Burlesque as you like it - Not a Family Show

Because the first season sold out completely a day before opening and we all know heaps of people who couldn't make it..... WE'RE BACK! Four nights, five shows from March 25 at the Basement Theatre.

The Dust Palace (Making Love to the Audience, Fête Macabre) presents a smouldering burlesque which promises to be comedic, politically astute, and poetically informed. Hand picked for their individual talents the troup uses circus arts, singing, dancing, clown, balance acrobatics and more to undress ideas around sexuality, both modern and historic.

The show comprises feats of daring, coercion, seduction and sedition by a luscious troup of gorgeous performers.

“Burlesque as you like it - Not a Family Show” is both true to the origins of the genre and in discussion with the new wave of feminism, that of the "stiletto feminist", or “babe feminist” who believes the cliché of sex kitten, or the sexual consumer, to be ultimately empowering. 

Prior to the 1950's in America burlesque simply meant "in an upside down style". Like its cousin, commedia dell'arte, burlesque turned social norms head over heels. Burlesque was a style of live entertainment that encompassed pastiche, parody, and wit.

April 1925, Madamoiselle Fifi on stage, whether by accident or design, striped her clothing to the waist and moved.  The next few decades saw the rise of the striptease as a theatrical form and by the 1950's the quintessential American-style burlesque, which is often referenced today, had defined itself. Today the art of striptease, and the commercialization of the body, still holds social stigma not easily shaken. However we have begun to use these tools to empower ourselves in private.

“Burlesque as you like it - Not a Family Show” plays the archeologist, digging up the past for us to investigate through modern magnifying apparatus, the clown, slipping on lacy undies covered in whipped cream, and the provocateuse, balancing 'sexy' and 'intelligent' on the sharpened blade of a knife.