I just have to make this post happen, though. Thanks to all the performers, the producers, volunteers, and audience of the show, and congratulations to the winners!

Best Debut

Perle Noire
Image from Perle’s myspace

Best Duo

Jewel of Denial and Kat Bardot
Image from Jewel’s myspace
Best Boylesque
No photo or web link at the moment, but I’ll find one! Send one if you have one!
Sin Jyn
Best Troupe

Peak-a-boo Revue
Photo from the Revue’s myspace
2nd Runner Up for Miss Exotic World

Trixie Little
Photo by me
1st Runner Up for Miss Exotic World

Lux La Croix
Image from Lux’s myspace
Miss Exotic World 2008

Angie Pontani
Photo by Whitney Ward

And thanks to our judges, Catherine D’Lish, Lily Burana, Lisa Kereszi, Grant Philipo, and Viva La Fever! The performers were all outstanding and they had quite a task.

When I get home I’ll post more photos. In the meantime, search on flickr for “exotic world” and “burlesque hall of fame,” and you should see some fabulous shots!

On June 3, 1917, Marie Frances Van Schaack was born at Abbott Hospital in Minneapolis. Instead of Marie’s mother, her grandmother Alice took the newborn home from the hospital and raised her. Years later, her family told Marie that Alice took her home because her mother Idella was too sick to care for her and her father Edward simply disappeared. But in fact Edward hadn’t disappeared, he’d been drafted. … The United States entered World War I toward the end of the struggle and Edward spent less than a year in the army, serving most of his hitch at Camp Lewis in Washington State.

By the time Edward arrived at Camp Lewis, Idella was involved with another man, Louis “Jack” Cornett. While it is uncertain whether the two ever wed–and descendants of Cornett’s doubt it–they did have two children. But Idella’s relationship with their father did not last. By 1924 she had married Ian (John) Alfred Blackadder, a Scottish immigrant, and was pregnant with their first child. A year later, a month before she turned 30, Idella gave birth to her fifth and last child.

While her young mother started a new family and her father served in the military, Marie remained with Alice and her new husband Ben, believing they were her parents and Idella was her older sister. And for much of her childhood, she went by the name Marie Klarquist.

Much later, her family finally explained to Marie that Idella was really her mother, not her sister, and that Alice was her grandmother, not her mother. Marie rarely talked about the admission or its impact on her. As late as 1982 she wrote in her Canadian memoir Ma Vie de Stripteaseuse, “Even today, I don’t understand perfectly how much this revelation affected me. I did my best not to let it affect me.”

Lili’s not the only one celebrating a birthday today. According to The Writer’s Almanac, “it’s the birthday of Josephine Baker, a dancer and singer who became one of the most popular music-hall entertainers in France. Time magazine wrote: ‘Mlle. Baker wore feathers on her rump, bananas dangling from her belt, nothing else. Parisians were raving overnight.’ Baker said: ‘I wasn’t really naked. … I simply didn’t have any clothes on.’”

As the BHOF Weekend nears (or I should say, zooms in, as I’m feeling a bit behind in my preparations!), I want to make note of some of the loveliest tributes I’ve seen, so I’ve asked the performers who did them to make some comments on the experiences they had with their numbers. This is the first of two or three posts I’ll make about tribute numbers.

Left: BOB and Ruby at the New York Burlesque Festival.
Photo by Kitty Kowalski.

Video of an Interview with Liz Renay

“Last year for the NYBF 2007 I decided upon the exit of one of the world’s blondest and brightest stars, Liz Renay, that I would create a tribute piece to perform at the festival. Liz Renay travelled the US with her daughter, Brenda, in a mother/daughter strip act. I find this to be one of the several things that sets Liz apart from other legends. I researched their relationship and was touched by it. Brenda took her own life years ago & I approached the duet with Ruby Valentine as Brenda with great respect. A friend recorded the song they used, “Heaven Sent Me An Angel” off of Liz’s ACTUAL copy of the record. After costuming , research, & choreography we performed it live. It felt like I was sending Liz & Brenda a thank you card wrapped in a pretty song and a young girl.”
–World Famous *BOB*

Above: Kitten Deville preparing for her Dixie Evans Tribute. Photo by me, taken backstage at the BHOF Reunion, 2006.

