Please Tease Me

Wendy McPhee says her maturity shocks some in the audience.

If the idea of watching a woman strip to her lingerie sounds more like something your brother did on his stag night than the subject of a pop culture renaissance, think again. Burlesque is back, baby, and it ain't just for the boys.

Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani, Carmen Electra, Christina Applegate, Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria and Denise Richards have all donned their finest suspenders and jumped on stage with the burlesque troupe the Pussycat Dolls.

After their early success, the entertainment company behind the Dolls launched a chart-topping girl group whose lingerie is yet to be aired in public.

Fashion designers are raiding the burlesque look epitomised by 1880s Moulin Rouge and Hollywood glamour girls Jean Harlow, Betty Grable and Mae West. Burlesque dancers featured briefly in Peter Jackson's King Kong.

Even balloon-popping scientists at a climate change forum in Canberra helped to put burlesque back in the spotlight this year, care of a few screaming headlines.

Now the trend is catching on in your neighbourhood. The Hootchy Kootchy Girls' first burlesque show on K Rd sold out, Pavement magazine editor Bernard McDonald is recruiting dancers for a burlesque night at the Schooner, and Nicky Watson is on the look-out for burlesque-friendly real estate on Auckland's Vegas girl strip.

Burlesque is "striptease in its purest form," says McDonald, who has wanted to stage a burlesque night since he stumbled across images of 50s pin-up Bettie Page 15 years ago. "But it's not about getting it all off."

He envisages his burlesque night as an elegant, modern affair in which the audience dress up as the dancers get down to tunes by Depeche Mode, Joy Division and Nick Cave. In other words, it's stripping with style.

Few are as stylish as Dita Von Teese, the wife of Marilyn Manson and modern queen of burlesque. Watch her bathe in a giant martini glass with an olive sponge or dance from an art deco crescent moon suspended from the ceiling. Like any good flirt will tell you, the ability to conjure a laugh is a powerful aphrodisiac.

"A lot of people find the naked body right in front of them a bit frightening," says Australian burlesque dancer Wendy McPhee (aka Ms Fortuna), who performs in Auckland as part of the Tempo Dance Festival this month.

"But because burlesque uses it in a comic way, we break down those barriers between the audience and the performer."

Although burlesque's heyday was in the smoky jazz clubs from the 30s to the 50s, its history can be traced to ancient Greece. Aristophanes' Lystistrata had Athenian women rebelling against war by using sexual blackmail against their husbands. No wonder the best burlesque performers would chat up their audience in a mocking way before setting a stockinged foot on stage.

Burlesque has always been more about the tease than the strip, but in the 19th century, it was more about teasing the upper classes. Performers would spoof operas, plays and social habits of the bourgeoisie. Stripping was introduced later as a way to keep bums on seats during the declining years of Vaudeville. The stars of the era stripped with artistic flair, like Sally Rand, who danced behind a huge fan.

In the 50s, when Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot represented the height of fantasy, burlesquers relied on lavish publicity stunts. Evangeline the Oyster Girl would disrobe in a tank of water, then shatter the glass with a hammer, soaking her audience.

Traditional burlesque performers do have one thing in common: they don't go further than a g-string and pasties (stickers that cover the nipple area).

"We do get people thinking they're going to see, y'know, tits," says McPhee. "Then I come out with my 10AA and they go, 'Oh'. But that's part of burlesque. I am not your classic bimbo blonde, in fact I'm nothing like that. People always get a bit shocked that somebody of my maturity comes out on stage."

McPhee, who studied burlesque as part of her Master of Fine Arts, says the burlesque renaissance has been perpetuated by the media since Von Teese burst on to the scene.

But McDonald wonders if its newfound popularity is society's reaction to a conservative time.

"It's hardly Steve Crow's Boobs on Bikes or anything. It's an intelligent, fun display of female sexuality that should be celebrated and cherished rather than suppressed and frowned on as it so often is."