Burlesque Rocks

I decided to start the new year with an easy blog. My idea was to rewrite an old one: “What is Burlesque?” The first time around, I concentrated a little too much on keywords and felt I went off-piste, talking instead about what I love about burlesque. (Still lots to say on this and a new blog will be coming soon!)

So, what is burlesque? I’m not going to lie I’ve been struggling with this rewrite because the answer to this question is not straightforward. Burlesque has taken many twists and turns to become the art form it is today. Plus it has always been controversial. In my opinion, burlesque is:

An inclusive, empowering art form which incorporates storytelling and stripping.

The sentence above doesn’t fully explain what burlesque is though does it? So why do I find it so complicated to explain? The common misconception is “It’s just stripping” and without wanting to get sidetracked, it’s worth saying here that stripping isn’t just stripping. If you’ve ever been to a strip club, there is a lot more to the job than taking your clothes off. Same with burlesque.

To understand what burlesque is you have to take a look at its history: how did this art form come about? Why is there stripping in burlesque? When did burlesque become so popular? Who were the pioneers? What follows is my interpretation of what burlesque is and how it came to be a dance and performance style.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, burlesque is:

“An absurd or comically exaggerated imitation of something, especially in a literary or dramatic work; a parody.”

This is true. In the beginning, burlesques were short satirical plays, operas and ballets. In 17th-century Britain, burlesques were satires of popular plays running in major theatres. I can’t help but think it was probably like a Cliff Notes version of theatre but with humour. Lyrics from popular songs were also reworked to entertain, so it wasn’t just plays that were parodied. This all changed in the 19th Century.

In 1863 a talented dancer by the name of Lydia Thompson took her version of the burlesque show Ixion, along with her troupe “The Blonde Bombshells” to New York…

“The eccentricities of pantomime and burlesque – with their curious combination of comedy, parody, satire, improvisation, song and dance, variety acts, cross-dressing, extravagant stage effects, risqué jokes and saucy costumes – while familiar enough to British audiences, took New York by storm.”
– Kensal Green web archive

America hadn’t before experienced this style of theatre, and they loved it! The show had been booked for a six-month run and ended up running for six years, which led to a tour of the US. Lydia Thompson’s shows at first inspired and attracted mostly female audiences. I suspect this was because the cast was predominately female, and they played intelligent women. What caused the most uproar was the girls wearing tights. Technically, their legs were covered, but they were on show, a scandal! The press came down hard in later years, belittling the show to a:

“disgraceful spectacle of padded legs jiggling”

Moses, Marlie. “Lydia Thompson and The ‘British Blondes’.” Women in the American theatre, New York, Crown (1981)

Whoever wrote this, in my opinion, was a critic, probably a man, feeling threatened by intelligent female characters and having to find a way to belittle them. As a result, the shows began to attract predominantly male audiences out to see a bit of flesh.

Around the beginning of the 20th Century in America, the Vaudeville circuit (variety shows performed in theatres a bit like Music Hall in Britain) was in decline. ‘Talking pictures’ were on the rise, and variety performers had to find a new way to attract an audience. Run-down theatres became burlesque halls. Similar to vaudeville there would be stand-up comics, circus and variety acts, singers, dancers and throughout the show burlesque striptease artists. Each one with a unique talent to show off.

Dance isn’t associated with burlesque here but there are elements of dance involved. There’s a live band/orchestra and the stripper moves to the music. I feel this is when the conversation of burlesque is born.

Picture a theatre with its proscenium arch and velvet curtains, the smell of cigarettes is all around, the smoke hangs in the air, and anticipation is growing for the next performer to enter the stage. The drummer starts the beat; Um-bah-bah-um-bah, the burlesque dancer enters, bumping her hips along to the beat. The bumps get bigger, the drums highlighting every bang of the hips, and as the bumps and grinds get bigger, the audience gets louder. When our dancer is satisfied, she removes part of her costume, encouraging the audience to shout and cheer more. This call and response continues until she exits the stage.

In the early years of burlesque, performers didn’t always remove all of their clothes. A performer could “send them wild in the aisles” if all she removed was a single glove. This new style of burlesque, later called American burlesque, was not embraced by all.

Laws in America, for example, led to restrictions on how much a woman could reveal. Burlesque dancers got creative; pasties to cover nipples for example. I’m not 100% sure how or when tassels were added to the pasties, but it paved the way for the iconic tassel twirl, a legal and entertaining way to watch boobs bounce. There were merkins (to cover vaginas), body stockings, mesh knickers. If there was a way to look naked without being fully naked, the burlesque dancers would find a way.

Burlesque was ridiculed and looked down upon until around the 1930s when soloists like Sally Rand and Gypsy Rose Lee were appearing both on stage and in film. To guarantee top billing, strippers of the 30s, 40s and 50s had to find their unique selling point. Gypsy Rose Lee used her sharp wit to entertain and tease. I love this video of her act ‘Psychology of a Striptease Artist’
It’s a shortened version of her act, but it gives you a general idea of her style.

Gypsy Rose Lee turned her fortunes around through burlesque. She earned more from burlesque halls than she did from the Vaudeville theatres. In 1957 she wrote her memoir – Gypsy – which went on to inspire a musical in 1959 and a film in 1962.

