Art of seduction

Published on Sunday 11 March 2007 00:59

HE woman on stage drops her cream silk dress to the floor, revealing a svelte body clad in sparkling nipple tassels, black stockings and frilly pants.

At the bar, a PVC-clad catwoman with remarkable curves sips a champagne cocktail and chats to a fresh-faced man dressed in a British officer's uniform from the Second World War. Behind the couple, a handsome young man in a tuxedo with tails and top hat glides past, swinging his cane under his arm as he greets a Rita Hayworth lookalike wearing a waist-cinching 1950s prom dress and elbow-length black satin gloves.

The crowd cheers as the near-naked woman on stage exits gracefully and the compre introduces the next act. To the sound of a dark, bluesy saxophone, the lithe figure of Vanity Kills steps on to the stage in a floor-length, bottle-green vintage evening dress. Fixing her gaze on the audience with an arched eyebrow, she moves her hips languidly to the music. Slowly, teasing, she unrolls her long gloves down each of her outstretched arms. She is in command and loving it. The room quietens as she gradually raises the hem of her dress to reveal willowy legs and the tops of her stockings. But a haughty toss of her Veronica Lake-style hairdo sends the dress rushing back down to the floor.

Kills spends the next three or four minutes teasing us in this way - removing a scarf, slipping her dress straps over one shoulder, then the other - until finally the dress plummets from her shoulders in a smooth cascade. Stepping out of the pool of satin with a look of naughty glee, twirling red tassels on her breasts and not much else, she waves to the audience and the curtain falls to delighted applause.

Welcome to Club Noir, the biggest burlesque club in the world. Is it Las Vegas? New York? San Francisco? Not quite. It is a bitterly cold Saturday night at the Carling Academy in Glasgow's Southside.

Vanity Kills has been a regular performer at Club Noir for the last three years. "I first discovered Dita Von Teese and burlesque six years ago, and fell in love with both immediately," she says. "I never knew there were burlesque clubs in Britain, and I certainly never thought we'd be lucky enough to have one in Glasgow.

"When Club Noir began I was one of the first people through the door, and when I heard they were looking for a cigarette girl I volunteered straight away." The cigarette girls, it should be noted, wear pink rubber mini-dresses as they circulate through the crowd.

Kills' arch, ironic style of striptease is typical of the current burlesque revival, made popular by the likes of Dita Von Teese and LA's Pussycat Dolls. These glamorous performers have taken the art of the burlesque striptease and made it (and millions of dollars in the process) their own.

Traditional burlesque has its roots in a very different world, in 19th-century music hall and vaudeville. The word itself means to mock, parody and exaggerate, and in the Victorian era burlesque shows often used humour to parody the straight-laced sexual mores of the time. To this extent, burlesque was somewhat subversive. But burlesque shows were mainly about entertainment for the working man, and featured all sorts of performers - musicians, acrobats and comedians - as well as immodestly dressed women.

Understanding burlesque's popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is straightforward enough: it was cheap entertainment for the masses that mocked the upper classes and featured attractive women in skimpy outfits at a time when a glimpse of a woman's ankle was enough to make a young man swoon. But why today, in a society swamped by sexual imagery, is burlesque enjoying such a massive revival?

Michelle Baldwin, author of Burlesque and the New Bump-n-Grind, has a theory. "Modern sexuality is so 'out there' and completely in our face, from the tabloids to prime-time television," she says. "Burlesque takes a bit of a step back, relying on a teasing sensuality rather than out and out sexuality to entice and entertain. The shows are titillating, without the risk of being raunchy or offensive." It's true that, just as in the old days, the nipple tassels and knickers stay on.

Kills thinks people are desperate for something different. "Clubbing and entertainment have become rather stale. Club Noir came along at a time when people were looking for something exciting and new." But burlesque isn't new, and many of the fashions and styles at the Carling Academy could probably be found in a dusty suitcase in our grandparents' attics.

Another theory is that burlesque is popular in times of war and depression. "Burlesque thrives on depression," wrote Irving Zeidman in his 1967 book The American Burlesque Show. "Prettier girls are obtainable at burlesque wages, and the unemployed or indigent male reverts to less expensive forms of entertainment."

Cultural theorist Nick Prior, a lecturer at Edinburgh University, agrees that the era in which burlesque becomes popular is significant. "Traditional burlesque is being remade into a quaint package that signifies a time when things were different, a time when communities held together and British identity was strong. Perhaps this current moment of global uncertainty flashes up the image of a supposed time of enduring values and stable community."

The current burlesque revival began in New York in the mid-1990s, catching the trend for swing music, big bands and lounge bars. This in itself may have been a response to a decade of grunge, as people tired of dive bars, jeans, T-shirts and dirty hair and felt like dressing up again. Clubs such as the Slipper Room in New York led the revival, which took a while to filter over to London and then, never one to miss a new style bandwagon, Glasgow.

