Ruby, the fan dancer in Greg's show has repeatedly invited us to see her other performances. Well, most of them require going to a warehouse district in Brooklyn after midnight on a weekday, so we've declined. Saturday night was our chance to make it up to her. We went to the NYC Burlesque Festival Gala at The Supper Club in Times Square.
It was fantastic...crowd watching alone was worth the price of admission. However, I did think our $20 would get us chairs. We knelt behind a wrought-iron balcony railing for 3 hours--literally--so we could see the stage. Great blues band played first, then a gazillion burlesque acts. Everything from the grotesque to the sublime. It was an interesting experience in avant garde theatre (almost nothing in it was even remotely sexual) and some of the acts had put a lot of thought into their performances and it was very much their "art"; it just happened to involve disrobing.
The standouts included a woman who recreated Manet's The Picnic; a trio from Atlanta who included a seriously ugly man on stilts in an antebellum gown from under whose skirts came two "soldiers" in blue and gray who did a well-choreographed sword fight/striptease while the man sang mid-19th Century ballads funereally in a gorgeous baritone; and Ruby's Big Apple Burlesque's film noir scene complete with radio announcers, singers and flashbacks. Others however, were downright silly and, occasionally, grotesque. Everybody had a gimic however, and as far as I can tell, if you have an odd minor talent, say, the ability to do rope tricks, balance glasses of wine on your forehead, hula hoop, etc., and can take your clothes off concurrently, you've got a job.
If you ever get the opportunity, I'd highly recommend the experience. Plus, I'm workin' on my act...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
you could do the can-can! I know you do it well.
Not quirky enough. It would have to be something like watering flowers and having them "grow"...if you know what I mean.
that would take months.... :)
Post a Comment