Profile: Tease-O-Rama to be held in San Francisco
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BOB EDWARDS, host:
The city of San Francisco will be filled with feathers, tassels and a whole lot of flesh this weekend thanks to a convention called Tease-O-Rama. The three-day event is dedicated to the art of burlesque. A theatrical stepsister of striptease, it's making a big comeback. From member station KQED in San Francisco, Alex Cohen reports.
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ALEX COHEN reporting:
The Rite Spot Cafe in San Francisco looks like your average 21st century bar, but on this night, the entertainment is something straight out of the past. Suzanne Ramsey, also known as Kitten on the Keys, sports a low-cut black fringed dress and belts out body tunes from the 1930s.
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COHEN: Ramsey's one of the performers at this weekend's Tease-O-Rama event and part of a larger movement called New Burlesque. New Burlesque traces its roots back to traditional burlesque, which began in the late 1800s. That's when P.T. Barnum brought a woman named Lydia Thompson and her troop of British blondes to the US to perform satirical skits in risque costumes. Technically the word burlesque refers to a wide range of performances, including comics and singers, as well as striptease artists, but says Suzanne Ramsey, the term has definite sexual overtones.
Ms. SUZANNE RAMSEY: When people think of burlesque, they don't think of the full show. What they first think about is, of course, the women disrobing 'cause that's the thing that left the best impression.
COHEN: Burlesque has left an impression for years as it involved from cancan to bump and grind to go-go girls. Though it was a mainstay of the theater in the 1950s, by the late '60s, much of burlesque's glamour had faded. Gyna Rose Jewel was an exotic dancer for 18 years, performing at clubs throughout the world. She blames burlesque's demise on newer forms of entertainment.
Ms. GYNA ROSE JEWEL: Burlesque, 'beit the bump and grind of the striptease artists, or the comic or the sword swallower or whatever, that used to be our TV. And when TV came in, people didn't have to venture out anymore. They could just sit down, turn on the boob tube and be amused for hours.
COHEN: Eventually, Jewel says, the only place where burlesque artists could draw audiences was in between films at X-rated theaters. But just a few years ago, all that began to change. The swing dance craze of the 1990s swiftly led to a renewed interest in this other more naughty dance of yesteryear. Michelle Carr, aka Valentina Violette, was one of the first to bring burlesque back to the Los Angeles club scene. In 1995, Carr put together a group of women to perform an old-school burlesque show. She called her production Velvet Hammer.
Ms. MICHELLE CARR: We just kind of blackmailed a few of our friends and twisted their arms; you know, friends who aren't strippers, you know, just regular good-time gals, you know, and, like, would coerce them into, you know, spending hours on a costume and then showing us their boobies.
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COHEN: The show was a big hit, and to this day, Velvet Hammer still puts on elaborate burlesque performances at historic theaters throughout Southern California. The ladies of Velvet Hammer all have sultry stage names like Ming Dnyalease and Bubbles LaRue. Associate producer Rita O'Albert, a svelte blonde otherwise known as Ursulina, says there are two requirements for becoming a Velvet Hammer girl--one, no professional strippers or porn stars, and two...
Ms. RITA O'ALBERT: No plastic surgery. We want to present gorgeous women as they were born, and so we have all sizes in our show from, you know, the kind of petite standard of today to just big body, well-proportioned broads
COHEN: Over the past few years, women of all ethnicities, shapes and sizes throughout the country have begun performing burlesque. This new burlesque encompasses everything from burlesque vaudeville roots, with singers like Kitty on the Keys to more modern acts, like the Gun Street Girls of Seattle who strip to Tom Waits tunes. New Burlesque features both solo sirens like Torchy Taboo of Atlanta and tantalizing troupes like the Devil-Ettes of San Francisco, who've been busy this week rehearsing for the Tease-O-Rama convention.
Unidentified Woman: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and one, two, three...
COHEN: Once described as John Waters meets the Rockettes, the Devil-Ettes are a troop of 14 women whose day jobs range from ad exec to professional chef to law student. Head Devil-Ette Baby Doe is the founder and promoter of Tease-O-Rama, a combination of entertainment and education now in its second year. By night, she says, the three-day event is a chance to see nearly 200 burlesque performers strut their stuff, but...
Ms. BABY DOE: It's also a convention during the day, and we're having things such as tassel twirling classes, pasty making classes, go-go aerobics. We're having a panel discussion on how to produce your own burlesque show. So it runs the gamut.
COHEN: Tease-O-Rama gives the stars of new burlesque a chance to learn from living legends like Gyna Rose Jewel and Dixie Evans, the self-proclaimed Marilyn Monroe of burlesque and proprietor of the Exotic World Museum in the Mojave Desert. This year's convention will also feature auditions to become the new Evangeline the Oyster Girl of New Orleans. The winner will learn the classic seductive routine from the original Evangeline herself, Kitty West, now in her 70s.
Tease-O-Rama not only provides women with opportunities to learn burlesque, it also gives women a chance to watch it in all its styles and variations which, says Devil-Ette Andrea Scarabelli(ph), happens much more with new burlesque than it did in the past.
Ms. ANDREA SCARABELLI: It's not just for men anymore, it's for everybody, and I think that's the beauty of it now, that women are going out and enjoying burlesque and enjoying the spectacle of it.
COHEN: The spectacle of Tease-O-Rama is not entirely G-rated, which is why the event is strictly 21 and over. But, says organizer Baby Doe, the highlight of the show isn't seeing gals in their birthday suits.
Ms. DOE: It's how you get there. That's the interesting part of burlesque and interesting part of Tease-O-Rama, and it's all about the tease.
COHEN: Tease-O-Rama kicks off tonight with a performance by The Wau Wau Sisters of New York City. For NPR News, I'm Alex Cohen in San Francisco.
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EDWARDS: From NPR News, this is MORNING EDITION.
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EDWARDS: I'm Bob Edwards.
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