All the News That's Fit to Strip

Actor and star of the forthcoming movie, Burlesque, Alan Cumming, began shooting for the film last week. He said:

"I go to LA this week to start shooting my role.I have already recorded one of the songs. I play Alexis,the door man of the burlesque club run by Cher, and where Christina Aguilera becomes the star."

Check out this sneak peek.

In other news...

Burlesque babe Go Go Amy and her Peep Show Burlesque bring burlesque to the most unlikely places, and the crowd loves it.

The Pasadena Playhouse closes.

What a burly dancer ponders while performing.

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We get a quickie on what burlesque is in two different articles. In a piece on a new burlesque exhibit in New Mexico, performer Sarah Robarge said:

"A well-done burlesque piece will have content to it, in the form of costume, theme and story. It's more about the tease and the slow reveal of what's under the costume, the anticipation that's built up during the striptease and, sometimes, what you don't see in the piece."

And England's Bella Besame, left, sees burlesque "as injecting glamour into everyday life which can only be a good thing. My idea of good Burlesque takes in a fifties striptease aesthetic and a lot of panache. Others will choose to bring things more up to date and that's the key to each person's self-expression."

In other news ...

Jenna Jameson takes it off for her boyfriend.

Don't miss Ravenna Black on Wife Swap this Wednesday night on ABC.

If you're in New Orleans, Fleur de Teases sasses up Valentine's Day.

Burlesque revivals continue to thrive.

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Dita Von Teese chats about champagne, Christian Louboutin and her favorite corset:

It's made by Mr. Pearl; he's the most elusive couturier in the world for corsets -- he only makes a couple a year and won't just see anyone. He made a very special corset to go under my wedding gown [Von Teese was a briefly married to rocker Marilyn Manson], and it reminds me of the special time I spent with Mr. Pearl. I had 12 fittings, and I had to fly to Paris for each fitting, and I have very fond memories of drinking violet-scented Champagne in his atelier down this dark, narrow, crooked street near Notre Dame cathedral.

In other news ...

William Safire explains the origins of the "long pole in the tent" with a nod to burlesque.

The Daily Mirror unveils the secrets of Gilded Lili.

A former burlesque dancer inspired her granddaughter's documentary.

Meet the fitness instructor behind cardio striptease.

If you're in Minneapolis this weekend, be sure to catch The Best of Midwest Burlesk, which is hosted by Lili's Burlesque Revue and features 35 performers including Michelle L'amour and Foxy Tann & the Wham Bams.

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Leonard Nimoy chats with Salon about The Full Body Project, which features the Fat-Bottom Review. Of the San Francisco-based burlesque troupe, Nimoy said:

It made it very easy for them to be photographed. They're comfortable with their bodies and they are performers, so once I gave them some direction, they were able to get to it very comfortably. We had a terrific time. There was music playing, there was dancing. They were joyous, and they were comfortable. They're a terrific bunch of people.

In other news ...

Prince William and Prince Harry got Wau'd.

C’est Duckie! brings its "sexually explicit, proudly exploitative or openly offensive" to New York.

Carmen Electra takes it off in two new Aerobic Striptease videos.

For Minneapolis readers, tune in to the Lori & Julia show this Friday. I'll be chatting about Minneapolis-born Lili St. Cyr.

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As Variety points out, "nothing says Christmas like suicide, drag queens and nudity." The reason for the saucy season:

"People want something unusual and immediate," says David Foster, whose Foster Entertainment Group is helping produce everything from "Kiki and Herb" to "C'est Duckie," an "interactive nightclub performance experience" in which patrons select individualized acts from a menu. "They want to see a live performance that can't be replicated on film."

In other news ...

If Leyla Rose, left, is any indication Scotland prefers a naughty holiday season as well.

L.A.'s newest ballerina, Melissa Barak, shimmys and bumps through the world of burlesque.

Sarah Hartshorne, who was eliminated from America's Next Top Model, returns to the Boston Babydolls. This Saturday she'll be performing with the troupe as Vita Lightly in the show Brrrrlesque.

The Chico Cabaret fills the holidays with "nearly naked elves and spiked eggnog."

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Dita Von Teese spent Thanksgiving as a bird of paradise for Erotica, a three-day adult lifestyle festival in London. Before the event she told one reporter:

"I'm sure some people think I've just brought fluffy, fancypants striptease back into fashion. But I hope I've inspired some people to embrace glamour and to see a different kind of sensuality. I'm the opposite of the tanned, blonde bikini babe."

