"Do you want the real thing, or are you just talking?" (the Cramp)

Forget the Folies Bergère, this is Cabaret New Burlesque. Naked women of course, but not porcelain dolls, fiercely funny, extremely rock, spicy, unimpeachable singers, heirs to a long and rich American tradition, the astute artists of Cabaret New Burlesque are among the best in the genre, and through impertinence and excess (of language and form) always know how to find elegance and poetry in the absurd.

Burlesque, a descendant of vaudeville in the second half of the 1800s, is a genre of parody show that originated in Victorian England and was later imported to the United States: it ridicules the world, habits and pastimes of the aristocracy and wealthy industrialists, to entertain the lower classes. There′s a plot, however slight, songs, dance numbers, much comedy. The genre becomes wildly popular and, between the ′40s and ′50s, some burlesque stars such as Sally Rand, famous for her "bubble dance," and Tempest Storm, star of Russ Meyer and Irving Klaw′s films, become real divas. In the ′90s, on the wave of fashion associated with vintage culture, neo-burlesque was born. The ironic characteristic becomes more pronounced, but it is no longer directed at the social sphere; instead, it ends up being totally self-referential: starting with music (to times with the songs of the era), passing through hairstyles (backcombed and colorful wigs) to clothes and accessories.


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The New Burlesque features from humor and sensuality and presents a succession of extravagant numbers. Unlike strip-tease, it turns sensuality into comedy and offers a parody of femininity itself: it is first and foremost an "attitude d′opposition" to established norms, conventions and socially predetermined female iconography. Each performer has constructed a character through the choice of a name, a costume, and choreography: they sing, dance, and undress with irony. Their bodies are not those of anorexic models from fashion magazines, but rather have generous forms of Boterian memory.

www.cabaretsnewburlesque.com

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