1st International Welsh Cabaret Festival

Beautiful hats and fascinators
by Looby Creations

BIG thumbs up to the Sherman theatre for staging such a key event in a central venue. 

People worry that burlesque is just an excuse for sleazy strip-tease. In fact it is a witty caricature, simultaneously sending up our fears about sex and celebrating real women's bodies and our sexuality. With its gender bending politics and intellectual rather than physical strip-tease, cabaret and burlesque is an ideal filler for a theatre like the Sherman to put in between earnest new plays and the kids' Christmas shows, providing something that's adult and emotionally mature. 

Burlesque is the mirror opposite of strip-tease. In strip-tease, women are the objects of Desire; in burlesque we are the subjects of our own desire to enjoy showing our bodies and our selves. The 1st International Welsh Cabaret Festival showcased this particularly well with the inclusion of several male acts - who were not stripping for women in a reverse strip-tease. They were often engaging with more feminine sides of themselves, e.g. through balletic movements - again providing a subjective celebratory vision of feminine sides to identity. 

Burlesque is a liberatory subversive artform, of the kind the critic Bakhtin called carnivalesque. 

OK, enough of that, now for what I thought of the actual festival:
After having wandered the foyer and seeing some of the cool workshops going on, I now regret not splashing out on a weekender ticket and doing some sketching or finding out how to put my hair up in a barrel roll. Plus, I overheard people saying the Friday Night new acts were possibly even better than the Saturday Night Gala performers! I don't see how that could be possible - curses, I will know better next year.

As well as workshops, there were stalls selling everything from cakes to sex toys, and I shall decorate this blogpost with my pictures of these. A quick thank you to kind Rockaflower, who pitched in to help when we were struggling to fix the new fascinator my friend couldn't resist buying to her short hair. Great job! it stayed standing proud and high all night.

My own 
fascinator 
by  
Looby Creations

I can't do justice to the acts in mere words. Suffice to say that we had such a good time that next morning I was hoarse with the screaming and laughing.

The evening kicked off with the ... inimitable compère Dis Charge. Sticking one finger up at taboos in a first act which was a belly dance of a very different kind (pregnancy will never seem quite the same!), Ms. Charge kept us going through the evening with sharp sarky banter. She actually used the F word once! (Feminism). Her style is in your face (literally - so glad we were sitting in the middle of a row of seats) and very funny.

Act 1 saw Lilly Laudanum doing a majestic Queen Victoria strip tease, hilariously mingling po-faced dignity with crude sexual gestures. Daisy Cutter followed with an incredible and exciting bum dance, of a kind which would lead you to beg people to assure you that you do look big in that outfit. Sandy Sure as a Mexican wrestler sent up macho man and Tuesday Laveau offered a delicious feminine dance.

Awww - cute penguins by Cathy B

Now came Kiki DeVille. Genius! I can't describe it. She made two audience members come up on stage and tear up a sheet of paper each. See, you're not laughing at all! you have to go and see it. Frozen will never be the same again. Sorry, I am larfing now, just thinking about it.

Pole dancing has had an even worse press than burlesque dancing, with people grumbling about women who go to classes because it's good exercise and - for God's sake - fun. In fact, I'm sorry to say that at one time I signed a petition against pole dancing classes in my institution of employment as at the time I did feel it perhaps wasn't quite the feminist thing. Sir Midnight Blues provided a dance of athletic elegance and beauty. He made plainly evident that this is a discipline demanding both grace and muscular fitness.

Hairpieces by Rockaflower

After an interval during which we started laughing again at the thoughts of Kiki DeVille's Let It Go, there were a couple of Welsh themed acts. In typical self-mocking style, Betty Blue Eyes appeared on stage in a whale costume and sadly held up a sign saying she realised now this wasn't what had been meant when they said do something about being in Wales. If you think staggering about the stage in a clumsy whale costume is not sexy as well as funny, you must beg Betty to reprise her hilarious act - which finished with her bending over to show off dragon-emblazoned knickers to whooping and raucous applause.

Tea party in aid of  
Breast Cancer Care

Lady Wildflower gave us an ethereal green dragon dance of mystic beauty, followed by Kiki Lovechild doing chapeaugraphy - originally developed by a seventeenth century commedia dell'arte performer. It was amazing what characters he managed to display using just a circle of felt with a hole in it.

Although I did mainly go for the burlesque, this was a genuine cabaret night and so, unusually, there were a lot of men performers including the gorgeous George Orange tightrope-walking across a metal rocking structure. In contrast, next was Lady Francesca who performed a hilariously funny duckling dance, complete with enormous bouffant red hair.

Cake by Bombshell Bakehouse

The winner of the Cwtch Award from the previous night's show was now given the opportunity to perform. The audience were awestruck at Pi the Mime's elegant boylesque ballet and made him stumble back on stage in his sparkling high heels to take a standing ovation. Representing an office worker who is overcome with the banal routine and breaks joyously out, his act appealed to all of us who have ever wished for something more in restricted lives. One part of his routine particularly struck me. Burlesque dancers usually strip off elaborate costumes quickly as a part of their routine; Pi played cleverly with this convention by slowly and teasingly undoing the buttons on his shirt.

A feisty finale was provided by Aurora Galore as a wild circus ringmaster - flinging her black hair and her gold tasseled red tails about.

Jewellery by Melissa's Boutique

This cabaret is way beyond mere titillation, it's a performance that is wildly entertaining and still does what art does best. It subverts our suburban assumptions and questions our inhibitions, saying Yes, to our innermost dreams - not our fantasies about the 0 size magazine models which advertising persuades us we would like to be, but our dreams about who we really are and what we could be doing if we had the courage to dance like the whole world is watching. 

And we don't have long to wait! Never mind Christmas, it's only 27 sleeps til the "Selection Box" Christmas burlesque party on 20th December. Tickets a mere £12 from Cardiff Cabaret Club. Hope you have got your stockings ready (wink).