Jo Weldon's New York School of Burlesque

[This article was originally published March 5, 2009.] I have been extremely lucky to work with some of the best musicians in burlesque. I've been performing, or at least dancing, to live music all my life, including one glorious night with Spinal Tap, but most of the time I was just dancing along to the music. In burlesque with live music, there's real collaboration. The dancers rehearse their numbers with the bands, and the musicians watch the dancers to see if they need to give them a drum hit when a glove drops to the floor, if the music needs to be sped up or slowed down, or if they need to repeat a form until the dancer is ready to finish her number. In New York we have live music at the Slipper Room every Wednesday night with amazing musicians including Brian Fisherman, with whom I've been performing for over 10 years, Le Scandal has featured The New York City Blues Devils and the Le Scandal Orchestra, Big Apple Burlesque features a live band every week, Brian Newm...

I have been extremely lucky to work with some of the best musicians in burlesque. I've been performing, or at least dancing, to live music all my life, including one glorious night with Spinal Tap, but most of the time I was just dancing along to the music. In burlesque with live music, there's real collaboration. The dancers rehearse their numbers with the bands, and the musicians watch the dancers to see if they need to give them a drum hit when a glove drops to the floor, if the music needs to be sped up or slowed down, or if they need to repeat a form until the dancer is ready to finish her number. In New York we have live music at the Slipper Room every Wednesday night with amazing musicians including Brian Fisherman, with whom I've been performing for over 10 years, Le Scandal has featured The New York City Blues Devils and the Le Scandal Orchestra, Big Apple Burlesque features a live band every week, Brian Newman produces a burlesque show with his trio at Duane Park...

Lux Interior, frontman of the Cramps, passed away yesterday. The Cramps, with their visual mashup of pinup, fetish, and horror, their dirty and incredibly danceable retro/neo/psychobilly music, their unapologetic admiration of perversion and outsiders, and the outrageous stage presences of Lux and his wife, band guitarist Poison Ivy, represent everything that makes burlesque so loveable when it is more than merely glamourous. They have been a significant influence on and fans of burlesque from way back, and Poison Ivy has always represented the pinup as an active and dangerous force of nature in a way that many burlesque performers have emulated, some without even realizing it. I actually feel totally inadequate to describe the Cramps and what they have meant to me over the years, but I'd love comments from Cramps fans and friends. I'd especially love to hear from burlesque performers about numbers they do to Cramps music. You tell me yours, I'll tell you mine--I'm...

One of my students just reminded me of this video, which I love: (Ursula Martinez) Gala Juste Pour Rire 2006 @ Yahoo! Video http://video.yahoo.com/watch/14680/1112820 Ursula Martinez is the performer who triggered the book "The Happy Stripper" by Jacki Willson, which I'm writing a report on--but you probably won't see it till after my manuscript is in to my adorable editor. I'm currently finishing my chapter on music and for my taste this is a great example of use of traditional music ( "A Shot in the Dark" by Henry Mancini ) in a very contemporary way--which I suppose raises the question of whether music from the 60s is contemporary, which I leave to you to debate. I think this routine deserves the attention it has gotten, and I really love it. I read a detailed analysis of this performance art piece which attributed all kinds of complicated intentions to her and concluded that the final reveal was meant to be menstruation. Maybe, but I think it wor...

When I interviewed Dixie Evans for this blog, she mentioned how some of the dancers would fight over who got to use the song Harlem Nocturne. In my classes, I talk about overused songs in burlesque, such as Night Train, Lament, and The Stripper (and of course there are many more modern songs that get used repeatedly), and I actually encourage my students to use them. Of course, they might not want to subject some of the most experienced performers in burlesque to them, but if they are new performers, they're bringing in new audiences, and those audiences may have never seen a woman do a fan dance to Harlem Nocturne or a shimmy to Night Train. I also think that since much of this music, such as the material on Striptease Classics, was produced and arranged to accompany sexy showgirl or striptease performance, it's the best to use to learn. Although almost all neo-burlesque performers play with more recent music--I've even choreographed a Fosse-tribute chair dance to Jethro ...