I love burlesque. My first encounter with burlesque was via gossip from various places, around 2000. In 2001 I visited NYC, and a friend told me all about the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island I’d just missed. For a few years, I was on the hunt for this scene, only catching its traces.
Before then, in the late 90s, I’d visited peep shows, usually up dubious-looking flights of stairs from doorways that opened out on the street in Soho, feeding a slot with £1 coins to see a mini striptease through an eye slit. When the time ran out, the slit shut, demanding another coin for more.
Finally, I went to my first burlesque show in 2005–in a disco bar with a revolving dancefloor that became the impromptu stage. Since then I’ve been to the breadth of burlesque shows, locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. I’ve seen stars and newbies, gore and beauty, bawdy and classic, bodily and cerebral acts and I’ve loved it all. Burlesque is a scene that appealed as it resonates with my own visual and research interests. I love the history of striptease and bodily display and I’ve got my own substantial collection of memorabilia and the clothes I wear are often my own homage to the stars I love.
Over the years I’ve attended various burlesque classes and workshops. In particular with the British burlesque and striptease legend, Jo King. Jo is rightly legendary, she embodies a crucial meeting point between all forms of stripping and has mentored generation after generation of burlesque stars. Memorably, she noticed my dancing in one of her workshops and she said to me ‘we’ve got to get you onstage’. (What an honour to be seen in this way, but such a refined set of eyes!)
Now, I’ve always been apprehensive about actually becoming a burlesque dancer. I knew that if I became a burlesque dancer that would become my main identity and it would eclipse my identity as an artist, so I stayed away. I did, however, want to be a stripper. Stripping appealed to me as a form that relies on improvisation, relationality, and intimacy. Even though burlesque is a scene I make sense in, I wanted to be a stripper. I talked to Jo about stripping in clubs, and she advised me against it. And fair enough–this conversation was a decade ago, and I don’t think I do belong in every club context or scene. I’ve always been size 14 and above, and I think then in particular, I didn’t fit physically. And too, hustling doesn’t come naturally to me.
Eventually, when I did start to strip over a year ago, I reached out to Jo and she said she was so proud of me and that means a lot to me.
When I saw a call for performers by a burlesque producer for a show in the strip club I work in, my interest was piqued. But as I read on, my heart sank. There was a call out, this was then re-worded. There was an attempt to bridge the gap between theatre-style striptease and club stripping. But in truth, I do not think the producer understands our strip club environment, nor the implications of staging a show in it.
The strip club is the very specific, coded environment in which strippers work. It is a space in which intimacy is staged and hopefully, strippers are kept safe. I cannot recommend enough the book The Ethical Stripper, in which Stacey Clare details the politics and feelings of strippers about these spaces. Burlesque and club stripping share the same origins. But contemporary burlesque is very different from club stripping. Club stripping remains marginalised and stigmatised. This is why I write under my stripper name and why, despite the drainingly numerous times I’m asked to give my real name in the club, I don’t.
So many of my favourite performers have experience in both strip clubs and theatrical striptease, so I’m not suggesting there needs to be a ‘them and us’ standoff between burlesque and club strippers. Rather, staging an event in a club is an opportunity to become a sex work ally. Allyship would involve working to understand the specific dynamics of the club environment. For example, become a club regular. Talk to club dancers, in the club, and listen to us online. Follow stripper activists online like Gemma Rose and read Stacey Clare’s book. Do the work to understand what it means to come into the club space.
I didn’t apply for the burlesque night, I thought that my low-key, slow, slinky dancing wouldn’t shine in that context. I know dancers in my club that did apply but weren’t selected. I know of other local strippers who really do perform with star/theatrical quality that weren’t chosen. Still, in truth, the line-up looked diverse, inclusive, and audacious and I would have loved to have seen the show.
I was working at the club the night of the burlesque show. I received a text telling me to arrive at the club at 10.15, rather than the usual 8pm. On the social media promotion for the burlesque night, I added a comment about encouraging the audience to stay and get dances. When the producer replied, I had high hopes I’d get private dances with the burlesque audience and performers–perhaps a true bridge into the club. I composed a burlesque-themed outfit for the night (in truth all my outfits are vintage and burlesque-inflected). But when I arrived, at 10.15, the burlesque crowd had all gone. All left.
The bar staff told me how amazing the burlesque acts were. And that was the only discernible trace left for the club strippers–the insights of the bar staff.
I had this strange feeling of not being included. Not being invited to the party. A line had been drawn in my workplace, and I was on the uncelebrated side of that line. The invisible side. For me, it was a regular mid-August Saturday with the usual slim pickings in the club.
There are ways we could have been included–we could have been invited to arrive earlier so the burlesque audience could see us. Or we could have been invited to the show. Or the burlesque audience could have been incentivised to get dances with us. We could have been included or celebrated or talked to. But we weren’t.
Excellent piece and thank you for the book rec!