Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The Vancouver Burlesque Community

Vancouver has a semi-underground performance community within the burlesque community. Since 2004 this Vancouver community has been thriving, and now hosts many burlesque, and boylesque, troups as well as courses, festivals and fashion!

May of 2010 will again host the Vancouver International Burlesque festival. This festival is organized by local burlesque performers and volunteers to help platform Vancouver's (and North America's) underground Burlesque world. It hosts performances, classes and workshops all allowing people to interact with, experience and explore this unique performance art.Information can be found at: http://www.vanburlesquefest.com/

Local troupes such as sweet soul burlesque have studios and various themed shows around the city. (http://www.sweetsoulburlesque.ca) The intention of creating these performances are to "Sweet Soul strives to break the mold by creating fun, ground-breaking burlesque events that are of high production value and unequaled sassiness. The troupe works together to inspire each other and other women / lovers of women to enjoy themselves and their sexuality and to rekindle their sense of playfulness and confidence." (as taken by the website)

Sweet Soul Burlesque isn't the only performing troupe in Vancouver either, its simply one of many. Some Vancouver troupes are less vintage-style burlesque and more about challenging modern sexual identities, for other troupes a revival of cabaret performance style.

A Vancouver production company -Screaming Chicken- holds various classes for Burlesque exposure such as pastie making classes, burlesque aerobics and a training course for " becoming burlesque. Info can be found at http://screamingchicken.net/productions_classes.htm

Burlesque Yoga classes are available in Vancouver and Burlesque fashion has increased in popularity particularly among designers around Main street in East vancouver with its focus on vintage fashion styles.

It is a growing performance community in Vancouver, all and all its jolly good fun!
-m

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for this, Megan, and glad to see you're already into the swing of the course and this blog. Did you see Screaming Chicken and the Wet Spots' burlesque musical, Shine, last summer on Granville Island. Here's a link to a post on my other blog about it: http://performanceplacepolitics.blogspot.com/2009/08/burlesque-west.html.

    And check out my friend Becki Ross' (Assoc. Prof., Sociology and Women's Studies, UBC) book Burlesque West (University of Toronto Press, 2009), about the heydey of burlesque on the west coast from the 40s to the present.

    Best,

    Peter

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  2. i sure did see Shine, It was wonderful! If it ever comes back I would highly recommend it!

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