Burlesque as a full-time job
Scarlett James puts a lot of hard work into every performance. Especially tonight, when she pops out of a birthday cake. Its taken her seven years total to perfect just a six and a half minute set. The costume, the choreography, down to the minute detail of the engineering of props. This is what it takes being a full-time burlesque performer.
James makes burlesque look like a cakewalk. But, what the audience sees on stage, in minutes, takes a lot of time and effort. “It’s an enormous amount of work,” she says, “ask that to any entrepreneur and they’ll tell you that the first five or six years is really a labour of love. Every penny you make, you reinvest.”
She begins by stretching and performing rhythmic breathing exercises. She explains that it’s very important to do this, because it creates focus and self-discipline in case of any mishap later in the night - like a wardrobe malfunction.
“You need to be flexible enough to handle the wardrobe malfunction.” she says, “and you need to be ready, in the sense that, even if there is one, you remain cool and make sure you have leeway in your choreography so there is no panic.”
On stage, she feeds off of the audience reaction, “If I am having a problem taking off my glove, the audience knows because they are smart, they have been to burlesque performances before” she says, “They know that when they are cheering, I am happy and the glove will finally come off.”
James grew up in France. She came to Canada wanting to become an entrepreneur in the burlesque scene. She is known as the main figure for bringing burlesque to Canada and being the Ambassador of Glamour for Montreal around the world.
Backstage, the dressing rooms have makeup tables lined side-by-side; sparkling costumes hanging neatly on clothing racks, ready-to-wear and glitter dust gracing the air. James is tapping away on her laptop trying to locate performers who have gone MIA.
Sitting beside James, we find Italian performer Albadoro Gala. She sits quietly applying her makeup. Gala was a corporate business manager that quit her job to become a full-time burlesque performer. She admits that working full-time in the industry isn’t as easy as her last job, where she received a weekly paycheck, but she wants to follow the path that makes her happy.
“In this industry, sometimes you work, sometimes you don’t." she says, “I am very lucky because previous business experience helps me a lot.”
Pastel Supernova is a Toronto-based burlesque performer, teacher of ‘Sultry Swagger’ burlesque class at Brass Vixens and owner of the Toronto dance company, Love Letters Cabaret.
Supernova exclaims, that she has been her own key motivator in pursuing a full-time career in burlesque. She stumbled upon it after being extensively trained in contemporary dance and says that when she started performing burlesque that it decided her future “i fell in love with it and wanted to do it all the time,” she says.
Supernova continues to train others in burlesque because it interests her the more than other forms of dance. She finds similarities in the forms of storytelling between ballet and burlesque performances , “I call them sexy ballets. So, you have your story, your ensembles and your extras and somewhere in there, is a Bermuda Triangle of sexiness, where we use all of it.”
The hard-work that goes into being a full-time burlesque performer takes a lot of sacrifice, but the payoff is worth every minute. “Tonight, I popped out of a cake like I’ve always wanted to.” says James, “ “I felt like a little girl, coming out in my Barbie outfit and it felt great.”
