Interview with Jacqueline Boxx, International Burlesque Headliner and Instructor (Neo-Burlesque History)
Photo c. Stereovision
I first got
to know Jacqueline Boxx when I was teaching a workshop while on tour, and our
relationship has perfectly represented how wonderful it is to get to know
people while traveling as a burlesque teacher and performers. The intimacy of
getting to know students and fellow performers while on the road, sharing
backstages and hotel rooms, is more important to me than the glamour, and I've
gotten to spend some quality time with people I consider friends and peers. I
was honored to be invited to host the Essential Tease Showcase she
co-produced in Baltimore. I had mostly stopped doing interviews, but our
conversations after that show lit a fire under me, and I'm excited to be doing
new interviews for my blog. If you haven't already met Jacqueline Boxx, prepare
to fall in love, and if you already know and love her, prepare to be very proud
of your good taste!
Stage Name:
Jacqueline Boxx
Locality:
Baltimore, MD
Years
Performing: Three, a break, then four!
Jo: When did
you start doing burlesque? What inspired you to try it?
Jacqueline: I
first got into burlesque as an offshoot of doing circus performance. In my
early years in college, I was teaching bellydance and taking classes in aerial,
hooping and clowning. Some of the other performers at my college started
getting interested in learning burlesque so the one who’d had the most
experience began teaching us a few basics and we learned what we could from
online sources as well. Our leader arranged a first show that would be MC’d by
Rose Wood who would come from NYC and would also teach a workshop and perform.
I’d originally wanted to join the group learning burlesque because I’d been
through a traumatic relationship and felt like I needed to connect with my own
body in a positive way. The workshop Rose Wood taught ended up cementing that
this was something I wanted to keep doing. Burlesque could tell a story and
speak to others about so much and I wanted to be a part of it.
What are some of the differences in the level of production
between your early and your current acts? Your first costumes and your current
ones?
My first acts
were all very message-focused. I became invested in telling only provocative
and subversive stories through stripping and became laser-focused in that
direction. In one of my earliest ones, I was made up like a store mannequin and
painted white. I stripped off the clothes and then poured water on myself and
smeared the paint around. For awhile, that’s the only kind of burlesque I
thought was “real.” My costumes were all pieces I’d gotten in thrift stores
with no rhinestones and were usually unusable after one show so my first three
or four acts were one-and-done events.
I received a
much needed education after leaving college and talking with other performers
about how burlesque was intrinsically subversive. I learned that I was wrong to
have this idea in my head that artsy freak-them-out performance was the only
way to challenge dominant narratives. Just being a woman on stage and liking
myself was subversive. Just enjoying my own body was subversive. Since then,
I’ve switched gears quite a lot in terms of my performance aesthetic. I like to
surprise people by having them encounter high glamour and elegance in a place
they don’t expect to see it: in a wheelchair user. Showgirl style is my new
artsy freak-them-out aesthetic, I guess.
What are some
of your favorite experiences in burlesque, as both a performer and producer?
Honestly, some
of my favorite moments in burlesque have occurred backstage with other
performers. It’s unfortunately REALLY rare for dressing rooms to be accessible
even if a venue is so I’m often separate from other performers in a bathroom or
kitchen space. When I get to have that backstage space with other performers,
friendships are formed, jokes are born, ideas are hatched that turn into acts
and shows, and I get to feel really connected to the other people who love to
do what I love to do. There’s a huge impact when I don’t have that space and I
love when I do.
I haven’t had
too many experiences as a producer yet but I hope to soon have a lot more. :)
So far, getting to bring both Perle Noire and Poison Ivory to be headliners for
a show in my hometown was an honor that I still can’t believe I’ve had. Writing
this right now I can’t believe I got to do that.
You
participate in Nerdlesque. What for you are the main differences and
similarities in preparing a nerdlesque and a non-nerdlesque routine?
I think that I
tend to want to dive into narrative more heavily with nerdlesque. I don’t
necessarily tell a story with my nerdlesque acts, but there’s something about
the character or source material when I create nerdlesque that tells a story
that I feel it is important to tell. I could probably write a seminar paper to
accompany each of my nerdlesque acts. I almost did for Professor X. My
non-nerdlesque routines are, in a way, much more free. I get to be myself which
will never fit into an easily-conveyed narrative.
