Gala!
- Les Coquettes Cabaret Burlesque
- At Revival in Toronto on Sunday
If you’re thinking pole dance, or lap dance, you won’t find it here. The aim of “le burlesque nouveau” is to put some of the class and glamour back into an art form fallen into disrepute.
This neo-striptease is focused less on the strip and more on the tease – a dance theatre/adult entertainment that is naughty and nice at the same time, rooted in both sex and satire. Both the nouveau-burlesque performers and the audience are here to have a titillating good time.
Les Coquettes Cabaret Burlesque’s latest show, Gala!, presented as a black-tie evening at Toronto’s Revival on Sunday night, is a case in point. What follows is a deconstruction of what goes into the making of a nouveau-burlesque production.
The Theme
Nouveau strip is usually built around one common idea. Gala! is an homage to the glamour of Old Hollywood. As themes go, it’s perhaps too general a topic, but it still produced entertaining moments Sunday with tributes to film noir and silent movies, and a boylesque (male burlesque) trio performing Singing in the Rain.
What’s in a name?
Everything! All nouveau-burlesque performers have less inhibited alter egos. By day, they may work in banks or marketing firms, but at night they are transformed into glamorous avatars. Les Coquettes include mistress of ceremonies La Minouche, Suki Tsunami, Dante Inferno, Charity Dawn and Charlotte Webber, not to mention the boylesque known as Dew Lily and the cleverly styled guest artist Coco Framboise (who happens to be black and gorgeous).
The Humour
Double entendres are what it’s all about. For example, MC La Minouche, in introducing Billie Black’s film noir number High Heels, had rather a lot of fun with the slang term for private detectives, not to mention the nudge-nudge possibilities of her own name.
Pasties and G-strings
Full nudity is not the goal here. The mocking fun is based on going only so far and leaving the rest to the imagination.
Glamour
Glitter makeup and overabundant wigs are the norm, as are stylish and seductive costumes. The latter are built around bustiers on top and garter belts with suspenders that hold up silk stockings. That patch of naked flesh between panties and stocking tops is what rivets the eye.
The Man Props
The male Coquettes are called the Man Props. They include the aforementioned Dew Lily, the Carpenter and the Barback. If the term seems dismissive, it’s because striptease has always been female-centric, but not female-controlled, so it’s payback time. Put the men in their place?
The Music
It’s always raunchy, with suggestive lyrics. There is, needless to say, a heavy percussive beat.
But is it dance?
It certainly is. Every number is carefully choreographed. The performers have to be able to move in time to the music while shedding clothes, not an easy thing to do cleanly and without awkward pauses. They all have to have rhythm.
Audience Participation
It’s a given. A guy was hauled out of the audience for Dante Inferno’s What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? number: He helped her undo her garters, and when she took off her bra, he was showered in confetti. Two women celebrating their birthdays, who were very good sports, were ordered by La Minouche to eat the same cupcake – together – in the most salacious manner possible, and they did.
The Gimmick
Every act has its shtick. For example, It’s Oh So Quiet featured Georgie Gates in a fan dance. Singing in the Rain had the three boylesques shedding yellow slickers and coyly stripping out of their briefs behind three twirling black umbrellas. Only Girl in the World was a bump ’n’ grind number performed by four women with chairs allowing for a lot of lascivious positions. The silent movie A Simple Tail starred Charity Dawn and the Carpenter, with the latter saving the heroine from an onrushing train.
(Les Coquettes Cabaret Burlesque is the featured attraction on New Year’s Eve at Brantford, Ont.’s Sanderson Centre. That town won’t know what hit it.)