In other news ...

Do you want to compete in the Jockey Wars?

Jo posts photos from Margaret Cho's Sensuous Woman and explains the term ecdysiast.

I spoke with Rick Klaw about Gilded Lili for Monsters and Critics.

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Boston Babydoll member and former America's Next Top Model Sarah Hartshorne told Bostonist how the burlesque troupe gave her a boost:

Being a Boston Babydoll certainly boosted my confidence and made me aware of my body, which helped at photo shoots. I was also very comfortable changing in front of people or wearing skimpy outfits, which helped at challenges. Also, dancing of any kind is very similar to modeling, and knowing how to move my body helped in taking good pictures.

After Sarah got bumped from the show, the Boston Babydolls put the smackdown on Tyra.

In other news ...

The Vixen chats with Miss Seska Lee and Miss Sugarpuss.

Burlesque is all the rage on Gossip Girl. And Jo has the pictures.

The Crazy Girls joined Kylie Minogue for her TV comeback.

Irving Klaw, who filmed movies with Lili St. Cyr, Tempest Storm and others, would have celebrated his 97th birthday on Friday.

The Fashion Police at OSU don't know burlesque. For real burlesque-inspired fashions try this, this or this.

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Miss Exotic World 2007, Immodesty Blaize, chats with The Guardian. Among the highlights are her thoughts on burlesque: "It is certainly misinterpreted. Burlesque is erotic, ironic cabaret. People often forget its theatrical nature in favour of the titillation."

In other news ...

Reviews and pix from the New York Burlesque Festival are trickling in.

Jo Boobs' burlesque salon is like "a book-of-the-month club with nudity."

Kitty Victorian purrs about how she got into burlesque and her new workshops.

Australia's burlesque revival tips a hat to the novelty of it all, Dita Von Teese, "burlesque's sexy, but non-threatening nature, the love of vintage and retro clothing; even the influence of pin-up star Bettie Page or raunchy American web sensations the Suicide Girls"

Maggie Gyllenhaal poses for Agent Provocateur and her "Lessons in Lingerie" ads launch Friday.

Dances of Vice, a new monthly 1920-30s dance and cabaret night held in the spirit of the early 20th century days, takes place on the third Saturday of each month upstairs at The Pussycat Lounge in New York, NY. The September 15th event will feature photos by Don Spiro. He'll show "a few pieces from a photo series inspired by drugs of a bygone era when absinthe was legal and dens were filled with smoke from pipes of opium."

Bustout Burlesque is holding auditions the first week of October.

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What is it about Carson Daly that makes women want to take off their clothes? First Petra Nemcova teased the Last Call host. Then Dita Von Teese slipped off her silk stockings and presented them to the appreciative host.

In other news ...

Vance DeGeneres, Daily Show correspondent, brother to Ellen and artist, is concerned robots are stealing our strippers.

The Glamazons survive another round of America's Got Talent. Tune in tomorrow night to see if they make it to the finals.

Jo Boobs reviews The American Burlesque Show.

In Playboy's September issue My Name Is Earl star Jaime Pressly talks about not wanting to make out with women -- even Angelina Jolie -- and why women enjoy strip clubs. “Because there’s no competition or threat," says Pressly of strip clubs. "I mean, I see a hot woman, and what is she going to do, rape me? My girlfriends and I love going to strip clubs where we sit down with drinks while hot chicks walk around and aren’t bitchy. In a regular club, the women are assholes—everybody’s in competition. You go into a strip club and it’s like everybody’s free-spirited, open-minded. It’s safe.”

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Dita Von Teese, Frederick's of Hollywood newest cover girl, spills her biggest turn-ons and shares her secrets for keeping a relationship hot to Maxim

In other news ...

Jo Boobs interviews burlesque legend Toni Elling.

Petra Nemcova teases Carson Daly.

BlogCritics reviews Hollywood After Dark, the 1968 film in which Rue McClanahan plays an aspiring actress "stuck working a seedy burlesque show with a couple of thieves for bosses."

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Margaret Cho gets saucy with The Sensuous Woman, a burlesque-inspired variety show. Cho told Playbill, "The Sensuous Woman is an evening of comedy, dance and music celebrating women's bodies. I have suffered from eating disorders and a horrendously distorted body image for my entire life, and I think the biggest reason is a lack of images of real women's bodies. Where are they? We don't see them in movies, on TV, in magazines. Instead, we are force-fed a steady diet of unattainable ideals, a tyranny of slenderness and youth, goals we can't even aspire to, they are so far out of reach. When we see dancers who enjoy their bodies, who are sexy and having fun, it gives us permission to enjoy our bodies and to enjoy ourselves in the process. We are presented with a new ideal, not one that is about dieting ourselves down to a smaller size, but expanding our notion of what is beautiful and to allow ourselves to be included there too."

