New Routines, Exciting Times!

Just in case I wasn’t busy enough with performing about six times this month and trying to sort out my post-university career, I also decided now would be excellent timing to sort out two new routines. I am so full of good and entirely practical ideas! Still, new routines are always fun to create, for the joy of being able to spend all your money on expensive sparkly underwear and soothe your financial conscience with the excuse that it’s for ‘work’ if nothing else….

I got my first ever pair of fans as a present from my parents for finishing my degree and used them for a seaside themed fan dance over the summer, but I decided with November rapidly approaching the likelihood of being booked for a nautical or seaside themed night is rapidly dwindling, so I’m busy reworking things for a slightly darker more winter-appropriate number.

This is really the first time I’ve done a ‘serious’ routine as I’m generally all about the ridiculous plotlines, props etc and I must say it’s given me a lot more respect for performers who do more serious acts. I’ve always thought that creating funny routines was a lot more of a challenge than just ‘being glamorous and taking your clothes off’, but working on my fan dance has altered my views on the matter somewhat! Not being able to rely on keeping people amused via the medium of comedy moustache disguises and pole dancing on hay bales makes keeping things entertaining and ensuring people don’t fall asleep half way through is quite the challenge.

I’m having to ensure I put a lot of effort into costume and choreography to make sure it’s still interesting to watch. On the plus side, I did kinda use the whole having to make sure the costume was interesting thing as an excuse to buy myself some lace print Atsuko Kudo latex I’ve been wanting for years, so that was something of a silver lining to the unforeseen challenges!

I’m also working on a new double act with the lovely Lena Mae which will see me firmly back in comedy territory. Working on double acts is awesome fun and I’m super excited to see how this one turns out, although also a little nervous, as due to the fact that Lena and I currently live a good couple of hours on the train away from each other we only have two full days to get the choreography sorted. Fingers crossed all will run smoothly!

Having said that, me and Lena’s double act performances have something of a history of being a bit of a shambles (injuries from hitting each other in the face, getting stuck in bras, the list goes on), yet always being a lot of fun and going down well, so I’m sure this one will be fine on the night!

I probably shouldn’t tempt fate by saying that, but still, it’s good to be optimistic…

Other than working on my new acts I haven’t been up to an awful lot burlesque related since I last wrote, however last Saturday I was in London for the afternoon to perform for ‘Naughty Sorts presents 1 in 4’, a charity event raising money for Mind. It was a great event and I was really happy to be a part of it, but unfortunately I was struck down by an evil cold of doom two days before the show, and spent most of the time before I went on feeling very sorry for myself and panicking that I was going to sneeze all over the audience. Stripping with a bright red nose and a hideous cold isn’t exactly the sexiest look, but thanks to a combination of an awful lot of makeup and some good old cold fighting on stage adrenaline I managed to battle through without looking too much like death, I think.

Later this month I’ll be hitting the stage in Bath for Club Cadaver on the 22nd and Ministry of Burlesque’s High Tease on the 30th, and debuting my new double act in Hitchin on the 25th, followed by burlesque style Halloween spookiness on Shoreditch on the 31st. After these I’ll be having a nice rested relatively burlesque free November getting my Christmas act ready for December’s shows, so come see me soon!

Miss Dolly Rose is a rising star in the UK burlesque scene. She has performed for BABC in the past and she can be found at www.myspace.com/missdollyrose

The Further Burlesque Adventures of Miss Dolly Rose…

Due to my current enforced living in the west country situation, and my reluctance to miss out on London burlesque based fun due to this, the last month or so has seen me on an awful lot of trains. On the plus side, I have made the discovery that the hot chocolate they sell on First Great Western Trains is actually quite nice?! The coffee not so much.

It has also seen me taking advantage of the loveliness of my friends floors/sofas/spare beds…special thankyou's must go to the lovely Duchess Divine for putting me up for three nights after I cleverly booked myself for four shows in the space of a weekend without thinking about the ‘I don’t actually live in London’ side of things. Whilst staying with Duchess, we were both booked to perform at her friend’s stag do on the Friday night. I wasn’t really sure what to expect having never performed at a stag do before and not really ever had any previous plans to end up doing so, but it was actually really fun and something I’d definitely do again if I knew the people involved, really nice atmosphere and we were well looked after!

