Burlesque is Back in Town

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Today the Shim Shamettes, backed by a jazz band called the Shim Sham Revue, perform at the club at least once a month. The shows are elaborate, with live music, an emcee, and promotional posters. As many as 20 women perform in each show, and they all wear over-the-top costumes—some vintage, others created by local costume designer Oliver Kroeten.

"We try to keep it very true to the time period," Fuller says. "We get a lot of our ideas from old footage of burlesque acts, and books, and articles from old men's magazines. Part of the fun is making the costumes as authentic as possible."

And the dancers' bodies need to be authentic, too. This means real women's bodies—not the surgically enhanced type. When Melissa Duke, who performs with L.A.'s Velvet Hammer as Bubbles LaRue, first saw the new burlesque, she remembers being "blown away by the fact that all the women involved were real women and they looked so amazing." .

"Here in L.A.," she adds," we're so used to seeing women looking all perfect and tall and thin, but these were real women who were curvy and fleshy and soft in the middle, and they were all dressed up and having so much fun. It looked empowering. I wanted to be one of them, too."

What's so powerful about taking your clothes off in front of a roomful of strangers? First of all, not everyone takes her clothes off, says Nina Bozak (a.k.a. Nina "Boom-Boom" Boomavitch), the Shim Shamettes' assistant director and choreographer. And, because the performers choose how much to remove (though no true burlesque dancer goes beyond pasties and full-bottom panties), they call the shots. It's a strangely powerful feeling.

"During one of our shows, there was a point where I was dancing with a group and I took off my skirt," Bozak recalls. "The crowd went wild. They cheered and laughed. It was great. I felt like a rock star."

Neo-burlesquers may feel like rock stars, but they certainly don't get paid like them. During the heyday of burlesque, top dancers may have commanded a queenly sum, but today it's nothing more than a labor of love.

"Absolutely nobody is getting rich here," Fuller says, adding that solo performers pay for their own costumes, "but right now that's not the point. We're doing it because we're having fun, getting together with our friends and performing. It's like a big game of dress-up, and everybody gets to be the star."

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