Black Orchid Burlesque and the art of tease

Burlesque is built on a wink and a smile. It’s the art of theatrical tease, a vintage form of erotic and ironic cabaret, where the emphasis is not on revealing but on concealing skin, while still feeding the audience titbits of fantasy-invoking bare curves. It’s the rare space where a woman can be sexy and funny at the same time, because the most beautiful curve on a woman’s body is her smile.

CLOWNING AROUND: Jessy (left) and Star (right), from the Black Orchid Burlesque troupe, photographed at one of Cape Town’s great entertainment venues, Vaudeville. The pair run workshops on Saturdays at the venue teaching wannabe Burlesquers.


I’m at the Obs Theatre in Cape Town. It’s 8pm and the show is about to start. I sit in the second row. Audience participation is expected at this type of thing and I’m shy. Diva-Disa Star, one of the sexy geniuses behind Black Orchid Burlesque, takes to the stage. She takes off one pair of gloves and there’s another pair underneath. She keeps going and going and it’s spectacular. Her moves are fluid, sensual and effortlessly undulating, and we’re all in suspense.

Diva-Disa Star and her ex business partner Scar-Lit Hearts began teasing the city of Cape Town nearly four years ago when they started Black Orchid Burlesque, at a time when no-one else in the country was doing Burlesque. The troupe follow the neo Burlesque genre: the vintage glamour of the femme fatales of the past mixed with a little bit of rockabilly cool. Boylesque, a movement big in the UK, is now done by Black Orchid as well. It’s an amalgamation of body building poses and cabaret dance mixed into the art of Burlesque, and it’s gaining popularity in South Africa.

HURLY BURLY: Star, a glamorous and petite Burlesque dancer. What is this lady like this lady like at home? She told us she has 5 cats. Sounds very homely. And she says they love nestling in her wardrobes amongst all the soft fabrics of all her beautiful burlesque outfits.

The show ends on an amazing high with Boylesque queen Jesse Jester. With his dark magnetism and otherworldly grace he’s like some kind of sexy space alien come to earth. Fluttering his impossibly long eyelashes, like giant butterflies resting on his cheeks, he slowly unzips his corset. Midway through he changes his mind, sliding the zip back up teasingly. The audience shivers with antici…pation.

STRIKE A POSE: Jessy in fool regalia

Standing by the bar after the show I ask Star about the Black Orchid creative process. “How do we conceptualise a show? It’s about the characters. Each artiste is different, and each character is distinctive and unique.” She pauses to take a sip of her drink, leaving a little bit of burlesque behind on the glass. “These are developed over time and are very personal to each of the performers who are influenced by various aspects of their own lives too. One of Jessy’s alter egos, for example, is a Japanese anime type person and one of the costumes he wears for that is covered entirely in toys…We try to always keep our audiences amazed and interested, so we tend to push the boundaries wherever we can.”

Jessy stresses that the art form of Burlesque “comes from the ladies.” I ask him how he got involved. “When I met Star, who had her company already up and running, she said to me she was starting up a Boylesque troupe. Having a love of all things out-of-the-ordinary (not forgetting the glitter - what is a performer without sparkle?!), I jumped at the opportunity and haven’t looked back since. Also, having the title of the first Boylesque performer in South Africa gives me some bragging rights!”

Aside from creating and executing their own performances, The Black Orchid Burlesque Academy aims to teach more women out there that it's okay to enjoy their sensuality and celebrate their femininity. “The women who join my workshops are self-empowered and confident, and not all of them started out that way,” Star says with passion. “All sorts of people join my classes: school teachers, secretaries, charity workers, students. We even have a 72-year-old tannie in the mix,” she exclaims, smiling, as she uses the word descriptively in Afrikaans. “Not one of these women would ever be ashamed to call themselves a Burlesque artiste,” she continues, "because what we do is classic and tasteful. It’s not all about gyrating hips and bare breasts. It’s up to the performer how much they want to reveal. Some of my shyer students never perform live – they just do it for their own self-gratification, though we do organise a photo shoot of final performances so that they can hold on to the memories.”

FANTASTIC: If you love what you’re seeing in this photo, then you’ll be happy to hear that Black Orchid Burlesque run workshops if you want to make the accessories yourself. They sell the fabulous outfits similar to those they’re wearing for a few thousand rand.