Saturday saw us all venturing off to the wilds of Colliers Wood for the Dark Mills Festival, where Duchess had put together an excellent line-up of some of the loveliest ladies in burlesque, plus BABC’s very own Mark Farley reading erotic fiction from the Burlesque Against Breast Cancer book.



After a lovely time despite the delayed dressing room entry and my subsequent frantic attempts to get into my costume in 15 minutes (apologies to anyone I stressed at!), I was off to Shoreditch to perform at the gorgeous Emerald Fontaine’s night at The Fox, where lots of fun and some excellent cupcakes were had. The night was vintage English summer themed, and I was most impressed by the Astroturf croquet lawn in the smoking area!

And after such a busy weekend, it was off back to the West Country for what was intended to be a quiet night of sleep and rest, but somehow turned into me going out and drinking slightly too much cider (these things do happen in Somerset), before venturing back to London for Flay & Deville’s Circus of Marvels on the Monday, which was a really great night with wonderful performers, I highly recommend it!

Last Wednesday saw me up in London yet again for ‘Beyond the Cabaret’ at the Tiger’s Rear. One of my friends has just moved up to London from Bath, so I dragged him along (and may maybe possibly have specifically asked the night’s host Kiki Kaboom to pick on him…sorry Callum, but it was too tempting!). I did my West Country act which is always fun times, although I must apologise to all the other performers for the tendency my hay has to get absolutely everywhere.

I’m imagining a lot of people will be finding mystery hay lurking in their costumes over the next week or two! All of the performers at Beyond the Cabaret were absolutely brilliant, but special mention must go to Frisky and Mannish for covering Wuthering Heights in the style of Kate Nash, something I can’t say I ever thought I would see, but which I’m very glad I did!

This week, I’ve been having a nice quiet rest after all my London adventures, but I’m back up again this Thursday for the British Burlesque Invasion show, and the following Saturday for Duchess’s ‘1 in 4’ night which will be raising awareness of mental health in aid of the charity ‘Mind’, plus a few exciting shows down in Bath later in the month, so hopefully I’ll have a lot more to write about soon!

Miss Dolly Rose is a rising star in the UK burlesque scene. She has performed for BABC in the past and she can be found at www.myspace.com/missdollyrose

Recent Burlesque Adventures

BABC performer Miss Dolly Rose:

The 'post-finishing my degree' feeling of being at a bit of a loose end and not having much to do has thankfully been avoided so far, thanks to a nice busy few weeks with lots of fun shows in a variety of exciting locations (Well, the west country and Croydon, but still, lots of fun!) Only one of them has been in the usual central London type area, and that one was made special by being one of the events put on by the wonderful people who are the reason behind this blog, so it’s been a good month of burlesque adventures for me!

The end of June took me off to sunny Devon, Exeter to be specific, for Kinky and Quirky…

I was performing with my wonderful partner in double act related crime Lena Mae, and also the lovely Fleur Blanche. Points for wonderful looking after of the performers goes to the Bells, who run the night, for many reasons but in particular for providing me with a hay bale for my West Country act so I didn’t have to drag one all the way to Exeter with me. I do love my West Country act but if I’d really thought about how much effort dragging a large, heavy, awkward, shedding hay bale with me everywhere I performed it would be I might have re-thought the idea somewhat!

My secret burlesque ambition is to one day create an act the costume of which can be fitted into a shoulder bag, but I seem to be drawn to thinking up ideas that involve heavy scales/hay bales/A1 posters and easels etc. However, in this instance there was no need for hay bale dragging, which was most wonderful and being an act based around an appreciation of farming, The Wurzels, and excessive cider drinking, it went down very well to a Devon audience. So well, in fact, that my performance became somewhat over-enthusiastic with the end result that I chipped my tooth slightly on my bottle of cider - oh, the perils of burlesque!

Myself and Lena’s double act was it’s usual shambolic but highly entertaining self; I got stuck in my dress, Lena got stuck in her bra, I accidentally hit Lena so hard in the face that I injured her jaw, but other than all that it went very well and everyone seemed to enjoy it, so all’s well that ends well!

