I Hit a Decade of Burlesque and All I Got Was This G-String.

Even as a huge fan of celebrating anniversaries, I was surprised at just how excited I’ve been to hit my 10 year burlesque-aversary. It snuck up on me in a way I wasn’t expecting. What are the chances that I’d be purging old files and run across my recital playbill just one month before the big 10? The likelihood of my debut video still being viewable is even slimmer.

I simultaneously feel like I’ve been doing this forever and that I’m still a baby burlesquer, learning how to walk properly in my heels. Life doesn’t hand us very many opportunities where we have the ability to look back on exactly where you started something and how much you’ve grown along the way. It’s daunting. And here is video proof that I had to start somewhere. But I guess it’s an exercise in not taking myself too seriously, so I took a deep breath and watched my debut video. Ready to die of embarrassment that I actually invited people to view it in real time 10 years ago.

Good. Gods.

I’m… so young in it.

And impatient.

The shakey video shows a 22 year old me, dancing to my friend’s band, Cold River City, struggling to slow down and stick with the timing of the choreography I had rehearsed for weeks. I’m rushing. Can’t stop long enough to actually tease anything at any point.

Even while typing this out, I have the urge to refer to the young thing in the video as “she”. She feels separate from myself. Like a distant memory of a dream I had at one point that just felt really real until I woke up and realized it wasn’t. I even performed under a different name at the time. She was impulsive. She was still figuring out what it meant to be confident. She thought she was edgy for wearing combat boots for her debut. She didn’t dare wear heels event though she had years of high school theatre in stage heels under her belt.

But this was new.

A new kind of stage fright.

A new kind of vulnerability.

She was on the edge of something that was going to determine how she lived the rest of her life.

That sounds so dramatic, but growing up in a conservative, modesty, and purity based house, finding burlesque was like watching my brain solve a riddle on a synaptic level. It soothed wounds I didn’t realize were festering. My story isn’t unique. Lots of us are drawn to this taboo outlet because it gives us control in a way we’ve never known before. Power enough to hoist whatever thumb we’ve been under for too long.

Even as I’ve transitioned burlesque from an empowering hobby, to a full blown job, that little flame of epiphany it gave me 10 years ago has stayed lit.

So I redid my solo. 10 years after the debut of [original performer name redacted], my dear friend, Cassy Cyanide, gave me stage time to recreate my original debut solo. But I did it my way. The way that feels right in my body now. And by that I mean unrehearsed, unchoreographed, and to the full length song rather than a shortened edit. Flying by the seat of my pants… or lack there of.

And at the end of it I realized I chose a damn hard song to strip to for my debut. It’s got a heavy rhythm that you have to really sit in for it to feel right. It takes patience, balance, and an ability to slow… the fuck... down.

That young performer in the video isn’t some other person. That’s not another lifetime. These legs are still wobbly sometimes. I still forget choreography (when I manage to actually choreograph. ) There will always be wardrobe malfunctions, injuries due to improper prep, soreness the next day, getting lost in the music, rushing. And since becoming a producer as well, there will always be new ways to fuck up, and do it more royally since I’m in charge of putting money in performer’s pockets.

I’m not sure there is some grand line I can sum this experience up into. Take the workshop. Learn the weird move. Make a fool of yourself in front of your friends. Fuck up on stage. Be sexy and ridiculous and sultry and impulsive and responsible and terrifying. If you’re frightened, do it scared.

Just make sure your friends are there to video you so you can look back on how ridiculous you looked and find new ways to look ridiculous in another 10 years for comparison.

And then post a badly edited video about it on the internet, dammit.