Blue Light Burlesque

Back to the old grind

Burlesque, complete with '40s-style peel-as-you-go dancers, feather boas and overt sensuality, is bumping its way back onto the stage

Is there anything sexier than a woman in long gloves, red lipstick and a feather boa? Well, maybe a woman wearing little more than pasties and a playful smile -- and those pasties, by the way, are spinning at lightning speed.
With the revival of burlesque performances in old theatres across North America, 1940s-style glamour -- epitomized by voluptuous pinups such as Rita Hayworth and Lana Turner -- is coming back in style. And so too are old fashioned bump and grind shows where women peel off gloves, stockings and trenchcoats, but reveal little more than what you might see on a summer day at the beach.
In the late 19th century, burlesque performers ran around in tights, defying stuffy Victorian norms about women's sexuality. Modern burlesquers insist their strip shows stick it to the thin, often surgically-enhanced, ideals of female beauty that exist today.
"With neo-burlesque, women are pushed to do their number and to be as they are. There's no silicone. You work other things like your charm, your seduction and your humour," says Mlle Oui Oui Encore, who two years ago founded the Montreal-based Blue Light Burlesque troupe with her partner Blue Eyes.
"If women and men see you on the stage they are instantly going to think ... I can relate to that, because she's not perfect. She has a bit of cellulite, but she's so cute! And so funny!" says Mlle Oui Oui Encore.
Cities such as Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver are leading the Canadian burlesque revival, while burlesque shows have been hot in places such as Las Vegas and Los Angeles for years already.
Even more conservative cities such as Ottawa saw at least two burlesque shows roll into town this fall. Blue Light Burlesque recently sold out a show at Montreal's La Tulipe theatre, a heritage building with plush velvet curtains and art deco design that hosted burlesque performances in the 1930s.
The veteran Mlle Oui Oui Encore opened the show with a slow strip tease performed behind a silk screen, her silhouette moving in time to sultry chords from Julie London's Blues in the Night. The star closed the show by standing tall and spinning her red pasties, a naughty smile on her face. It's hard to say what might have been the sexier skit that night.
Mlle Oui Oui says it's easy to determine if a woman has the right attitude to be a burlesque performer: "It's a mix of the way she looks at you, the way she plays with you when she wants to seduce you," she explains. But she and Hemming try to stage shows that are filled with more than just skin skits.
The performance at La Tulipe, for example, was loosely based on the story of a young man who travels to Las Vegas and meets a host of sexy characters along the way. Some of the best skits combined comedic and sensual elements -- like the fumbling magician who can't convince his gorgeous assistant to follow his instructions; or the rich diva who falls for an awkward pool boy called Dr. Chague.

"It's not a dance show. It's not Cirque du Soleil," says Mlle Oui Oui,"I like to do humour but mixed with more sensual numbers and even some sad numbers."
The couple staged their first burlesque show in Montreal two years ago, unsure if their audience would "get" neo-burlesque.
"We were so concerned about people misunderstanding the striptease thing that we pretty much forced people to dress up for the first show, because we didn't want people showing up in jeans and T-shirts and hooting at the girls on stage," says Blue Eyes. "We figured people wouldn't be yelling obscenities if they were dressed to the nines."
Now, audiences -- usually an even split between men and women -- regularly attend their shows dressed in suits and fedoras or nip-waisted dresses and boas.
Mlle Oui Oui and Blue Eyes are retro-fans who spend lots of time searching out fashion, music and art from the '30s, '40s and '50s. At that time, burlesque stars such as Lili St. Cyr performed at notoriously sleazy establishments in Montreal.
But burlesque didn't always have the in-your-face sexual overtones that have largely come to define the art.
"Burlesque really wasn't a skin show until the 1920s," says Elspeth Brown, a University of Toronto historian.
Burlesque first came to North America from Britain in the 1860s. In the late 19th century, performers were women dressed as men -- usually in scandalous tights -- who parodied the "high culture" theatre performances of the country's upper classes, says Brown. The audiences were mainly middle class and split between men and women.
By the early 1920s, other forms of entertainment such as vaudeville and movies were competing with burlesque performances and burlesquers were forced to spice up their shows with more risque elements to keep crowds coming. The audience soon shifted, and it was mainly working class men who filled burlesque clubs.
"You ended up losing the narrative, you ended up losing a lot of the comedy and there's not the sense of transgression of the earlier period where women appropriate an inappropriate role," says Brown, noting that there were exceptions to that trend such as Gypsy Rose Lee, a burlesque star with a famously acerbic wit.
In 2006, burlesque shows can vary from pure raunchy stripteases to more cleverly scripted skits -- that also end in a striptease. But the idea of reassessing attitudes toward female sexuality is still important.
"The implication is that we're sophisticated post-modern viewers," says Brown. "To signal that, God forbid, you see this as exploitative would be to signal yourself as some kind of prude. I think that's the kind of space that's being created at these shows."
But the appeal of burlesque reaches beyond the retro theatres -- Mlle Oui Oui Encore now teaches the art to women who will probably never end up on a theatre stage. A typical course consists of six weekly hour-long lessons where women might learn how to seductively peel off an elbow-high glove, or to how to strike the ultimate sexy pose. Many of Mlle Oui Oui Encore's students are young women who are either taking the classes solely for their own enjoyment or, if their partner is lucky, for their mates.

Those who decide to truly immerse themselves in burlesque culture can take a more advanced class to learn about costumes and more difficult routines.
Mlle Oui Oui, for one, seems immensely pleased to see a range of women taking on the challenge of learning the art of the classic bump and grind.
"Now I'm teaching (burlesque) to people who are shy, and I'm really a trouble maker," she says. "I'm creating all these women who want to undress everywhere, and I think it's really funny."
Blue Light Burlesque will be performing in Montreal on Feb. 13, 14 and 15 at the Maison Hantee. The show on Feb. 14 also includes dinner. Call 514-392-0004 for more information.