Vive la Revolution Burlesque

The raised fist, an international gesture of defiance, strength and solidarity, is the perfect symbol for a night of revolutionary queer burlesque at the Vanguard in Newtown on Bastille Day.

The storming of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789 paved the way for civil disorder and upheaval in France. It sparked a revolution that eventually overthrew the oppressive monarchy headed by Louis XVI.

This Bastille Day, glamorous and thrilling hostess Lillian Starr has selected a tasty array of subversive queer burlesque performers, including Australia’s Queen of burlesque Imogen Kelly, Fancy Piece, Billie Bradshaw, ZooFi and Paige Walker.

She told City Hub that Vive le Fist was an excuse to have a party on Bastille Day.

“It’s massively dangerous territory to appropriate a culture so it was more along the lines of what was relevant and so great about that event for us, which was the uprising of a culture.”

Lillian points out that burlesque has always been progressive because it has always pushed boundaries, “whether it’s the boundaries of laws around vulgarity or public affray or what’s appropriate, or pushing different social mores about what is expected for women, and the way women express themselves and the way they use their bodies,” she says.

Throughout the eras, as boundaries have shifted, being radical has meant a lot of different things, but when there’s an intelligence, it seems more revolutionary,” Lillian notes.

“Through the Victorian era it might have been just about showing a bit of leg or doing some cross dressing, whereas in the 1930s it might have been about taking off more clothes to show more of the body,” Lillian says.

Lillian points out that burlesque involves a lot more than showing off the female form.

“When burlesque fulfills the criteria that are expected to make it pretty in the traditional way then it doesn’t have the same potential to be subversive, because it can feed into the same anxieties that women see in the wider world of media.”

Queer burlesque offers entertainment that is empowering, raucous, funny and intelligent, and forces people to think about their bodies in a different way.

“It almost lulls you into a sense of security before it delivers a punch line,” Lillian says.”

Tickets: www.thevanguard.com.au