You call yourself
Miss Disa-Burly-Tease, One of your stated missions as a performer is to make
disability visible onstage and beyond. How has burlesque helped with that
mission?
Burlesque
created that mission for me. I came to terms with the identity of being disabled
through deciding to bring a personal wheelchair on stage for the first time, so
in a way I feel like performing is a way of expressing my constant everflowing
gratitude to burlesque for helping me to accept and love myself as I am.
“As I am”
means disabled in a way that often doesn’t fit what most people have in their
heads when they hear the word “disability.” A huge turning point for me came
when I really accepted that there are infinite ways to be disabled, that it’s
different for every single disabled person, and that the best (and only) thing
I could do to find my place in the world was to live what was true to me.
Wheelchair users have varying levels of mobility. I have found it to be the
best mobility aid that I could hope for when it comes to dance that doesn’t
hurt me. I think that 1) seeing a disabled person strip in a sexy way, 2)
seeing a disabled person dressed in an elegant and sexy way, 3) seeing a
wheelchair user dance with some limited leg mobility, and 4) hearing the words
“disabled” and “disability” proudly reclaimed are all ways that I am
purposefully confronting misconceptions and prejudice. I would never have
gotten to this point without burlesque.
You've told me you had two different experiences in burlesque,
performing before and after you were using a wheelchair. Do you mind talking
about that here?
I spent my
whole life being hypermobile, which fed directly into being a lifelong dancer.
I have been performing dance in some sense since elementary school and have
almost never in my life not been studying some kind of dance. I love to dance.
I studied ballet, tap, jazz, tribal fusion bellydance and ATS, modern, Indian
classical dance, swing dancing, and ballroom. When I first started creating
burlesque acts, I was teaching bellydance and used a lot of my training to
influence my choreography. However, I’d also always been dealing with strange
physical conditions. My joints would hurt much more than they should for
someone my age, my knees bent backwards when I tried to go en pointe (which led
to the end of my ballet journey), my shoulders kept dislocating over and over,
and I had ribs that would snap and pop loudly when I isolated my chest.
Specifically, my knees were hurting more and more after every dance session and
I was spending hours with ice on them trying to bring down the inflammation
that never seemed to dissipate. I didn’t want to imagine not dancing anymore,
though. It was in the middle of this push to keep dancing that I was learning
burlesque, so even though I had some struggles, I performed and presented as
able-bodied for three years while in college.
My last year
of college, I was hit by a car while walking across the street and one of my
legs was broken in multiple places. The healing process ended up taking much
longer than it should have and that’s when we started really hunting for
answers. I never returned to dancing the way I used to after that, although I
tried to get back into it in spurts but kept hurting myself worse and worse.
Still not healed, a doctor tried surgery on my other leg. I didn’t heal from
that either and now it was impossible for me to think about dancing on my legs
with how much pain and strain both of my knees were under. Through testing and
hunting and intense pressure on my doctors, we finally realized that I have
Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) like my mother and I wouldn’t be healing. My
doctor told me I should not dance on my legs anymore because I wouldn’t heal
from further damage I’d do.
I lived in
Tucson at that time and spent awhile still trying to fight this idea and doing
some damage in the process. My good friend Rambo Rose noticed how drawn I was
to a local burlesque troupe and that they were hosting a mentorship series. She
convinced me to sign up even though I wasn’t using mobility aids yet and had
been directly told not to dance on my legs. “You’ll find a way,” she said. It
wasn’t until halfway through the workshop that someone asked me why I wasn’t
considering mobility aids for movement. The following weekend I swallowed my
internalized ablism and used a wheelchair to go out with friends and family for
the first time. I could move without wanting to cry and stay out as long as I
wanted to. I could exist without the presence of so much pain, fear, and
discomfort. I decided to start thinking about using that wheelchair more
longterm and bringing it on stage.
You performed
at the Burlesque Hall of Fame. Can you talk about that number and how you found
it was received?