The people who join Black Orchid Burlesque do so because they love the art form, not to make a quick buck. “We all spend far more on dazzling costumes than we ever make from shows, but every now and then we’re lucky enough to get a big gig,” says Star. They do have several sponsors on board though, like Sailor Jerry Rum, Affinage Hair Products and Wildfire Tattoos. “The best thing is being able to perform around the country at several festivals and events. The greatest feeling is walking off stage after a big show and knowing you thoroughly entertained your audience for those few minutes.”

She offers advice to aspiring Burlesquers: “Burlesque is more focused on costumes and personas than the actual people themselves, so I believe that if you have a natural attraction to the more dramatic arts it will help you to be a better performer. Some of my performers have no dance background, but make fantastic Burlesquers. Just remember to keep it classy and you can’t go wrong!”

With a wink and a smile I'll end with a quote from Burlesque great Dita Von Teese: “Burlesque stars are made, not born.” In other words, you can dance Burlesque too.

For more information on upcoming shows, workshops or to book Black Orchid for an event contact Fox on: info@blackorchidburlesque.com info@blackorchidburlesque.com

Originally published in HSSS

Photos courtesy of Karl Lilje

Drawings in dialouge

“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears,” Gertrude Stein, writer and patron to Picasso once said.

The Tjorts!/Cheers! exhibition explores this idea. In the show lines of text and lines from works of art form a dialogue where the words and art come together to create a more complex, rich vision.

Collaboration between poets and artists is not a novel idea. There is even a word for it: “ekphrasis” defined as “the response of one art form to another” and it often involves poetry responding to a medium of art. It goes both ways though – with the artist’s work as a starting point for the poet, and the poetry as a stimulus for the artist. And sometimes it is a complete organic collaboration.

Inspired by South African writer Danie Marais’ poem of the same name the exhibition is essentially a creative conversation between the poet and visual artists, Tina Jensen, Marlise Keith and John Murray as well as Marna Hattingh and Liza Grobler who co-curated the show.

Liza tells me how the show came about. “Marna approached me with the idea of having a drawing show in which we could celebrate the diversity of drawing. We started talking about a possible theme that could connect everyone's contributions and then decided that a shared text might allow for wider and more interesting interpretations."

Liza's love for Afrikaans poetry took things further. "I have read both In die buitenste ruim and Al is die maan 'n misverstand by Danie Marais and simply loved his poems. He has the ability to summarise very universal experiences in a single phrase and on top of that his poems are highly visual and often refer to songs, books and experiences that are very familiar to people of our generation.

Cheers for now! by Liza Grobler

Rain Dogs by Marna Hattingh

Pencil Test by Tina Jensen

Opdrifsels (Jetsam) by John Murray

Errie Tjierrie Tjorts! by Marlise Kieth

“So we asked him to send us a number of unpublished poems to choose from…It made sense to select an unpublished poem as we wanted to strike up a conversation rather than reflect on a previously published text…As Tjorts! is a toast it also seemed an appropriate choice for the first exhibition of 2012 at the AVA.

In this poem Marais brings to light sights, sounds and experiences of Cape Town to paint richly layered picture of the city.

”This is seen throughout the work of each artist who responded to the poem in a range of media. Executions therefore vary from work on paper to site-specific spatial constructions. Artists also circulated work-in-progress and responded to each other’s interpretations in an effort to find synergies.

Each artist had a different take on the poem as reflected in their work. Marlise Kieth tells me about how she used the poem as the starting point for her piece Errie Jjerrie Tjorts! “The title of the poem comes from a nonsense rhyme from my child hood: olka bolka ribiekies tolka, olka bolka knor, erie tjerie tjikene cherie, erie tjerie tjorts or something like that. It has many variations depending on how one heard it while growing up. I found out that it is a picking rhyme, so whoever gets to be tjorts is IT/ picked. I liked that this could describe the random violence and other things that happen in one's day, how one gets to be picked or tjorts-ed and that’s what I’ve tried to express with the imagery of my painting.”

Danie Marais tells me about the essence of his poem – what he was trying to express with it. “The spark for my poem came from the Leonard Cohen song "A Thousand Kissed Deep", which he incidently also started as a poem:

I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed,
I’m back on Boogie Street.
You lose your grip, and then you slip
Into the Masterpiece.

Cohen never says what the Masterpiece is, but the line always came back to me and I believe the Masterpiece is life itself. Every classic work of art - painting, song, poem, sculpture or book - stems from the human condition which of course is part and parcel of the one and only broken world we know.”

