(For some reason www.dfw.com does not seem to archive their older posts… This article orginally appeared on their site but it is now gone.)
With sequins and seductive grins, a new generation discovers the pleasures of burlesque.
By Joanna Cattanach
The lights are dimmed. A jazz horn wails. And out walks Ginger Valentine, nibbling at her fingers, a saucy smile and sweep of her lashes tossed to the audience. Elegant in an evening gown, elbow-length white gloves, and a white flower in her hair, she turns her back to the crowd, hot and antsy in their seats.
The smell of sweat and seduction hang over the stage.
Down slips one dress strap, then another. Slowly, she bends over and peels off her gown, revealing sparkly fringe panties and a matching bra that cling to her curves. She shimmies, she shakes, fringe fluttering, and then, voila!
Rhinestone tassel pasties are spinning wildly.
Undone, her fans roar, women laugh at her audacity. They have to earn the panties. They cheer them off, revealing another layer — a barely there thong, and it’s all Ginger Valentine, butt cheeks quivering to the howls of the crowd.
The 29-year-old ballerina turned “very classic burlesque” dancer knows how to move. She makes a living feeling sexy on and off the stage. When she’s not performing, she teaches young women the fine art of seduction at her Burlesque Charm School.
“Bump out, out, out,” the curvy girl in front of the mirror says this day as she demonstrates the tush-push move. “Whatever makes you feel sexy,” the raven-haired beauty encourages her students. “I don’t care as long as you keep your ass moving.”
Valentine is one of a growing number of young women in the Metroplex drawn to the hootchy-kootchy lifestyle. It’s addictive. One show, and you’re usually hooked. There’s something about all the legs, the boobs and booze, the tassels and nakedness — like public foreplay without the finish.
Part art form, part strip tease, American burlesque was popularized by 20th-century mavens like Gypsy Rose Lee and pinups like the late Bettie Page. It’s bawdy live entertainment that often involves elaborate costumes, choreographed music, dancing, singing and even fire-breathing mixed with saucy strip routines that almost-show-you-everything-except-for-these-2-inches-of-cloth-covering, well, you get the picture.
Today’s burlesque performers range from regimented dance groups with hip-hop music, to vaudeville troops with juggling routines, to feather-fluttering jazz performers.
The retro comeback has found a strong female fan base among people like artist Alison Aldridge, 27, of Dallas, who’s equally intrigued with the fashion — fishnet stockings, feather headbands, corsets, ribbons and lace. “Ultrafeminine,” she calls it.
The lean redhead in a black leotard and pants follows Valentine’s instructions to “milk it, milk it,” during a recent Level 1 burlesque class at The Girls Room — a dance studio on lower Greenville Avenue in Dallas that also offers pole-dancing classes. The burlesque class caters to women like Aldridge who want to draw out their sexier side, something her boyfriend is “totally psyched” about, says Alridge as she practices rocking her hips and pouting in the mirror.
With Valentine leading the class, it’s easy for first-timers to lose their inhibitions. She encourages her students to feel their body, to find their own rhythm. “It is important for women to have this,” she says. Not all women posses a natural naughtiness or hip-swaying swagger that makes men weak, says Valentine.
“Everyone is a little shy” at the first class says Valentine, red lipstick still unsmeared after a sweaty session. “But they lose that shyness so fast it shocks me.”
But even Valentine, who can seduce crowds with a roll of her shoulder, a smoldering stare or hands slowly sliding up her thighs, has limits. Her dad is still coming to terms with her new career. “It’s hard for him to have to watch his only little girl take a sexual role,” she says.
The Lollie Bombs
Trixi Toxic, 23, with the Lollie Bombs, doesn’t have that problem. Her parents and brother are her biggest fans. The tattoo-covered, funky girl with short black hair has wild routines that include “whipcreamage.”
At their South Ervay Street studio in Dallas, the Lollies, who range in age from 23 to 38, talked about their sometimes political, dark, seductive themes. It’s burlesque “with a kick.”
While more classic performers like Valentine bring audiences to a slow simmer, the Lollies are much more in your face. They break things, throw things and are more like your crazy girlfriends who make parties fun and ex-boyfriends scared.
“You can tell every one of our personalities onstage,” said Miss Malicious, 29, a short, angry, redhead who’s been with the group two years.
“There’s a real tease in burlesque that you don’t get in a strip club,” Black Mariah said.
But calls of “take it off” and “show us your boobs” are common. The art form is lost on crowds more interested in a cheap peep show than female empowerment. But Black Mariah, 31, a voluptuous woman who’s been with the Lollies for about three years, is used to the raunchy remarks. She uses feather fans and a coquettish smile to lure her audience, even the drunken hornballs.
‘My creative outlet’
Honey Cocoa Bordeauxx with Denton’s Vixens of Vaudeville Revue is new to the burlesque scene, but the 23-year-old senior sociology major and sorority president has already made a name for herself.
“It’s my creative outlet,” she said.
In February, Honey and her outlets wowed a standing-room-only crowd at the 2009 Dallas Burlesque Festival. Knees bent, laid flat on her back, head toward the crowd, she rocked her shoulders and her pasties back and forth to the roars and whistles of onlookers who packed the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff.
Her name is a reflection of her lifestyle. “I’m really drawn to things that are really sweet and delicious,” she says during a coffeehouse interview.
Burlesque is about the “power in a woman,” she continues. “The mainstream sees burlesque as the Pussycat Dolls,” say Honey, one of only a few minority women who perform locally. She’s proud of her curves, her waistline, her imperfections and “jiggly fat” and looks to performers like the late Josephine Baker and singer/actress Eartha Kitt for inspiration.
Women shouldn’t need liquid courage and the lights to go out to get their groove on, says Honey. It’s more sexy, more empowering, she says, to be uninhibited in nothing but pasties and a G-string, “that’s how [women] should feel all the time.”
That doesn’t mean you have to transform yourself into someone you’re not, it’s about embracing someone you are — a liberated librarian, a taunting teacher, or a hardworking free-lance writer who’s secretly attending burlesque shows for sex tips, who’s never bought a garter belt but does own a girdle and paid 10 bucks for pasties that are still in the bottom of her panty drawer.
Like most burlesque dancers, Honey works as a solo performer and with a group. “We’re very DIY,” she says, do it yourself. “For us it’s not very lucrative.” Groups and solo performers can make $150 a show — maybe less, maybe more. It depends on the location, the performer.
For most it barely covers the cost of costumes. Like the Lollies, the Vixens have day jobs and make their own costumes and pasties. This June, they’re attending the Miss Exotic World competition in Las Vegas. It’s the Super Bowl of burlesque, says Honey, and it’s a dream of hers to be crowned the Reigning Queen of Burlesque.
Honey says she’s thought about doing other things, but she’s not ready to give up dancing. Her mom, who also acts as the Lollies’ manager, has asked Honey to consider what being topless onstage in sparkly panties and bra might mean for her future.
“Is this going to have an effect on me getting a job? I’m just not a 9-to-5 kind of girl,” she says, “If I could be a burlesque performer for the rest of my life, I would be OK with it.”
“There’s a real tease in burlesque that you don’t get in a strip club.” Black Mariah
