Gina Louise:1. Because I'm a performer, first and foremost.
2. Because it's been the most delightful, challenging, and exhilarating genre I've explored.
3. Because it's a creative fusion of all the things I love: dance, comedy, costume, sex, and history.
4. Because it's liberating.
5. Because it makes me think.
6. Because, as a 39-year-old suburban mom and housewife, I'm not supposed to.
7. Because I love seeing people naked.
Scarlett Letter:
I enjoy it because it is the ultimate one-person show. It has the potential of using absolutely every aspect of performing, theatre craft and art that I can think of. ... It can be funny, it can be thought provoking, it can be shocking, but it can also be just stunningly beautiful. It is only limited by the performer's imagination and the direction they want to take it.
Paris Green:I perform burlesque for the sheer joy of it. I love that I can be silly and sensuous, ridiculous and racy all at the same time. I love that we - the audience and I - are sharing a little secret about where my act might take us. There is a connection you have with the audience as a burlesque performer that is unique - I haven't felt it as strongly as a musician or a comedian. It's a fantastic energy. Finally, there is a camaraderie among burlesque performers. It's old school showbiz. We're family.
Princess Farhana:
Burlesque not only spellbinds audiences, by displaying the beauty of the female body, it turns societal notions upside down, usually in a comedic way. Through a theatrical filter, under the stage lights, it parlays universal fantasies and female archetypes into high art, simultaneously empowering both the women who perform it and the women who observe it, while entertaining everybody in the process!
Jo Weldon:I love the huge range of ways we get to perform, from classic to bizarre, and the community of people who perform. I love that we have historical organizations such as the Burlesque Hall of Fame and Burlesque at the Beach at Coney Island, as well as spaces for radical performers to experiment with performance art and transgressive themes. And I love the passion and heart that people bring to it. There are good, loving, generous, brilliant people in burlesque.
Vixen Violette:
A few years ago I was really struggling to find the feminine, sensual, and even sexual side of myself. A friend asked me on a whim if I would take a burlesque class with her. It was very out of character for me at the time, but it sounded like it might be fun and interesting. Surprisingly I started to touch on all of what I had been looking for there. Now that I've been performing for a few years I feel like Vixen Violette and I are merged into one person. I get her confidence, sparkle, and tiger-like sexuality, and she gets my winning sense of humor and mad rhinestoning skills.
Darlinda Just Darlinda:
I see how it inspires other women to love and respect their bodies. I also hope that with burlesque becoming so mainstream it might mean we will see more realistic bodies in the fashion/advertising world. I am a firm believer that underground arts has a huge effect on the mainstream world, especially in New York. All the big advertisers are going down town to party and watch a burlesque show to be shocked and awed! So I think it will seep in and they will have no choice but to accept real-non-starving bodies! I do burlesque, because I have to perform, I will be performing until the day I die! I love it!
Frankie Boudoir:Burlesque is a self-expression that says the female form is beautiful, powerful, & alluring! It calls into question what the female role in society is, and also allows women to show the power that we've been given, to revel in it, without apology!
