Last night I headed over to Lincoln for a girlie night out for one of my best friend’s birthday celebrations and wanting to do things a bit differently she chose for us to have a lovely meal out followed by a bit of culture at the theatre in the form of An Evening of Burlesque. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect. When I think of Burlesque I think of the beautiful Dita Von Teese, I think of stunningly perfect bodies, sexy lingerie and yes, stripping! A slow, seductive, tantalising, teasing striptease!
The show began with Dusty the Compere who did a perfect job of getting the audience warmed up, some a little warmer than others. He had a wickedly dirty sense of humour and an amazing singing voice when he wowed us with his “Whatever Dusty wants, Dusty gets” number. Before long we were introduced to the lovely ladies of Burlesque but I had only one negative to the first two acts – I felt like a pervert who had sneaked into a dodgy club in Soho. The ladies were beautiful, their outfits were stunning but because they were only dancing and stripping it just didn’t feel right as the audience were a little reluctant to embrace it and show their appreciation. Dusty kept reminding us that this was in fact a live show, we could interact with the stars of the show, we could whistle, we could cheer and we could clap. Later on in the show some of the ladies sang as they danced and stripped, another played the piano and it felt more like a show and the audience woke up, they cheered, they whistled, they whooped and they applauded. The ladies shook their tooshes, they swung their nipple tassles and they had spoons in some strange places, one even found space in her dress for a teapot, cup and saucer!!! The beautiful lady below is Chrys Columbine who was amazing on the piano, she has performed all over the world and on TV before, who would have thought you could play the piano AND strip at the same time? But she did!
There was comedy, glamour and a little bit of danger and I absolutely loved it!
The most encouraging thing for me was seeing the different women’s bodies, referring back to my first paragraph, I thought they all had perfect bodies; pert bottoms, moderate boobs, flat tummies and absolutely NO CELLULITE but this was not true. There was cellulite, there were big boobs and there were fried eggs, there were tummies and there were gorgeous tattoos of which I was quite jealous and they were all sexy. I would love to have their confidence to get up on stage and do that, I would love to alter my whole wardrobe to the fifties style because I love it, so feminine, so sexy and I would love to have a hairdresser on standby to give me those beautiful classy curls everyday but I think I would get a few odd looks in the school playground so I’ll just go back to my non-style and wobbly bottom!