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| The "strange beauties" of Blue Skies Burlesque |
What is it about a woman’s bare back that intrigues imagination
and rouses desire? How about glances of a woman’s upper thigh peeking through
black gauze or jewel-studded breasts delicately draped with red tulle? Audience
members saw all this and more at Blue Skies Burlesque’s opening night performance
of “The Dreaming” at the Magnetic Field on August 17.
Cherry-Oh, a former Bootstrap Burlesque member,
masterminded the troupe, including Odessa Dawn, Lacey Lyons, Shotgun Kelly,
Ahnyae, Tony Bravo, Ginger L’May and stagehand Insomnia Djangle. The
performance opened with a short introduction from a craggy yet loveable Jim
Henson-esque puppet host named “the Sandman” and quickly began with a tantalizing
strip tease from Oh, Dawn and Lyons as the Memory Trio.
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| Cherry Oh |
The show started at 10:30 p.m. and boasted a full house
of onlookers eager to behold the “strange beauties” of Blue Skies Burlesque. The
show’s title, “The Dreaming” comprised eight decadently devious dances, each
inspired by a dream. The second dance was “The Erotic Dream,” a solo
performance by Shotgun Kelly. The stage was prepared with thick bushes of
crimson tulle, with Kelly encapsulated in the center of the fleshy material.
Kelly, adorned with jewels and curled ram horns jutting
from her head, delicately pushed against the tulle with her arms and legs as if
an unborn deity tucked inside a celestial womb and preparing for her birth.
Kelly’s lean, ivory body and long limbs glowed in contrasted to the ruby hue of
the lacy tulle.
When she finally found her way out of the gentle netting,
the entrails of tulle transformed into an impressive boa that Kelly wrapped
around her mostly nude body and sensually danced about the stage.
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| Shotgun Kelly |
The third routine, titled “A Possession Dream,” equally
captivated the imagination with Ahnyae’s darkly seductive belly dance
performance to Marylin Manson’s Goth-metal cover of “Sweet Dreams.”
The serpentine dancer shifted and shimmied across the
stage, demanding the audience’s attention with her exotic face and movements. A
scimitar balanced on the crown of Ahnyae’s head further complimented the
precise undulations, pops and glides of her body.
Next up was a bewitching dance by Cherry Oh.
Titled” A Flying dream,” Oh’s routine incorporated
sensual belly dancing and graceful pole dancing that enchanted the audience
with demonstrations of strength and feminine beauty. Oh, dressed in a layered
point skirt of gauzy noir and aubergine panels, hoisted herself to the top of
the slender metal pole a number of times in feats of aerial wonderment as she
skillfully balanced her body and twirled around on the phallic post. The
combination of fluid belly dancing and bursts of pole climbing guided the
audience through a twilight flight across a dark and erotic dreamscape.
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| Odessa Dawn sporting a red head |
After
a brief intermission, Odessa Dawn resumed the stage
with her performance, “A Nightmare.” The blue-haired vixen donned a
silver
sparkled skull mask and performed a delightfully macabre dance,
eviscerating delicate
lace guts from inside of her before removing her mask and clothing to
reveal her supple body but for skin-tone pasties and a thong.
Before Dawn’s act, the stagehand prepared a black tarp-lined
corner with a very large goblet filled with red substance placed on top of it.
Dawn’s final deed consisted of her pouring the goblet red goo upon her
illusionary nude body and rolling around in it like a sultry slip-and-slide of
blood.
Lacey Lyons graced the stage next. Wrapped in an emerald
tulle skirt, Lyons strutted to a swaggering rockabilly nugget. Her voluptuous form
bounced rhythmically to the primitive rock rhythm until the music stopped—literally—and
replacing the rock ‘n’ roll jangle was Flight
of the Bumblebee. Lyon turned to a rushed madwoman trying to twirl out of
her skirt until—back to the swagger.
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| Lacey Lyons |
Lyons resumed her cool and her strut and looked damn good
until the music stopped, again, and a frenzied can-can melody took over. Lyons
took pair after pair if panties off in an equally frenzied hurry until the sexy
swagger resumed. The playful tease offered a lighter tone to the previous dark
and sultry performances.
The seventh act was a duet performance by Tony Bravo and
Ginger L’May titled “The Fever Dream.” Bravo, dressed like a 1950’s traveling
sales man, falls into a sexy slumber where L’May seduces him into a hot fever
of desire. Quite fitting, the duo danced to the song “Fever.”
While the duet was a sexual and playful bit, Bravo’s
mannerisms fell a bit too heavy on the “hey guy’s I’m getting laid tonight” attitude
and casted a campy and typical feeling to the routine. And, when Bravo’s pants
final came off, I think it would have been in better taste to see him in something
other than a jock strap. Just sayin’.
The final act was “The Future Dream,” with Oh, Dawn and
Kelly disguised in white boar, elephant and lion masks, respectively, and clad in
white pearlesque g-strings and pasties. In their anthropomorphic forms, the
women danced like primal beasts, with their hands contorted like claws and
their spines rolling and undulating like wild women casting a spell around a
cauldron.
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| Tony Bravo gets pampered with a shave and a hair cut |
Soon the lights went dark, and a black light illuminated
the trio’s white masks and clothing, and brought to vision smeared streaks of
ultraviolet striating the women’s bodies. As the women left the stage, they
removed their animal masks and the other performers came out to take a bow and
accept their ovations.
Overall, Blue Skies Burlesque nurtured some seriously
positive vibrations with their maiden performance of “The Dreaming.” The troupe
performed again on August 18, and they’re putting on a second weekend
performance Aug 24 and 25 at the Magnetic Field; tickets are $15. Oh has plans
on touring her troupe in the future, so you can keep up with Blue Skies
Burlesque on Facebook or on their website at www.BlueSkiesBurlesque.com.
People love seeing a woman —or a man—take off almost all of her clothes. Burlesque’s relentless
beauty is the art of the tease and of the fantasy, and its powerful intrigue
steams from what still remains unseen.
The strange beauties of Blue Skies Burlesque will, hopefully, continue to
captivate curious crowds in their future dreams.