Given the competition from London and the US, can Glasgow's Club Noir really be the biggest burlesque club in the world? Organisers Tina Warren and Ian Single feel justified in making the claim. With more than 1,700 tickets collected on the door last October, they contacted the major players on the scene around the world to ask if any could report a club night that busy. "So far, no one has come close," reports Warren.

And 1,700 is a lot of people in vintage clothes. As the queue for the cloakroom coils around the Carling Academy's impressive, original 1920s art-deco balcony, a security attendant laughs indulgently. "It's fancy-dress night," he says. "The freaks all wore their coats because they didn't want to get jumped on the buses."

But Warren insists, "It's not fancy dress. Burlesque's about dressing to reveal who you really are."

The security guard's comment recalls a time when people regularly faced attacks and threats because of the clothes they wore: the mods and rockers and the original punks of the 1960s and 1970s. People have always dressed to identify themselves as members of distinctive subcultures and communities.

And there's no doubt burlesque is a community. The Ministry of Burlesque, the London-based organisation behind club night High Tease in London and Brighton, soon to become a regular fixture in Glasgow, have a busy online forum for fans where members are noticeably supportive of each other. Messages such as "Burlesque changed my life!" and "I've made so many brilliant new friends" are common.

Warren agrees that there is a strong sense of community within the scene. "Our club is a safe space for people who look and dress differently from the crowd. It's also a very friendly place." She insists that the dress code, which bans jeans and trainers but encourages retro, raunch and glamorous styles, promotes communication.

"People talk to each other about their hair, make-up, clothes and tattoos, and know they're not just being chatted up. Burlesque clubs also have a focal point, the on-stage acts, which provides something to talk about. It's very different from traditional nightclubs, where everyone's trying to look cool and no one's talking to anyone else."

Kills agrees. "You can't walk through the crowd without someone complimenting part of your outfit."

But why the nostalgic look? For Warren, who looks as if she has stepped out of a 1950s Hollywood film-noir set, the answer is straightforward. "People enjoy looking back to a more glamorous era. Everyone's so bland now. People dress down all the time and it takes a funeral or a wedding for a man to wear a shirt and a tie. Not long ago, men wore suits to go out at night to clubs. Now no one makes much effort. It's all jeans and trainers everywhere."

Michelle Baldwin, aka Vivienne VaVoom, a burlesque performer herself and the founder of Burlesque As It Was, one of the most respected burlesque troupes in the US, agrees. "I think the nostalgia comes from a basic longing for glamour. There's so little glamour in our modern culture that it makes sense that people on the scene would reach back into the past to a time when full make-up, hats, gloves, corsets and the like were everyday wear."

For Prior the answer is only slightly more complicated. "Clubbing is a very carnivorous practice that ransacks the past for all it has to offer," he says. "As there's no dominant youth style any more, niche styles and specialist markets are all fair game. Maybe it was the just the turn of the 1940s and 1950s to be ransacked."

It's not just the clothes of this era that are enjoying a comeback. As the curtain drops on Vanity Kills at Club Noir, it soon lifts again to reveal a live six-piece swing band. The crowd love it. "We play everything from swing and bebop to The Ramones to Kylie," says Single. "Our music policy is as eclectic as the people who come to the club and it's a big part of the place's appeal."

Another aspect of modern burlesque's appeal may be no different from that of 100 years ago: a burlesque show is a place to watch women take off their clothes live on stage. These days, though, you'll find as many appreciative women in the audience as men. "Burlesque is adored by men and women equally," says Kills. "It's sexy but cheeky, glamorous and a bit naughty, but never sleazy."

It's true that the atmosphere is nothing like a traditional strip bar. There is no suggestion that the female performers are available, and it's clear that they are having a lot of fun displaying themselves in a sexy, provocative way. The women on stage also bear little resemblance to the standard 'footballers' wives' look favoured by lads' magazines and strip clubs. Neither do they look like they're a size zero, something that has led to suggestions that burlesque performance is in some ways liberating and empowering women.

But Warren doesn't go along with this. "I'm not going to pretend that burlesque makes a feminist statement. People say it's empowering for women, but the most I'll say is that burlesque today presents a fun, beautiful and feminine version of female sexuality - a female-inspired vision of women's sexuality, as opposed to a male version of female sexuality."

The women at Club Noir, both on stage and in the crowd, do look fabulous. There are plenty of fishnets and corsets and ample bosoms on display, but there's also a distinctive elegance, an appreciation of the artifice involved in dressing up, and a rediscovery of the pleasure of it.

As the crowd collect their coats at the end of the night and spill out on to the distinctly unglamorous Eglinton Street, I wonder how many of them will dress this way in the morning. Most insist they will. As Kills tells me, "I definitely feel more myself in glamorous dress than I ever would in a tracksuit."

• Club Noir comes to Edinburgh's Studio 24, Calton Road, on March 24. Tickets can be bought in advance - see www.clubnoir.co.uk.

• The next date in Glasgow is April 7, at the Carling Academy, Eglinton Street. See the website for information about forthcoming workshops