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Adelaide Fringe 2015

The Art of Tease

The Art of Tease

Genre: Burlesque

Venue: Shotz Bar Pirie Street

Festival:


Low Down

If you love burlesque performances you will love some of the acts in this show. If not you will find there are too many things that detract from the dancers’ performance  for you to find it an entertaining show as a whole.

Review

I was about to find out that a burlesque show was a very hard thing to judge, because each burlesque act is an individual show in itself. You find that you are not reviewing a single show, but as many shows as there are dancers.

Burlesque is a celebration of femininity. I respect each performer for their dedication to their craft. It truly is a calling. So much more sexy than strip tease, because the personality of the girl is more important than the exposing of flesh.

The acts of course were varied. I suspect each person in the audience had their own particular favourite. Mine was the beautiful flame headed woman who came out in a pale blue outfit. She had the requisite amount of sass I would consider to be an essential ingredient of a good burlesque performance.

Each of the girls were pretty and sassy. Some acts didn’t appeal to me as others but such is the nature of shows like this. A crowd favourite was the girl who had nipple pasties that resembled tennis balls. The crowd went wild over her ability to shimmy.

Apart from the dancers though, I found the rest of the show, the glue that held the show together to be a bit amateurish. The MC for the show wasn’t great. The sound system at the venue, a local pool hall made it hard to understand her. The lighting at times was poorly done.  

Things like this started to make the show feel less like a burlesque show, which I feel is supposed to have an element of classiness, and more like a low rent strip show.

The MC tried to instigate some audience participation. It was largely cringe worthy and awkward. There was an dance competition with 4 audience members who were suspiciously good dancers. Certainly the thought came to mind that they were ring-ins.

The final word? Focus on the dancers and you will love it. Just switch off from the rest of the show.

Published

Show Website

 www.revolutionweb.com.au