Video of Dixie Evans in the original number
“It was an exciting and intimidating experience
performing Dixie’s number with her and an audience
full of my peers. It was my first time trying to do someone else’s
performance. Dixie had coached me on her routine and the songs
that I used were hers. But she insisted that I add my
own song and my style to the end of the act. And so I
did. I tried to stay true to her coaching of what she
had done in that number from the different times that
she had performed it and then added my own twist to
the ending.”

–Kitten Deville

Left: Michelle L’Amour at The BHOF Striptease Reunion, 2007.
Photo by Mike Albov.

ideo of Sally Rand’s Fan Dance
“The tribute to Ms. Rand happened by accident. I was working with ostrich.com to develop these fans and had been working with them for a bit, when I got the call from Luke. He asked me to do a tribute and I immediately thought of Sally Rand, however, when I hung up, I thought, ‘What the hell am I thinking? I’m actually going to try to tribute this woman, whom almost all tribute when they do a fan dance?’ I knew it had to be something special and really different from what was out there already. First, I had to find the right version of Clare De Lune. I used a version with this sweeping violin that just tugged at your heart. Then, I had to work out to lift those gigantic fans. When I was practicing, my hands were blistered and cut up. When I was done with practice (and I could only muster an hour at a time), my arms, hands, forearms and back were so sore. In developing the choreography, I didn’t want to mimic her moves, but her feeling behind the act. I had seen her video of this dance a couple years ago, and I just want to remember that feeling and I wanted to tribute that.

“The only thing I wanted to do in the tribute was not to cry. I would cry in rehearsal and I would cry in the car just listening to the song. I almost broke a couple times in the performance but I didn’t want to ruin my make up! Afterwards, while I was taking my bow, I was holding it in, and then I went backstage and Franky met me there. He had tears in his eyes and gave me this big hug and then I let it out. The song just gets me every time and knowing that I was tributing one of the biggest influences in burlesque was overwhelming. It was one of the proudest moments in my performance life.”
–Michelle L’Amour

Left: Sally Rand’s fans in the Exotic World Burlesque Museum.
Photo from Erochica Bamboo.

Coming up, stories of tributing Hot Honey Harlow, Blaze Starr, and Zorita!

Posted by Jo Weldon, Headmistress of The New York School of Burlesque, for burlesquedaily.blogspot.com.

‘Minsky’s features an all-star cast, and the first signs of a budding nostalgia for the vanished world of the ‘20s and burlesque theatre in particular; the casting of Burt Lahr – the Cowardly Lion - in a small but poignant role is a tribute to that vanished tradition. Britt Ekland plays an innocent who arrives in the Lower East Side dreaming of being a dancer, who gets caught up in the desperate dramas being played out by the cast of Minsky’s, a burlesque theatre on its last legs. The rather broad little story is intercut with the cast – including Jason Robards and the great Norman Wisdom – performing burlesque routines with a chorus line of the meticulously bad dancers….’

Today marks the re-release of ‘The Night They Raided Minsky’s’ on DVD. From Metro.com

From the Wikipedia entry for the movie:
‘Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, “‘The Night They Raided Minsky’s’” is being promoted as some sort of laff-a-minit, slapstick extravaganza, but it isn’t. It has the courage to try for more than that and just about succeeds. It avoids the phony glamour and romanticism that the movies usually use to smother burlesque (as in Gypsy) and it really seems to understand this most-American art form.” (12/23/68)’

Posted by Jo Weldon, Headmistress of The New York School of Burlesque, for burlesquedaily.blogspot.com.

For those of you curious about the list, here’s the complete top ten list:

1. Martin Luther King Jr.
2. Rosa Parks
3. Harriet Tubman
4. Susan B. Anthony
5. Benjamin Franklin
6. Amelia Earhart
7. Oprah Winfrey
8. Marilyn Monroe
9. Thomas Edison
10. Albert Einstein

And, a poll of 2,000 adults age 45 and over produced a list with only two differences – Betsy Ross and Henry Ford replaced Monroe and Einstein.