Danie is clearly inspired by many other artists, and also tells me that he recently saw Noah Baumbach’s drama comedy Greenberg. Danie says that the main character, Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is talking to an old British friend he fell out of touch with, Ivan (Rhys Ifans). They had a band back in the day and they almost had a record deal too, but now Greenberg is 40 and kind of lost. Ivan is on the verge of a divorce after kicking drugs and booze, but he wants to be a good dad to his son. Danie explains how Ivan then says to Greenberg: ‘It’s huge to finally embrace the life you never planned on’. Then Danie goes on to explain how Greenberg fits in with his poem:

“I suppose that’s also what the poem is about, and that might just be one thing that unites this exhibition and all the artists who took part. We might just all be looking for the proper balance between the acceptance of our fate in this unrelenting world and a little bit of bloody-minded defiance.”

Tjorts!/Cheers! Is on at the AVA, 35 Church Str, until February 10. Call 021 424 7436 or email avaart@iafrica.com or see www.ava.co.za. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday from 10 am to 5pm, Saturday from 10am to 1pm.

Tjorts!

Die wêreld is alles
wat die geval is,
soos Wittgenstein sou sê,
maar ek en die gevalle alles
het altyd ’n gespanne verhouding gevoer.
Jare lank het ek my swart hart
kinderlik soos ’n vuis vir revolusie
gebal, my tande vir ’n ander wêreld
geslyp.
Maar op hierdie uitgewasde somerdag
met die Moederstad wat soos opdrifsels
teen ’n Tafelberg vol littekens lê,
loop my beker oor van bewondering,
drink ek op alles wat geval het.
Want o, hierdie wêreld met sy kleinlike oorloë,
growwe nalatighede en nederlae
ís my vervalle woning;
hierdie stukkende lewe met sy
Nighthawks at the Diner, sy
Madame Bovary’s, sy bergies en sy botteltjies blou
ís ’n perverse meesterstuk
die groot onheilige mis voor die son.


Cheers!

The world is everything
that is the case,
Wittgenstein said,
but everything
rubbed me wrong.
For years I clenched
my black heart childlike
for revolution, set my teeth
on edge for another world.
But on this washed-out summer day
with the city shored up
jetsam against a Table Mountain
wrapped in scar tissue, my cup
overfloweth, I propose a toast:
to Tess of Durbanville
and everything that has fallen.
For, oh, this dashed world with its petty wars,
Cape-Coon choirs and mountain fires, this ocean
we have ploughed, this world
I’m passing through is my home;
this star-crossed life with all its lepers
of love and Grapes of Wrath,
its Rain Dogs and Nighthawks
its Madame Bovarys, bergies and blue murder
bestows on us a perverse masterpiece
our daily bread –
the great unholy mass, the fog
that will not clear.

Danie Marais
Poet Danie Marais has won critical acclaim for his lengthy works that explore personal experience using sound, visual images and texture against historical, environmental and political backdrops. It is precisely this unique combination of substance and essence that makes his work so strikingly resonant.

Marlise Keith
Artist Marlise Keith’s work captures often disturbing but mostly surreal moments in small, detailed areas. She draws primarily in acrylic inks on paper, canvas and board. She works this medium into delicate lines and tipsy smudges, swirls and clouds making her paintings a mood and a picture. It is important to examine her works carefully to fully enjoy their complexity.

Liza Grobler
Artist Liza Grobler has dabbled in a diverse range of media, embracing bright colour and often incorporating traditional craft techniques to create site-specific work. Her art is a conversation between image, language and daily life.

Tina Jensen
Artist Tina Jensen mostly uses black marker pens to create images that are very much like doodles on paper. She has an intuitive approach when starting an artwork and prefers to not have a preconceived idea about its final look.

Marna Hattingh
Artist Marna Hattingh creates a distinct personal iconography of imagery and symbols in her drawings. The evocative stylized figures lost in patterned interiors are playful, yet ambiguously sinister. Her work seeks to make subtle commentaries on society’s oddities and the numerous unfounded fears that lurk in the corners of our minds.

John Murray
Artist John Murray is interested in the physical process of applying medium to a surface. He mostly works with oil paint and charcoal and the process of application often consists of scraping the surface with blades or sanding paper. He sees this as subtle acts of violence that underlie the quiet appearance of his work. Although his work makes reference to the physical and social world that we live in, his response as an artist is quite visceral.

Originally published in HSSS

Photos courtesy of the artists