrical tour de force.

The echoes of burlesque, a dance form, multiply throughout the cabaret scene. Solo shows, like Vogue’s Blue Lady, Meow Meow  frantic bash through egomania and celebrity, Sarah Louise Young’s Cabaret Whore Trilogy pick up on a choreographic approach to subjects, deconstructing them not through a clear lineal approach but returning to them from different angles. Definitions of dance slip either into the vague or the prescriptive: cabaret performance frequently shares a creative process and structure with choreography, if not a movement vocabulary.

Inevitably, there is an agenda behind The Shimmy’s inclusion of cabaret. Last year, Bryony Kimmings, an eclectic performer who admits she is from the Live Art tradition, appeared in many variety shows. She rocked the house. Aerial is already a regular visitor to the vaudeville. Stronger links between the scenes might lead to short dance works being billed alongside Des O’Connor, expanding the audience base. If a dance publication can find space for cabaret, perhaps comperes can find slots for dancers.

Beyond this, if the burlesque scene has become moribund, a reinjection of dance might be the cure. There is still a thriving amateur scene in the central belt of Scotland: often, its stars have never bothered to learn new skills or develop their choreography beyond stylised gestures. Charms and Misadventure have always had a show-girl edge to their routines, and the best international stars have basic dance discipline – or, like Kiki Kaboom, a fierce intelligence. Blurring boundaries is little help for the poor critic, desperately trying to decipher the codes of genre. But for performers and audiences, it offers potential for great new entertainments. 

Old Thoughts on Nudity in Theatre - Still Vaguely Interesting, I am surprised to note

I did not understand quite why Anti-Christ upset cinephiles with its explicit violence and apparent misogyny. Anti-Christ is a movie, and protects its cast with the same trickery as TV does for Derren Brown and 1930s radio for ventriloquists. Hanging out on the cabaret and Live Art scenes, I regularly cheer along as real people pull things out of orifices, cut themselves, run about naked and drink blood. It’s a shame that The Daily Mail lacks an adventurous reporter: then they could have some real “BAN THIS FILTH” headlines. 

The place of nudity in live performance is contested. In Nic Green’s Trilogy, there is a great deal of female nudity that has worried some critics, especially in an avowedly feminist work. And in burlesque, does the majority presence of women as promoters and performers, audience and advocates really avoid the accusations of exploitation? Regulars at Tramway might be disappointed if they go home from a Belgian production without some flash of flesh, but does the status of art protect it from the censorship that governs other media? 

In Trilogy, the nudity is framed so that it deliberately anti-pornographic: similarly in burlesque, the stripping is justified by comedy and rhetoric of self-esteem and inclusion. These could be mere fig-leaves of distraction, hiding the more fundamental tensions that emerge when sexuality and society collide. 

Of course, these productions are aimed at adults, aside from the occasional absurd piece of programming as at Latitude, when Fancy Chance was booked into a daytime slot. It is telling, however, that Chance didn't perform her usual routines in front of the liberal parents and their untamed toddlers. And in London, burlesque nights are being expected to have the same licence as lap-dance clubs, a clear sign that for some bureaucrats, there is little difference. 

Inevitably, I defend the right of performers to undress, even cut themselves on stage. There might be the odd director or actor who is indulging their own exhibitionism, voyeurism or aggressive need to control, but to legislate against them is to exclude those who use nudity as a strategy to provoke and expose. 

At Itsy’s Kabaret, Empress Shah did two acts that could reasonably described as self-harm: pouring molten wax on her stomach and inject a syringe into her arm. Despite the polish and finesse, which distracted from the brutality of these actions, they were part of a serious and profound comment on the nature of passion. When she toasted the audience with her own blood in a champagne glass, it had the symbolic intensity of a nightmare, and nailed the self-destruction that lurks behind so much romanticism.  

Nic Green, on the other hand, takes any erotic bite out of nudity, celebrating the body as shameless: some of the scenes in Bloody Town Hall are all the more innocent because the actors are naked. And many burlesquers recapture a charming sensuality, removing striptease from harsh commercialism and re-inventing it as humorous and sincere. I wouldn’t defend nudity purely on the grounds of its lack of eroticism, however. Nightshade, a production by Victoria that paired strippers and contemporary choreographers encouraged a sexual response, which made the accompanying messages - which varied from critiquing the male gaze through to more direct associations of eroticism with vulnerability or exploitation -  more immediate.  

Theatre can’t use its isolation as an excuse: performance happens in, and impacts upon society. But frankly, when the internet has such an exotic selection of material, and my local newsagent has two rows of magazines that boast SEX HUNGRY BABES, attacking the liberal arts is always going to be a token gesture. Sexual content does have a habit of warping perspectives, which is why it is so valuable as a strategy but also why the debate around it is frequently ill-informed or self-justification masquerading as reason. The relationships between the body, sexuality, consumerism, feminism and social values are endlessly fascinating, and it seems utterly appropriate that performance wants to map them. It does a far better job of it than philosophy or tabloid editors.

Vile versus Eric at Stereo (part 2)

EK: Focus, man! Burlesque dancer on the stage! Crowd cheering, guys whistling... typical, I guess. But then, you're tired of nudity on stage, aren't you? And the crowd quickly disperses...

GKV: Yes. That's why I am off for a coffee. And keeping you typing so you are not corrupted by Miss Hell's Belle's striptease.

EK: Well, it's over now. What to do. Not my fault I get excited by these things... Although admittedly, it's more fun in the intimacy of a bedroom. I can see why you tire of the nude on stage - what is the joy of that?
And Derek McLuckie takes the stage.
Extremely poetic narration ensues. It doesn't always rhyme, but he is telling us a story that sounds like a dream. Or a nightmare.
'Machine gun rattles, old woman cackles...'

GKV: It's exciting to see McLuckie going solo... dressed up as a fireman, then one quick change and he's an American starlet in 1952. He's trawling through the glamorous era of  Hollywood. An abortive romance with Steve McQueen is told in a thick Glasgow accent. Then the last days of Marilyn Monroe recited in the voice of a jaded friend of the sex goddess.

It's even better as a juxtaposition - a queer balance upsetting what could have been a rather macho evening of blues rock and striptease. McLuckie is relating a memory of an orgy starring Jack Kennedy, in drag, but the surreal narrative is contrasted by the specificity of the detail. The crowd is silent - my typing is the loudest sound and I am feeling self-conscious.

EK: And we are back to the thick Glaswegian accent, to the rhyming. And he slips into a clearer accent, almost like Dracula.
 'Jealousy is mine'
Commercial break.
Advertising a doll  of Judy Garland - the 'perfect gift for young queens everywhere'. I wonder how many layers of meaning we have to unpeel to thoroughly understand this performance.

GKV: He's jumping between different moods - sometimes singing, other times getting vernacular and even poetic. There's a theme of disappointment and twisted romance throughout... he refers back to classic camp icons, that feminine glamour of Monroe, the ballet dancer, Judy Garland, filters them  through the alienation of a very Glaswegian nightlife. There are corpses littered through the monologue.
EK: And now he speaks of Camp, a wrinkly old lady seducing young men. The audience hangs on his every word. He speaks of elderly masturbation, and 'entertainment'. Not sure what to make of that.

GKV: He's good. He has a presence, and it's fascinating to see him stripped of scripts and props and theatrical supports.

EK: His energy reminds me of the solo performance titled TITUS at THAT Festival, part of a very young, adrenaline-filled triple bill. There was no need for him to move at all, because he tells a story so well.