Weekly Burlesque

I don’t post video clips often because they seem to get deleted from YouTube soon afterward, but I can’t resist this one! I use this in my “Exotic Dance in Contemporary Film” presentation, and this is the first time I’ve found it online.

Every now and then, I get to do things that aren’t part of my usual circuit of gigs. Recently, I worked as a consultant, dance designer, and movement coach on a television show called “Gossip Girl” (The CW).

In the first part of a multi-faceted discussion, burlesque dancer/columnist Jo Weldon interviews Dixie Evans, a legend of the genre that curates the Burlesque Hall of Fame and started the Miss Exotic World pageant in 1990.

In this week’s installment of Weekly Burlesque, esteemed columnist and dancer Jo Weldon discusses Girl Show: Into the Canvas World of Bump and Grind, one of her favorite books on the topic.

The burlesque scene has its very own print magazine thanks to Dale “Black Dahlia” Rio, Shimmy Magazine‘s co-owner/editor and photographer who recently relocated to Seattle. She has been photographing burlesque for about five years. A little over a year ago she began editing and publishing Shimmy Magazine, the only print magazine devoted to burlesque.

“The trouble with the American burlesque show, from beginning to end, is either that is has been too dirty — or else that it hasn’t been dirty enough.”

Though written forty years ago, the first sentence of The American Burlesque Show, Irving Zeidman’s history of burlesque in the United States (primarily New York), cites a dilemma that continues to haunt burlesque.

Take one guitar wonder kid and one international burlesque star, throw the two together, and you get a rock-out road show hitting a Canadian city near you. Real-life couple Alistair Christl and Tanya Cheex have put together a winning combination of tunes and tease.

People always ask questions about pasties. They are, after all, pretty peculiar articles of clothing in spite of being some of the most traditional items in most neo-burlesquers’ wardrobes. As far as I know, they are unique to burlesque — at least in terms of dance costuming.