The following weekend took me down to Devon again, this time to Plymouth. I stayed in Cornwall with my parents for a few days for this one and I am very proud of myself for braving the perils of swimming in the icy waters of the English sea whilst there. Although if I am completely honest, the only thing that got me in the water was mentioning to a friend before hand that I was going to attempt it and not wanting to admit to being defeated by the cold.

But still, I am proud of my stubbornness if nothing else!

The shows in Plymouth were fun, not as easy a crowd as some as it wasn’t really the usual sort of burlesque audience, but I think it’s very good experience to perform in front of crowds that aren’t as easily appreciative as a crowd who are all specifically there to see burlesque and know what to expect, and it was lovely to meet Coco Deville who was also performing.

My next show after this was the Super Summer Breast Awareness Night at the Book Club Boutique, for Burlesque Against Breast Cancer. I thought this was such a great night. Everyone there and the general atmosphere was lovely. I really enjoyed the fact that the night managed to very much stay on the topic of what we were raising money for, but in a very positive way.

Everyone who spoke, read, played or burlesqued on the night was brilliant so it’s very hard to pick out highlights, but it was great to see Kiki Kaboom’s chav act as I had wanted to see it for absolutely ages and it did not disappoint, one of the funniest acts I’ve seen.

Enjoyable for the opposite reason (in that I had not previously heard them and wasn’t expecting them, was Lola and the Clic; beautiful music with sweet and funny lyrics, really good.

The following weekend took me down to my hometown of Bath for Geisha Go Disco’s Fight Fire With Fire Night. Unfortunately we had to battle with the venue being quite far up a long road on a night when it was absolutely pouring with rain, so the night wasn’t as packed as it deserved to be, but it was still a really nice night and really well organised by Gem. I love doing gigs down in Bath anyway because my parents are generally happy to drive me to and from the venue.

Yay for not having to negotiate buses whilst carrying giant suitcases and easels and all the awkward to carry objects I love to fill my acts with!

After far too little sleep it was off to the magical land of Croydon for Dj Suave’s night the Glitter Room. As per usual with Keith’s nights it was really enjoyable, very well organised and made even better by the providing of a backstage table of crisps and lollipops and triangular sandwiches!

At risk of sounding overly obsessed with lollipops and sandwiches, I must admit that free supplies of them backstage make me extremely happy, particularly later in the night when one is done performing and has had a glass or two of wine and sandwiches that have become slightly stale by this point suddenly become incredibly appealing. After the slightly tipsy hurrah for sandwiches incident, it was off on the train back to London for a very long sleep to recover from a busy weekend of Burlesque adventures.

So yes, that pretty much sums up my recent burlesque related exploits, lots of wonderful times had and lovely people met, and hopefully there will be lots more fun this month for me to write about!

Guest Blogger: Miss Dolly Rose

Hello! I’m Miss Dolly Rose, a London based burlesque performer who’s been performing for about ten months now.

I thought first I should do an initial blog to introduce myself a bit and also, as I’m quite a new performer and I thought it might interest people thinking about getting into it, I’d write a blog about how I got into burlesque and the experience of my first performance last August!

Like quite a lot of performers, I come from a background of doing a lot of dancing. I’ve done ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, Arabic, Irish and ballroom to name a few!

One of the main reasons behind my desire to get into burlesque was that I absolutely loved dancing and performing, but I’m not really physically cut out to become a classical dancer, so I love being able to perform a form of dance where one can play to one’s own strengths. Especially the choosing whatever style and blend of dance, humour, acting etc one wants!

I also love anything creative and fashion related, so planning costumes, choreographing routines etc is so much fun, although I rather fear I’m going to discover my uni grades have gone downhill since I started performing, as pretty much all my spare time seems to go into burlesque related activities these days!

I think I was sixteen or seventeen when I saw my first burlesque show in Bristol and I’ve wanted to do it ever since then, but didn’t get round to it as moving from Bath to London and starting uni etc, somehow got in the way and it got rather put to the back of my mind as one of those ‘one day I’ll do that’ type of things.

