November 28, 2002


You gotta have a gimmick, or so some learned strippers once advised Gypsy Rose Lee. And in the current brouhaha over burlesque, that wisdom has proved more sage than ever.

Over the last few years, burlesque -- until recently an art form thought to have gone the way of the threepenny opera and the Puttin' on the Hits television series -- has grown from a grassroots, community-theater-style movement, as represented by amateur troupes like Denver's Burlesque As It Was, to a bona fide performance phenomenon, slinking its way out of smoky clubs and into legitimate theaters across the country. Next year, in fact, the first full-blown burlesque tour -- organized by local promoter Jerri Theil, of Nobody in Particular Presents -- will grind its way through ten American cities and two in Canada.

As a result, many of the girls involved in burlesque now enjoy a kinder, gentler, classier version of porn-star celebrity. Dita Von Teese, who headlines Burlesque XXX (Mas) at the Gothic Theatre on Friday, November 29, and Saturday, November 20, is on the cover of the current Playboy, sucked into a tiny lace corset and demurely covering her bare chest with lace gloves. The Howard Stern Show has also been, er, aroused by all of this furious shim-shamming, as have VH1 and MTV.

What accounts for such rampant revivalism? Maybe it's the marriage of nostalgia, performance art and fetishism, a permissibly naughty indulgence for a crowd more likely to patronize Navajo Street galleries than Shotgun Willie's. Maybe people are just so bored with contemporary culture that they have to look back in wonder from time to time, making room for dusty forms like swing and rockabilly to thwart the course of pop culture's forward march. Or maybe it's just that people like to see beautiful women writhe around in next to nothing.

Inevitably, as burlesque grows, its innocence fades a little. While many of the early retro performances -- including Burlesque As It Was's seasonal productions -- featured female dancers of every conceivable shape and size, from pear-shaped and flabby to statuesque and Xena-like, the more professional troupes are likely to enlist actual stripper-type strippers. Von Teese's Web site is flush with her image, both nude and nearly nude, at times bound with rope, tied to chairs or frolicking with fellow femme fatales. Before burlesque's popularity swelled, a fan dance was about the most blush-inducing thing you were likely to see at a show, at least on a Denver stage. But as its title suggests, Burlesque XXX (Mas) -- which reprises a NIPP-produced show that played at the Ogden earlier this year -- promises to be a slightly more skintastic affair.

Still, Theil promises that less-than-perfect specimens will see plenty of stage time.

"At the last show we did, there were people in the audience who were like, 'Ooh, I can't believe there are, like, fat girls on stage,'" she remembers. "But that was the whole point of burlesque. Women were not perfect back then. It was something that was open to all different kinds. We didn't screen anyone based on how their girls looked. There isn't a requirement that they be skinny or anything. I like it that you're going to see all kinds of women, just doing their thing and being free."

Ladies, start your pasties.