The
Strange Fruit of Summer Burlesque Revue
with
Cantankerous Lollies, Kitten on the Keys, MC Mad Dog, Tony
Mangini & the Something Girls, Third Floor, The End
of the World Circus, et al.
Berbati's
Pan
231
SW Ankeny St., 248-4579
10:30
pm Friday, Aug. 11
$7
"[V]audeville...
represents the almost universal longing for laughter, for
melody, for color, for action.... It is joyously, frankly
absurd."
--Hartley
Davis, early 20th-century journalist
"He's so disgusting,
I can hardly bear to look at him."
--Kitty Diggins
on Tony Mangini
The End of the
World Circus will also perform at the Medios Espectaculo,
an orgy of experimental performance scheduled for Friday,
Aug. 18, at 2126 N Lewis St.
As has been noted, ad damn near nauseam,
Portland's erotic-dance underworld is uniquely vibrant.
The women who work at the city's many strip clubs mix freely
and fondly with the city's arts and music scenes, etc.,
lending an oft-marginalized subculture a degree of acceptance
almost unknown elsewhere.
Plenty of performers, promoters and clubs take advantage
of this wonderful state of affairs, playing off the close
ties between the rock and flesh scenes. Events mixing (sometimes)
high-concept strip shows with live bands and other trappings
of ye olde rock decadence are thick as flies in Egypt hereabouts.
Nothing wrong with that, certainly--though a frugal customer
could get the same sort of thing, in less glorified form,
for the price of a Budweiser and a $1 stage tip at Magic
Gardens.
What troubles some people is the misguided tendency to
label such straight-up strip shows as "burlesques" or "cabarets."
Those time-lost art forms are splinters of a broad old current
of low-brow satire, tavern song, exotic (not necessarily
nude) dance, circus tricks, gutter theatricals and screwball
comedy. This tradition's history threads back into the Middle
Ages and beyond, and that's the heritage this Friday's ambitious
Strange Fruit of Summer Burlesque Review will attempt
to harness.
"The reason I'm doing it is that there's supposedly this
big burlesque scene in Portland, but I don't know where
it is, exactly," says Kitty Diggins, the local go-go
queen pushing Strange Fruit. Diggins, a confirmed burlesque
aficionada, hopes the one-room three-ring madhouse will
capture a little of old-time burlesque's anarchy and sly
wit.
"I don't know how many clothes are going to be removed
during this performance, and that might surprise people
who have equated burlesque with stripshows," she continues.
"There might be some costumes removed, but I don't know
if there's going to be nudity."
The Cantankerous Lollies, a much-praised troupe
of classic burlesque dancers from San Francisco, headline
with their reportedly saucy can-can dancing and triple hula-hoop
numbers. While such displays of rhythm and pulchritude were
hallmarks of classic burlesque theater, the quasi-underground
progenitor of today's strip clubs, the scope of Strange
Fruit's supporting cast should make it a full-fledged vaudeville
happening. Kitten on the Keys, a lingerie-clad chanteuse,
will provide cabaret obscurities and dirty old bar-side
ballads. The End of the World Circus, a performing
gypsy horde from Arizona, promises an alarming menu of "two-headed
robotic chickens, oversized bunnies, human flamethrowers,
acrobatic pussy galore, daredevil clowns and fun with knives."
"I think the circus reminds people of things they don't
touch every day," says Commanda Galactica, End of
the World's spokeswoman. "I believe there's a circus renaissance
going on right now, in the last 10 years. It built slowly,
but I think it's coming to its zenith."
Suzanne Ramsey, a.k.a. Kitten on the Keys, likewise
views her slinky piano hijinx as part of a larger revival
of pre-televisual amusements.
"Younger people have missed out on these entire forms of
entertainment," Ramsey says. "Burlesque is sassy, it's tantalizing
and sexy, but it's also sweet and gentle. You can go give
a gynecological exam for five bucks at a strip joint. This
is a little more subtle."
With lounge-lizard antics from reputed sleazebag extraordinaire
Tony Mangini, sketch comedy, "punk rock drag divas"
and some Diggins choreography piling atop the fan-dancing,
femme-fatale singing and circus stunt-mongering, Strange
Fruit could be elegantly crazed. Or, of course, it could
flounder. You have to hand it to Diggins, though, for chancing
such a wide-ranging celebration of arts once thought extinct,
and for putting together one of those rare events that actually
begs to be seen before it can be boxed into a tidy description.
"Anyone I've talked to who is, say, over 50 and went to
a burlesque show back when describes it as this incredibly
hush-hush, risky experience," Diggins says. "It was the
most cutting-edge part of pop culture at one time. One writer
said that burlesque is a branch of the tree of art--it just
happens to be the lowest branch, the one that's closest
to the people."
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