Tease us a bit, for God's sake! By Tanya Pikula Oh yeah baby!

roars the girl sitting next to me at Goodhandy's, as we watch a female dominatrix strut onto the stage and tease a blindfolded girl with a lap dance. Next, a female-impersonator in a coruscating dress delivers a self-deprecating comedy routine and an energetic rendition of Mein Herr. It all ends with a beautiful Christian schoolgirl who alternates between reading the Bible and shedding pieces of her clothing. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the Neo-Burlesque! Wilkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome! In most simple terms, Burlesque is a mix of sex, wit and subversion of all kinds. It is also the more politically charged ancestor of the striptease. It originated in the nineteenth century, with Lydia Thompson's British troupe taking New York by storm. Women-written, -directed and -acted, the shows featured gender-bending, clever dialog, broad comedy acts, and of course, the quintessential tease. They were delicious cocktails of satire and sexuality that fused popular entertainment and performance art. As the industry became more professionalized in the 1880s, however, male managers took over and the focus shifted from the wits to the tits. Rather than vehicles designed to temporarily unhinge the social norms, the shows became more focused on revealing as much of the female form as the laws allowed - with a bit of comedy on the side, of course. Life was good for Burlesque for several decades; people like to laugh and scantily-clothed women on stage were still a novelty. But in the 1920s, as films took over the stage, the public interest in Burlesque began to wane. Robert Allen, author of the book Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture, observes that Burlesque bared all in the 1920s as a last ditch attempt to stay alive. Flesh-colored tights used until this point were stripped off; screens, with their silhouettes of naked female forms, were torn down; and the only things left standing, or rather hanging, between the performers and the audience, were the pasties and the underwear. Somewhere in the midst of this struggle, Burlesque gave birth to what we now know as striptease. What was left of the transgressive songs, comedy acts and witty dialog was packed up and relegated to the dusty backstage rooms. The form was distilled to its most marketable ingredient, the one out of which the words, the drama and the music sprung from and one to which they invariably returned: SEX, of course. So why did performers like Billie Madley, Ami Goodheart and Michelle Carr decide to awaken the moribund artform in the mid-1990s? More importantly, why has this movement gathered such momentum in our contemporary culture? Thriving Neo-Burlesque scenes are present in cities all over North America, including Vancouver and Toronto. Major events and competitions, such as Miss Exotic World Pageant (started in 1992) and Tease-O-Rama Burlesque Convention (in 2001) are gathering places for hundreds of troupes and independent performers. In Toronto, performers have banded together to form the Toronto Burlesque and Vaudeville Alliance. We're tired of straightforward sex, says Kate, a fan of the revivalist movement, We just want a bit of tease. Sitting in the front row of another venue and watching a rather bland Neo-Burlesque show, I had to agree with Kate. The performance consisted of a line-up of girls who rushed onto the stage and immediately plunged into generic and efficient stripping routines as they lip-synced (badly) to fairly tame songs. The audience was mum. Boredom was marinating in the tight, dark room.

How is this possible? you may ask, Sex is in the room! Alas, the twenty- and thirty-something-year-olds that lounged in the venue and sipped an array of alcoholic beverages have lost that incredible visual fascination with naked female flesh. We are the generations raised on sex-filled media, porn and striptease. We have seen it all and we are not easily shocked or interested. We want the mystery, the comedy, the provocation and the tease. We want, for once, NOT to see it all, or at least NOT to see it right away. Michelle Baldwin, who wrote Burlesque and the New Bump-n-Grind, suggests that quality NeoBurlesque provides what is missing in contemporary life. In an era of instant gratification, stick-thin models, tiny cellular phones and the sleek aesthetic of technology, the Neo-Burlesque is an unashamed scream of the Rabelais in all of us. It is filled with noise, tease, larger-than-life grandeur and curves, curves, curves. Used to the lean, toned bodies of modern entertainers, I was surprised to find that most NeoBurlesque performers look like....well, real women. The modern ideal of female beauty (the combo of the stick-thin waist and C-cup perky breasts which belongs to the realm of plastic surgery) is tossed out of the window as ladies of all sizes allow their flesh to frolic and shake. You will thus witness a male-impersonator with a buzz-cut perform a sexy, slow striptease to reveal a set of large breasts and a strong, muscular body; a tall woman with layers of opulent flesh strip into a thong and shake her behind at the audience; and a thin, ethereal-looking gamine perform a wonderfully-choreographed dance with large, white feathers. Indeed, it is the acceptance of all body types that makes Burlesque so different from most entertainment industries today: everyone is welcome and every type of sexuality and body is celebrated, satirized and explored. Dainty Box, an independent Burlesque performer, explains: As an African-American woman, I want to emphasize that what people usually consider exotic beauty is something that is real, present and beautiful. Neo-Burlesque is undeniably reminiscent of Lydia Thompson's 1860s troupe, for it is once again women who hold the reins of their own performances. Chris Manson, a photographer who traveled with a Neo-Burlesque troupe around Canada in the fall of 2007, says that most female performers view their acts as vehicles of self-empowerment. He is, however, skeptical of the degree to which women can be empowered by taking their clothes off, but shrugs and says: Most women who do it would disagree with me. Dainty Box certainly would. I was raised in a strict Christian family, Dainty explains, I use my performances to take control of my identity and to tackle raw and serious issues. Male objectification of women has always been there. I go out to the grocery store dressed like a bum and men cast salacious glances in my direction. So Burlesque is all about using something that is already out there and owning it. In one of Dainty's signature acts, she covers her body with chocolate and asks audience members to lick it off. It is about controlling the situation, owning the body and exploring an identity, she explains. Perhaps this is why women have dusted off the Burlesque and pioneered its contemporary revival. After waves of feminist movements have washed over North America, women could finally go back and own the art that carried at its insemination a germ of female subversiveness. One could say that Burlesque was a precocious form, waiting for the right epoch to tease it to its true glory. I would also argue that nostalgia plays a major role in the revival. In a society that is hurling towards the future strapped to heavy technology, our glances are frequently cast backwards. We recycle fashions, art forms and even people in our lives. I am not yet thirty and I am already wistful about my simpler, slower-paced past. Neo-Burlesque is a time-capsule which provides us with a whiff of that much-needed yesterday. Whatever the reason for Neo-Burlesque, the reality is that it is here and it is in full swing. And it is different from its much-oppressed predecessor. In the late 19th century a woman's bare thigh in a

Burlesque performance was both a source of acute titillation and a cause for moral outrage. And therein lies the rub. Today we can explore more and do more. We can play with different kinds of bodies, sexualities and scenarios, because local laws no longer limit us so stringently. Neo-Burlesque performers can truly make politics and art because their medium has blossomed with possibilities of expression. But just as a bare thigh no longer causes outrage, so it is no longer a site of endless erotic contemplation. We have been shamefully desensitized. To provoke and entice us, the performers need to be all the more daring, clever and talented. Anyone can go on stage, explains another Neo-Burlesque performer, but a good performer will control the audience's attention way before she or he takes the clothes off. Neo-Burlesque is thus both more challenging and exciting than Burlesque itself ever was or had a chance to be. It t speaks first and foremost of the present.