My “Microaggressions”
number was created while I still lived in Tucson, AZ. I was part of a hugely
helpful Facebook group with other disabled and chronically ill people where we
could get support and bitch about our experiences. There was a lot of us
telling the people who hurt our friends to fuck off. I thought about how so
many of these people didn’t realize they were hurting us. They would say things
without thinking and it would feel like a piece of us had just been carved off
and they were totally unaware. That’s pretty close to the definition of a
microaggression.
As just one
quick example, I have been asked over and over, “How did you break yourself?”
People think it’s a cute or funny way to ask about what they assume is a
temporary injury because they’ve seen me before not using a wheelchair or they
just see me as young and “healthy looking” and therefore are waiting for me to
explain about my skiing accident or something. That question hurts because it
equates disability with “being broken,” which is horrifically ablist. It hurts
because it puts the blame on the disabled person for being disabled. It hurts
because it carries those assumptions about what disabled people are supposed to
look like.
It also hurts
because we’re expected to be polite and smile in response to these people and
not tell them to fuck off no matter how much we’re in pain. Because they didn’t
mean to hurt us. I started to fantasize about an act where I could symbolically
tell every single one of these people who hurt me and my friends this way to
fuck off in one big gesture and finally get that off my chest. That developed
into the projected words on the screen behind me, which are all taken with
permission directly from the people in that group or from my experiences, and
the Cake song “Nugget,” which has the chorus, “shut the fuck up.” While I
originally thought of being aggressively unappealing visually throughout the
act, I ended up deciding to capitalize on the dissonance of a burlesque
performer who is usually seen as there for the audience’s consumption still
being visually appealing while essentially yelling at them for their shitty
phrasing. I also came to see that the way people were torn between looking at
me and looking at the words as highly connected to my experience having to
smile on the outside while screaming on the inside in response to those words.
It’s an experience in cognitive dissonance. As far as how it was received, I
was so pleasantly surprised. I’ve gotten to connect with so many other disabled
and chronically ill people who have had experiences like mine and who felt
connected to my need to flip off their microaggressors.
View this
performance on Vimeo:
You produced
a workshop and student showcase. Where all have you been teaching? Will you be
doing more workshops that conclude in showcases?
I’ve been
overjoyed to be teaching my personal two-part series for about three or four
years now called, “The Mind: Dance for Mobility Restrictions” and “The
Movement: Floor/Chair for Mobility Restrictions.” I still teach those as
requested all over. Now myself, Cherie Nuit and Nona Narcisse are teaching
“Essential Tease: A Transformative Burlesque Workshop Series” in Baltimore, MD,
which is where I’m from. That first series and showcase were so very rewarding.
We’re happy to announce we’ve been invited back to Creative Alliance to teach a
second series and plan to begin teaching those classes in late July.
What's
upcoming for you? What are you most excited for?
I’m so excited
to continue my journey of producing accessible shows in Baltimore and traveling
to perform around the world. Being a headliner for the Vienna Boylesque
Festival which is coming up at the end of the month is such an honor and that
is a huge exciting thing on the horizon right now. I’m also beginning to mentor
burlesque students with disabilities and chronic conditions through online
one-on-one sessions. It’s really putting into action my overall goal of
increasing the visibility of disabled bodies on burlesque stages.
Photo c. Stereovision
You told me a
great detail about why you wear zebra print, will you tell these readers about
that?
Medical
students are supposedly told while in training, "when you hear hoofbeats,
think horses, not zebras." That's because doctors are supposed to assume that
the most common reason for the symptoms is the cause. The simplest explanations
and most common conditions are usually to blame. The problem is that sometimes
the hoofbeats are zebras. EDS is a rare genetic condition with deceptively
common symptoms like joint pain or fatigue. That's why, worldwide, patients
with EDS call themselves zebras with pride to bring awareness to our community.
You can learn more at www.ehlers-danlos.org
Anything else
you want readers to know?
I love to meet
new people and I love to travel! If you’d be interested in me performing and
teaching in your area, please get in touch.
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If you're in
Vienna late May 2019, you can catch Jacqueline headlining the 6th annual Vienna Boylesque Festival!
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