In other news ...

Julie Atlas Muz shares her New York Diet.

SexTV's fall lineup includes Bump & Grind: The Making Of A Burlesque Diva, a documentary that follows four burlesque dancers to the Miss Exotic World competition.

Trixie Little makes a splash with water ballet.

Tessa Thompson shimmies into Make It Happen.

Dita Von Teese loves Madonna and porn.

Will DC's strip clubs start bumpin' underground?

Playboy reports Elvira Mistress of the Dark returns to TV this fall to put “the boob back into the boob tube.”

Mr. Skin bares the cinematic nude scenes for you.

E!'s favorite "bald dingbat" does a beachy striptease. So does a "wild-child in recovery."

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Apparently writer Duane Adler is working on a dance trifecta. After bringing us Save the Last Dance and Step Up he scores his hat trick with Make It Happen, a film about a small-town girl who moves to Chicago with dreams of entering the Chicago School of Dance but winds up shimmying through a burlesque club. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who most recently starred in Live Free or Die Hard, told Trailer Park:

"I feel like a lot of the dance movies that have come out in the last 10 years, not all, but some of them have been airy, sweet and simple. I’m just hoping to bring a more realistic edge to the character and show the more real-life…things that happen when you’re trying to become a dancer ... I just want to show the less sweet side to it even though it will be a classic dance movie, a feel good girl movie. But I think we give it a little more interesting edge to it as well. It’s a challenge I’m taking on and I’ll see whether I can run with it."

Winstead, by the way, is No. 92 on Maxim's Hot List.

In other news:

According to the Daily Briefing Ohio Dem Chair Chris Redfern called off a meeting because Dems were "distracted" by a local "spat" involving flashing strippers on a golf course.

Are striptease-inspired classes "a healthy reawakening of the seductress innate in every female" OR "further evidence of the ... 'stripperization' of American girls and women."

Broadway's Legally Blonde director and choreogrpaher Jerry Mitchell's career "took a major turn when he performed a striptease at the gay bar Splash for the AIDS charity Broadway Cares."

A Vermont town "famous for its strip-and-let-strip attitude" is considering banning public nudity.

Learn how to make a corset-style t-shirt.

Forget Britney and Top 40 sounds, burlesque rocks out to punk.

Fleshbot fills us in on good news for Scottsdale City residents and bad news for Vegas.

Missy Malone, one of Scotland's top burlesque dancers, is all about "secrets and teasing."

The world's best candy bars? Try this Candy Barr.

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The Daily Bulletin looks at how Dixie Evans went from precocious child performing at family functions to pin-up girl to "Marilyn Monroe of Burlesque" to grand dame of the Burlesque Hall of Fame. And in a separate piece the paper explores burlesque's Renaissance.

Dita Von Teese loves the word stripper.

Patti Lupone and Arthur Laurents kiss and make up so Patti can take on Gypsy's Mamma Rose.

The newest Pussycat Doll Kim Kardashian opens Washington D.C.'s nightclub Ibzia.

In London, cabaret clubs pop up on the heels of burlesque.

Another burlesque blog joins the Interwebs and kicks it off with a definition of burlyq.

The Miss Exotic World pageant is still earning buzz. And check out pix from Don Spiro.

In Washington D.C., the new restaurant Proof gives a nod to burlesque in the bathrooms.

One of my favorite bloggers is having hook problems. Any regular corset wearers have a solution?

All the News That's Fit To Strip

Dita Von Teese inspires pin-up styles and "the must-have pin-up accessories are high-heeled platform pumps with fishnet stockings."

Jessica Simpson uses Pussycat Dolls moves in the bedroom.

Speaking of the Pussycat Dolls, Kim Kardashian says meow.

Bambi the Mermaid talks tails, seashells and snake charming.

Spiegelworld returns in July.

Porn vs. art. Stripping vs. burlesque. The debate continues.

The trailer for Lindsay Lohan's new flick hits YouTube. Catch glimpses of her striptease.

Simon Cowell doesn't like burlesque, though he's far more appreciative than David Hasselfhoff.