NYC Style Spot   +  TIME

The Closeted Top-Less Dancer

My friends and I were strolling around New York's East Village, looking for an post-dinner plan. In the city that never sleeps, what goes great after some Japanese food and candy-floss? Burlesque of course!

I'll assume you all know that American Burlesque is not just stripping. The ambiance and theme of the show is not seedy but sensual, slightly comic and occasionally bizarre (if you need to read up on it, wikipedia helps). The place to go to was The Slipper Room, an iconic burlesque theatre-bar, in the heart of New York's Lower East Side.

We each paid a small entry fee, took a seat and soaked up the atmosphere. We bought some drinks at the bar and soon the show began. The girls were beautiful, some curvy, some skinny, some had gorgeous costumes, whilst others had great dance moves. Each of them had their own identity and on-stage personality. The show is as varied as the girls starring in it. Live music accompanied the performances, and the audience loved it all. So did I.

That we went for a evening of burlesque is no surprise. It has been experiencing a revival in the last years with more theaters adopting the trend and more and more girls lining up to be the next Dita Von Teese (pictured below) or simply copying her style.

It doesn't take much research to find workshops for wannabe burlesque stars or conferences on the subject. To continue with the revival, a new film featuring Cher and Christina Aguilera is due some time at the end of this year - though I'm slightly dubious about this project, wondering how much we will see of Aguilera, how "purist" the film adaptation.

A friend of mine who paid for her studies striping (I know, such a cliche, but this is actually true) would now easily decline taking part in any burlesque performance. She declares that stripping was never fun nor easy. However, there are a lot of women who are considering giving burlesque a go, even just once, and not for money.

Could this be that the modern woman is supposed to see past the traditional connotations of stripping and find some sort of liberating self-expression, or even a gain in power? Is it a reaction to the ever growing PC surrounding us in the media? Is this what Madonna meant when she published her Sex book? Are we all good girls in disguise wanting to be publicly naughty?

I look at myself in the mirror, and though I've always been a bit of a performer, would I strip for the sake of it? Would I find it liberating? The costumes are indeed amazing, but one thing is wearing them, and another taking them off. Whatever the purpose, whatever the reason, burlesque is out there, almost everywhere, more open and active than ever.

I cannot finish this post without directing you to the site of one of the artists performing that evening, Veronica Varlow. She owns an online shop featuring some seriously gorgeous retro dresses, skirts and accessories. Worth a visit.

Pictures: The Slipper Room, Dita.net