However, during my second year at uni, it finally started turning into more of a ‘one day soon I’ll do that’ type of thing and I booked myself on Jo King’s course (which was brilliant) and really changed my views on what sort of performance I wanted to do. Originally, I was quite interested in the more classic side of burlesque, but Jo’s course really opened my eyes as to the fun of doing more comedy based routines and having routines with a plot, gimmicks etc.

Although one can obviously teach oneself the technical basics of burlesque like tassel twirling etc, I’d really recommend going on a course as it really helped me learn how to develop a routine and I think I would be quite a different (and very likely, worse) performer if I hadn’t learnt from Jo King. Plus Gypsy Charms at The Ministry of Burlesque, who I take improvers classes with now.

My first show was in August last year, at a night my friend Tom was putting on in Bath. He mentioned on a night out that they wanted burlesque performers for the night and I rashly asked if I could do it!

This seemed like a great idea until the reality of what I had said I would do hit and I realised I really didn’t have that long to think up a routine, let alone find the right music, plan/make/buy the costume and do the choreography.

The routine I performed is still the one I do most often and I still love doing it, but creating a routine for the first time involved so much more work than I would initially have imagined. My main memory of this time was naively assuming finding a 1950s song, of the right length and speed to dance to, which lyrics suitable to a routine about weight loss would be relatively easy.

No, no it really wasn’t!

In fact, I think I have pretty much an entire shelf of obscure 1950s music now from my struggle to find that song.

However, eventually I came across ‘Plenty of Love and 20 Calories’ by Jayne Mansfield, which was perfect!

Costume was another thing which I assumed would be easier than it was. Anyone who’s ever been shopping with a mental image of a certain type of dress or top in their mind will know what it’s like, nothing is ever quite what you imagined.

It only took a few days of frantically searching the internet for me to realise that I was going to have to make it myself. Thankfully however, my wonderful mother (who is an awful lot better at sewing than me) helped me out at this point and saved me from the horror of what would have been the results of me trying to make it myself.

On the subject, I would say to anyone thinking of getting into burlesque, learn to sew, it’ll make your life a lot easier!

Choreography I found the easiest aspect of putting it all together, but I’m so glad I filmed it a lot before I ever performed it. More than once I thought I’d come up with an absolutely awesome bit of choreography only to discover that nothing could be further from the truth. But yes, so now I had my routine all put together with costume and music and props and everything, so onto my first performing experience. I can say pretty safely, probably the most nervous I have ever been in my entire life.

I pretty much didn’t eat all day I was so nervous, but then worried that might make me faint, so ate chocolate to up my blood sugar and then just ended up feeling faintly sick. Well done me. I have a very clear memory of standing by the side of the stage before I went on thinking to myself,

‘Why am I doing this?!’, but once I actually got on stage I really needn’t have worried. I had so much fun and the bouncy adrenaline filled feeling of being on stage more than made up for the 'oh dear god what am I doing moment' beforehand. I’m always so happy and energetic after a show, which generally lasts a lot longer than the terrified feeling beforehand, thankfully...

The routine all went pretty smoothly other than my bra almost getting stuck, but thankfully, this was an opportunity for me to learn the fact that little costume problems and mistakes are generally a much, much bigger deal to you than they are to the audience. Most of my ‘oh my god, was the bit with the bra really noticeable?’ type comments were met with the response that people didn’t even know which bit I meant, so whilst I think it’s always important to try and learn from messing up on stage, one can take comfort in the fact that, as a general rule, the audience is not going to notice tiny things like that if the routine is generally entertaining, and there’s no point in beating yourself up over it.

So yes, that’s pretty much a summary of how I first got into burlesque. I’m so happy I got up the courage to do it as I’ve had so many amazing experiences both onstage and offstage in the last ten months, performing at some brilliant events and meeting some really lovely people. Fingers crossed there are many more amazing things to come...
Miss Dolly Rose will be performing at the Burlesque Against Breast Cancer Breast Awareness Night at Dick's Bar, in Romilly Street, Soho on the evening of the 6th of July from about 8pm, with lots of other lovely people, plus a few surprises. She can be found at www.myspace.com/missdollyrose