“Burlesque, that fabled if slightly soiled fantasy realm whose heraldic totem was the twirling pasty and whose undisputed queen was Gypsy Rose Lee, has returned to New York, dripping with rhinestones and trailing clouds of glitter. Under the rubric neo-burlesque, a Depression-era genre whose hallmarks were smut with attitude, bargain-barn glamour, rock-bottom ticket prices and a proudly stuck-out tongue is reasserting itself, flourishing in unexpected corners around the city.”

Jo Boobs points out The New York Times did a similar story in 2003 and writes, “I’m thrilled that they’re interested enough in burlesque to write about it, and thrilled about the awesome folks in the article, but I confess I get a little bit baffled that it’s still being treated like it’s “back” when it’s clearly, simply, HERE.”

In other news …

Seattlites love themselves a little burlesque. This Friday, they can help Sinner Saint Burlesque troupe get to Miss Exotic World.

Will the Fountainbleu in Miami do burlesque again?

This one, also from the Times, circa 2003:
‘It is not surprising that there is an old-time burlesque revival in New York. Like tiki bars and the jitterbug, the striptease had to come back sometime. What is impressive, though, is that it has come back with such a vengeance. Suddenly, women in very scanty clothing are everywhere, or at least on every bijou stage in every hipster neighborhood, introduced by languid gay M.C.’s instead of the straight male impresarios of the 40’s and 50’s. You can see a burlesque revue, or two, on almost any night of the week: Mondays in Williamsburg; Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays in the East Village; Fridays on Coney Island; Saturdays on the Lower East Side. In May, the Knitting Factory staged a sold-out show during a burlesque festival.’ (Not) For His Eyes Only

I’m thrilled that they’re interested enough in burlesque to write about it, but I confess I get a little bit baffled that it’s still being treated like it’s “back” when it’s clearly, simply, HERE.

Above: The NY School of Burlesque in Grand Central Station.

The four-day festival, which will take place Thursday, June 5 — Sunday, June 8 at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, will include performances from the reigning Miss Exotic World, Immodesty Blaize, left, Michelle L’amour, Kitten DeVille and more than a 100 of the world’s top burlesque performers representing over 10 countries and 25 states.

Beyond Friday’s Striptease Reunion and The Miss Exotic World Pageant on Saturday, there’s also a weekend long Burlesque Bazaar, a display of memorabilia from the Burlesque Hall of Fame, a Pinup Safari with Don Spiro, daily poolside dance parties and the debut of Dr. Sketchy’s Las Vegas . Don’t miss any of the fun.

Sadly, the other letters intended to respond to that statement were quite inadequate as arguments. While I realize not everyone has studied philosophy, I didn’t find myself admiring the persuasiveness of ANY of the letter writers.

Fortunately, this article makes quite a bit more sense:

‘The phenomenal rise of burlesque over the past years has been propelled by its popularity among women. There were men in the room, but mostly they were under the protective wing of female friends. It was girls’ night…

‘There is a growing industry supporting the increasing popularity of burlesque. As satirical as it may be, it remains happily within the world of erotica. It is a fun and sophisticated branch of erotica, however, that encourages women to participate as consumers and producers and relegates the male eye to a secondary place while playing with what attracts it.’

I love a thinker who actually thinks.

‘I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.’ Mae West

Posted by Jo Weldon, Headmistress of The New York School of Burlesque, for burlesquedaily.blogspot.com.

“Burlesque is becoming such a popular form of entertainment. More and more people are understanding that it is just the right balance between glamour and fun, it’s sexy and it’s a chance to dress up. It’s comedy too. If you look up ‘burlesque’ in the dictionary, it says it’s a comedy, a parody. It has the moves of striptease but really it’s mixed up to provide a parody element. Burlesque has become synonymous with striptease, but that’s not necessarily all there is to it.”

In other news …

Did you know the genius behind Baskin-Robbins was inspired by burlesque? After a trip to Minsky’s Burlesque in Chicago, where 21 girls were on display, he put up a big sign proclaiming “21 Flavors 21″ at his Glendale, Calif., shop.

Millie Dollar’s hearing loss hasn’t held her back in the world of burlesque.

To witness artful burlesque in action, a Florida reporter caught the Boudoir Beauties, a longstanding West Palm Beach-based collective of art/stripteasers.