NYC

After a seven hour flight to NYC, a rough hostel stay for two nights, a breakfast of over 3000 calories and a carnivalisque performance event in Brooklyn I have arrived back in Blighty, back from Jonny Porkpie’s Cocks and Shocks night, http://www.pinchbottom.com and what a night it was, advertised and contextualized as ‘Jonny Porkpie’s Bad Ideas ‘SHOCKS & C*CKS: ALL NUDE, ALL DUDE REVUE.

Hosted by a naked (sometimes semi covered) Jonny Porkpie it featured Albert Cadabra’s wonderfully complex comedic escapology striptease, Ferro’s hot sensual hula hooping, Hard Corey’s clever bottle opening act in which he lampoons the patricarchal sexist male, Mat Fraser’s performative complications of the male sexual body through exotic and freak show stripteases and neocabaret songs, and finally Tigger’s comedic, high energy, camp, disco hot and beautifully twisted priest act.

To summarize this event I need to paraphrase  Jonny Porkpie who set up this evening by openly and honestly giving his opinion that burlesque had gone beyond simple striptease, it was a performance art, and this evening was to be all about ‘the cock’. This event revealed beautifully the males last taboo, and with it, all the issues of revealing, the shrinkage, its’ comical shape, its pathetic-ness its massiveness, it potency and the performers own rescripting of it as an object of glamour, of athleticism, as a joke vagina and the celebration of the absolute togetherness of these physically, geographically and sexualy different males.

This event peeled away so many taboos and left exposed multiple ’tales’ to digest and acts to experience. It was a defining celebration of the male burlesquer and his craft.  ‘We laughed back stage at our own shrinkage, or opposite, we cheered each others stage antics and lunacies, we aided each other as stage hands, we heckled from the bar, ‘COCK’ and it made me, British Heart want more. I passionately want to dig deeper into this art form of tease, sensuality, reveal, lunacy and irreverence. Challenging my supposed non performative maleness, and to interpret my own maleness and burlesque it. I want my naked body in huge tun of Gin, with bubbles, plastic pricks and a rubber Maggie Thatcher, all encompassed by a gaggle of spectators with drawn straws. I want to pound the stage as a high camp drag Tarzan, Disco beats and disco balls, kidnapping spectators and forcing them into awkward games of tease and peelfor my cannibalistic jungle chef  preperations of grilled body bits. I want…

For me this one night said so much about the present state of burlesque.  This event will be the final reveal for my PhD.  The pages of my PhD leading to the final reveals we all made that night.

Uk male striptease updates

Well, I am back in the UK, and I have been recovering from the huge travel that is now behind me. Pinchbottom in New York has invited me to perform at a full cocks and shocks night, so I am puzzling over how to reveal the penis.  I am drawing on many sources of inspiration however, presently, I will reveal none.

Saturday I performed at the Volupte Lounge, at the Candy Shop.  Lovely night, I did the mouse,  however I used the Squid’s performance narrative as a new frame work.  Pretty successful I believe.  My fellow performers were great, Kitty Bang Bang, Roxy Velvet, Bijous Noirand the Marquis de Gray. 

I have also had some interview time with Tim the Eagle, Smokin McQueen, Bobbie Burlesque and Lara from the Whoopee.  Today I will be interviewing Fred Bear, Thursday, Rasp Thorne and Beatrix von Bourbon and Friday Mister Joe Black down in Portsmouth.  Lots of really interesting infomation turning up, detailing the reasons for starting.  Fantastic.  So the interview gathering is increasing, though scheduling is a nightmare.

How I will examine and interrogate these interviews is still a little out of my grasp, I know I will have to challenge the interviews validity, I know I will have to contextualize them socially, politically and economically.  I would like to interrogate them as cultural products, for this I believe I will need cultural theorists, which will sit cheek by jowl with masculinities studies and gender theorists.  Finally I know I will have write in a concise manner.  Fuck.  help anyone?

Melbourne Burlesque

Fighting off the floor destabilize effects of serious jet lag Foxtrot India and I ventured out into a rather cold Melbourne city to the find the Forum Theatre, where we we hoping to catch and hook up with an Australian Burlesque phenomena ‘The Town Bike‘

After a few jars of Cooper, we found the The Forum Theatre bustling with spectators. However what I did expect was the extraordinary beauty and play the interior designers of the Forum had created. With sofas, beach chairs, booths, a beach style bar with palm trees, a cafe selling cakes and quiches, and all this set within high walls decorate in mock Roman/Grecian pillars and figurines.

The show started with a presentation of pole dance, it was a solid a clear performance of erotic pole, with good technique. Later mini skits (50s kitsch aesthetic) were used to set up their routines. For me it highlighted the problematics of a male body performing such female sensuality. Still for me, I cannot see my masculinity being represented within this performance from without tensions arising, due to the reading of sensuality. I am still asking how the male body can fit into this performance form and be read as heterosexual. Of course there are performers that may offer pathways into finding my hetero-sensual male, Miss Glory pearl’s burlesque pole dancing or Remi Martins emotional male Chinese Pole act.

However for my own personal taste, the highlight of the night was ‘The Town Bikes’.  Am Australian female duo that fucks everything right up.  Twisted, comical, they layer with such grotesque subtly multiple representations of the female it is, for feminist studies, a wonderfully mezmerizing stew to savour.  After their performances I asked them if they wished to be included in the PhD at which they smiled and hugged me.  (Seriously nice girls) I feel ‘The Town Bikes” along with ‘The LBF girls’ , kleinkunst and Killpussy, along with Beatrix von Bourbon, Kitty and some others should provide a complex feminist landscape from which I must pluck the males.

Next, off to Japan for family meets, then Hong Kong for more Booze and back to the UK.