As the sultry jazz standard Harlem Nocturne opens, 10 scantily clad petite to plus-sized women sway their hips side-to-side and coyly cover their chests with giant hot-rouge feather fans. When the saxophone kicks in with the song’s haunting theme, the performers swoop the fans in a half circle over their heads, still covering their breasts with their free hands and forearms. After further teasing the crowd of 400 with partial nudity (their breasts, after all, are covered with adhesive “pasties”), they form a kickline and kick, shimmy and strut.
By day, the Capital City Burlesque performers are ordinary women, but when they take to the nightclub stage, they embody over-the-top flamboyance and sassiness. A popular belief of burlesque is that it’s smut. It’s glamorized soft-pornography.
A moral ineptitude. But if that were true, why would the neo-burlesque movement attract “average” Canadian women? For Donna Ball, a 28-year-old costume-designer who moonlights as Lily Von Doon and daylights as a receptionist, it is all about donning the glamourous feathers, rhinestones and sequins, then getting on stage and commanding attention.
Ball was originally involved with Wild Rose Revue, one of Edmonton’s first neo-burlesque troupes, as a costume designer. When she was asked by one of the troupe’s dancers, Kim Rackel, to participate as a dancer for a show, she agreed, never guessing that the performer’s thrill would inspire her and Rackel to forge their own troupe. “Donna is a forced co-founder,” jokes Rackel.
“I knew she could dance and was reliable.”
Founded in 2003, Capital City Burlesque was the only troupe in town for a few years, after Wild Rose “moved to Germany.” But with the proliferation of burlesque influence in popular culture — as exemplified by the revival of the pin-up girl look, and ultra-glitzy performers Dita Von Teese and the Pussycat Dolls — the neo-burlesque movement in Edmonton is alive and kicking.
Today, there are several Edmonton-based troupes that perform at local nightclubs such as Pawn Shop and The Starlite Room, including Lascivious Burlesque, Sinfully Sweet and the newly formed The Keyhole Kittens Burlesque Revue.
Burlesque is a form of musical theatre that is a send-up of higher culture. Although the neo-burlesque movement certainly pays homage to the likes of Betty Page and Lili St. Cyr, the acts often mock traditional attitudes toward women, and historical and contemporary expectations of gender roles.
“I think when we put old music on stage and do a burlesque number to it, the humour element is important. We’re making fun of everything,” says Pam Cruise, a PhD student in ethnomusicology at the University of Alberta, who is doing a fieldwork project on the local neo-burlesque scene. Her method involves attending Capital City and Lascivious performances and rehearsals, and learning the dances.
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