“I was pleased and proud that I had made it. I had no doubts about that. I didn’t have to sing or dance or do anything. I could be a star without any talent at all, and I had just proved it”

Gypsy Rose Lee – Gypsy – 1957

Performing solo empowered Gypsy Rose Lee, she had lived in the shadow of her younger sister’s dance talent for nearly a decade. After her first burlesque performance, the roar of the crowd proved she had made it, without talent. I always tell my students anyone can learn and perform burlesque. A lot of it is learning what an audience wants and what you enjoy, then playing with it.

Gypsy Rose Lee went on to achieve star stripper status. She went on to reinvent herself again in the 60s and became a talk show host!

Sally Rand is the perfect example of an artist finding a way to look naked without being naked. She teased her audience by wearing a body stocking and creating a fan dance that both confused and delighted the crowd. Using her ostrich feather fans, she created the illusion of wings. The fans were huge and would cover her entire body. Swapping between each fan, she would amaze her audience with her fan-twirling skills, never fully revealing what was underneath.

In one of her acts, she incorporated a screen and removed her fans, to reveal her silhouette. She wore a body stocking at all times but the audience was led to believe she was naked. In 1946 she was arrested twice in San Francisco while performing this act at the Savoy Club. The judge overseeing her trial took an unusual approach. He went to see her perform! His ruling:

“Anyone who could find something lewd about the dance as she puts it on has to have a perverted idea of morals”

American trials of the 20th century by Knappman, Edward W, Publication: 1995

Cleared of all charges, Rand carried on fan dancing and went on to own a burlesque hall and even learned to fly a plane! I love that she flew herself to gigs across America. All those years I was carting a suitcase on public transport and I could have just learned to fly!

As we are on the subject of pioneers, I have to take a moment for the amazing Josephine Baker. There were many performers of colour on the burlesque scene of the 30s and 40s, but few broke into the mainstream like their white counterparts. Josephine Baker had regularly starred in the chorus line of shows on Broadway before she decided to try her luck elsewhere and moved to France. Her exotic and humorous style of performance took Paris by storm and she became a regular performer at the Follies Bergère

Now this woman rocked. Not only did she bring the house down with her athletic and comedic Charleston dancing, she became a spy! During German occupation in World War II, Josephine Baker joined the French Resistance spying on German officers who came to see her dance. In 1975 she was the only American-born woman to receive full French military honours at her funeral. She was also the first person of colour to appear in film.

This is why I find burlesque empowering; women throughout history have had to get creative to be independent and to keep their independence. Becoming a star on stage was a way of doing this. As mentioned before with the rise of talking pictures, theatre makers had to change what they were doing to attract an audience. In the UK, the Windmill Girls were posing nude so they would appear as live art, and as I have covered here in America it was stripping. Stripping was seen as morally wrong, but it was how the pioneers of burlesque were able to gain their independence and turn it into an art form that became respected and admired.

The artistry and the lives of Rand, Gypsy Rose Lee, Josephine Baker and other burlesque performers of the mid-20th Century are inspirational.Their successes in a time when a woman couldn’t open her own bank account are amazing and they continue to inspire many performers to this day.

With the arrival of strip clubs in the 1970s, burlesque fell out of fashion. The modern/neo-burlesque revival began in the 1990s with the Pussycat Dolls at the Viper Rooms in LA and Dutch Weismann’s Follies revues in New York City. More followed. When Dita Von Teese married Marylin Manson in 2005, interest in burlesque skyrocketed, followed by the Cher film ‘Burlesque’ in 2010. When the revival began, it aimed to capture the old Hollywood glamour. Dita Von Teese, with her sparkling costumes and large props, and the Pussycat Dolls troupe, who used classic big band bump and grind music.

The revival continues. Burlesque in the 21st Century aims to push boundaries. The tease in burlesque is no longer for the male gaze; it’s used to promote body confidence, tell stories, and ultimately delight and inspire the audience. The emphasis is on community, support, and body positivity.

Burlesque nights are no longer restricted to the female form. Male, female and non-binary identifying artists are blazing a trail on the burlesque stage. Burlesque can encompass almost anything: political, narrative, satirical, beautiful, ugly, provocative, informative or silly.

I hope you can now see why burlesque is inclusive and empowering and how storytelling and stripping became an integral part of the art form we know today. So, you see, this was not a straightforward thing to write, I’ve actually had to stop myself from going too deep. I got very distracted reading historical burlesque blogs and I went down a YouTube rabbit hole watching videos of vintage burlesque. I’ve added links and references below if you’re interested in reading more.

For me, burlesque has always been fun, and I’ve loved inspiring and encouraging people to explore their burlesque persona. My classes have always been and always will be open to all. There will always be a welcoming and encouraging smile and lots of ‘YAASSS!’ when you come to class.

Speaking of which, I have a new beginner basics class starting in February. For more info click here or drop me an email at hello@burlesquerocks.com

References and more info:
https://library.osu.edu/site/burlesque/beginnings/
https://burlexe.com/burlesque/burlesque-history/the-history-of-burlesque-dancing/
https://web.archive.org/web/20110513080257/http://www.kensalgreen.co.uk/documents/FOKGC43_Thompson.pdf
https://21stcenturyburlesque.com/dita-von-teese-interview-glamonatrix/

And just for the lols: