Ivy Paige and The Chaps

Just a quick little update for you on a very wonderful weekend.

Friday night was the first time I ever went to see Ivy Paige's Scandalous. I tell you that girl is inspirational. It was the first time I'd seen the show advertised down in Brighton so I jumped at the chance to get in an infamous show without the trek up to London. It certainly didn't disappoint.

In fact at one point I think I may have picked my jaw off the floor and was so astonished by the sheer talent and spectacle that I forgot to keep taking pictures (I was trying to get a couple of good pics for the promoter).

I shared my table with Therese la Tease, Baby Bones (when she wasn't busy organising as the promoter of the night), and Emma of Peep Toe Magazine, along with a few lovely ladies I was introduced to that night. However as they don't have performance names and I'm not sure if they'd want their names in my blog I'm sure you understand I can't share them. We were even lucky enough to chat with Ivy after the show when she could impart a little performer wisdom.

Ultimately, as I have already come to understand, it comes down to plain, damn hard work and a whole lot of creativity.

Moving swiftly on, my plans to finish making my polka dot dress were foiled as it was already very late by the time I got home and I had a very big day ahead. The Chap Olympics!

I met Infinity Favour on the train up to London on Saturday with one of the lovely ladies who I met at Ivy Paige. Let's call her Princess Shoes for now...she'll know what I mean!

We must have looked a very interesting sight indeed. Three ladies who looked like something out of a period 1940's film complete with picnic basket. I managed to finish my hair on the train, rather impressive considering the lack of mirrors. Although I must say, a train window in a tunnel does make a pretty good substitute.

It was a great trip up as we debated the merits of bullet bras and non stretch versus stretch fully fashioned stockings. Lipstick on, hair done, gloves in place and skirts tugged and smoothed we arrived like a whirlwind into London Bridge station and began the underground battle to the gardens. After going the wrong way for a turn and discovering a 'voluptuous underground station' we made it!

What a day! It was the most fun I've had in such a long time. We laughed at the Bounders event where the gentlemen had to approach ladies on the track and say something so caddish as to receive a slap, stuffed ourselves with cupcakes and cherries, promenaded to check out the talent in the tweed jackets and bowler hats, and danced in the rain with cups of tea until it was dark. As far as 'the scene' goes, the Chap Olympics is really one of the events of the year and you can see why.

When we finally left in search of a pub before the journey home, walking out onto Tottenham Court Rd was like walking through a portal into another world. I love the city as much as the next girl but after a day of gentle manners and tea and cake in the gardens it felt overwhelming, loud and garish. The old-fashioned pub with it's stained glass windows and beautiful vintage looking bottles of tonic water was a blessed relief.

Alas, but all good things must come to an end. After such a busy weekend it was nice to spend Sunday drinking milo and planning out the rest of my year and looking over my acts to make improvements while BW worked on his scripts.

In addition to all of this I have come to understand that I don't seem physically capable of writing a little update. Isn't it wonderful to learn new things about oneself?

Finally, I have a few more bookings to update shortly for August and October so keep your eyes on the events page if you want to make any of the great new shows coming up.

Have a lovely week you lovely people.

The Knickerbocker Glories Show

A great little montage of the wonderful Knickerbocker Glories, who performed at our spring fling in Notting Hill. It features the wonderful Rocky routine that they performed for us. I saw it performed at the LBF's Battle Royale and I contacted them to insist that they HAD to perform. Of course, they said yes. x

Beatrix Von Bourbon

Beatrix did the most amazing geisha fan dance for our Burlesque Against Breast Cancer show at the London Festish Fair last October. Here's a recent TV appearance. we LOVE it...

Guest Blogger: Capella Silverangel

Boobylicious

My boobylicious boobs
Are a source of inspiration to blokes
I’ve heard their silly jokes
And puns
About my soft round buns
Cherry nippled on top
Just missing the icing
But you’d never guess
From the size of the areoles
Which mimic warm melted chocolate sauce.
Ouch don’t bite that hurts you horse!!!

Some guys just stand and stare
As I walk by them down the street
One guy once pursued me through
Istegade – (prostitution avenue in Copenhagen)
Wanting me to do what exactly?
I don’t know
But I dodged him and ran into 7’11
Heaven!!
I roll my eyes aghast
And exhale with exasperated breath
Oh breasts,
Do you need to cause so much
Attention???

It’s cold
You’ve guest,
The cherry topped bits
Stick further out of my chest!!

Some guys get kind of rude
And ask
“You don’t have a boyfriend
With those boobs
How is that possible???”

Others describe and define me by them
Capella…. they say
In that man gossipy way
“The one with the great smile,”
“Funny, boisterous,”
“The one with the big tits?”

Yes, that’s me.
With my curves
And bumps and mountaintops
That always make car drivers stop
And turn and look and beep.
Ahhh, when I left heaven
I knew I should have picked that
Cane (stick thing) for the sheep
And been a Bo Peep
Instead of asking for boobs
That can’t fit in a boob tube
Boobs
That make a man lewd

But I love them (now)
My boobylicious boobs.


Double D (Part I)

Men have been programmed
These days before birth
Faintly hearing from a midwife or nurse
Through the wall of the womb
Breast is best
Breast is best
Breast is best
Which like Chinese whispers turns into
Double D chest
Double D chest
Katie Price, Jordan
Double D breast

Capella Silverangel is a singer/songwriter, artist and poet. You can find her at: www.myspace.com/capellasilverangel

Guest Blogger: Justine Hardy

Survival

This is the story of dancing with the body, but there needs to be a bit of an introduction.

One of the strange phenomenon of surviving cancer is that a lot of those who live on long after the cancer has been defeated do so, not by going to war with the disease, but by adopting the survival mechanism of kindness.

Let me explain. Say a woman goes in for a check-up because she has found a small lump, tiny, almost indiscernible to anyone except her, but she is just playing it safe. Her view of the world is fairly balanced as she walks down the street towards the doctor’s clinic. She got up as usual, and she has gone through her day as usual up to this point. She goes into the clinic with a sense of herself, and where she is in her life.

She emerges a while later with an appointment for a biopsy.

Her world has changed, utterly and entirely, as though one minute she was looking down onto a familiar garden, and now she finds herself looking out onto a harsh desert where nothing is recognisable. When she next looks at herself in her bathroom mirror she does not see herself as she really is, but as someone with breast cancer, someone whose body has let her down.

It is at this point that a woman just diagnosed with breast cancer, or indeed anyone diagnosed with cancer, makes a choice. They either reject their body, seeing it now as their enemy, the thing that has turned against them, or they embrace the human machine as their greatest ally and friend in the healing process.

The shock of the diagnosis itself can further compromise an immune system that is already weakened as it tries to deal with the invasion of cancer cells. To decide, at this vital point, that the body has let you down is to betray the greatest ally we have, and to let go of the most powerful tool of recovery.
Where the mind leads, the body will follow. This is just the way that it is. If we mentally turn against our body the relationship between mind and body breaks down, the sympathetic dialogue ends and the body begins to fail, literally. In a sense it gives up. But if the mind encourages the body, constantly reassuring it, the body responds. In simple terms the mind is shoring the body up to do what it does best —to heal itself.

I have been based in India for a long time now, and in several different part of this kaleidoscope mass of peoples and cultures. I spent part of one winter in a village up in Ladakh in the very north, high up in the Himalayas, living with a farming family. I did not speak Ladakhi, and the main reason that I was with the family was that I was supposed to be teaching two of the sons of the family English. The Dorjay’s was a traditional Lakakhi farmhouse, the yaks below, the people on top, the loo a hole in the floor out the back so that everything tumbled straight down into a pig sty.

As the snows fell it became almost impossible to get out of the house.

Increasingly we were reliant on the supplies of dried food that had been stocked up through the summer: strips of meat, apples and vegetables that had been dried on the flat roof through the long dry-skied summer, all moisture wicked away by the altitude and the intensity of the sun. As the weeks passed the family settled back into their winter routine, bundled in thick layers, and taking up very sedentary residence in their particular corner of the main room of the house. It was where everything happened, cooking, eating, sleeping, arguing, chatting, and sometimes periods of silence as the family sat in winter somnolence, peering out occasionally onto the high white world beyond.

The surviving grandmother of the house became my most constant companion as we shared the job of rehydrating vegetables, and churning salty Ladakhi butter tea in a long wooden churn. This woman was only 57 but she had lived a hard life. The altitude and harshness of the region made her look about twenty years older than she was. Her flat Ladakhi face was a map of recent history and geography, deep lines drawing her story across her forehead. She had also been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer a few months earlier, a common cancer in the area because everyone inhales so much smoke from open fires throughout the winter months. Yet in spite of the diagnosis she did not seem to be deteriorating, even though had been told she had a matter of months to live.

Often I would see her stroking her chest, her arms and her legs, talking to herself as she did. As I got to know her better, and once I had mastered the art of butter tea-making to a level that allowed her to regard me as worthy of her attention, I finally asked her what she was doing when she was stroking herself and chatting away at the same time.

‘I am thanking my body for doing its job so well.’ She began to stroke her chest again. ‘See, I am telling my lungs how proud I am that they are giving such a good fight. I am dancing with my body, see.’

And she stroked and jiggled, laughing so hard that her eyes disappeared into the merry folds of her face.

She lived on for several years beyond her diagnosis. She chose not to take any of the prescribed conventional treatments or medication. Instead she ate large quantities of a local berry, possibly what we now see all over the place being sold as the superfood, goji berries. She outlived one of her sons, and certainly for a large multiple of the time predicted when she had first been diagnosed.

Thinlas Dorjay of Stok village was quite a teacher of kindness to the body in which we live, love, heal and die. She was a woman who did indeed dance with her body.

Justine Hardy is a former frontline correspondant and author of fiction and travel writing. Her latest book is called "In the Valley of the Mist", a story of a family in Kashmir. You can find out more at: www.justinehardy.com

Tasseltastic!

Burlesk was absolutely wonderful! I've only been to Hastings once before and this time I saw a very different side of it. Venue is tucked down the sweetest little lane of cute stores and relaxed drinking spots.

I arrived after making a mental note to take the train for a day trip along the coast one weekend. I didn't realise how easy it was to travel from Brighton to Hastings and beyond. It was my blessed luck to be doing a prop free act and one without a corset to boot, as it was ticking on past 7pm and the sweltering heat hadn't abated.

Domino and Severine run a burlesque taster class for beginners before the night begins so I tried to find the dressing room inconspicuously but it wasn't to be as a gent out the front had directed me to the first door on the left which led to the tiniest dressing room I've seen. Realising there was no way they could squeeze 10 girls in there I gave Honey Wilde a call. She laughed and explained they were up the back above the bar and gave me a little wave from the window.

This was more like it! Dumping my bag down on one of the chairs I proceeded to pull my costume out and make some last minute alterations of an extra clasp as it had been popping open during rehearsals.

While I stitched Honey and Khandie Kisses were getting made up as they were in the first act and before too long the two of them had me in stitches. Discussing false eyelashes, Khandie mentioned that she had so many in her bathroom cabinet she thought they might turn into one big eyelash and crawl around her apartment. Which wouldn't half make a bad short film!

Before we knew it the girls for the first act were hurried off to the backstage area and as the show rolled on I managed a peek at the acts while I attached pasties, covered myself in body shimmer, backcombed my hair and untangled my tassels (the ones on the dress not on my chest!).

Piratica did a brilliant debut performance to Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend from Moulin Rouge and I'd seen Honey's 'How to Burlesque the British Way' at LBF and it was as hilarious as I remembered. I hadn't seen Khandie's Blitz Belle act, man that girl has energy! I loved the fact that she got down into the audience and all the more incredible considering she wasn't feeling very well. The sign of a true showgirl.

Unfortunately I missed Domino's first act as I was hurrying to do my final touches before interval.

The girls of the second act were warned by the girls of the first act that it was VERY hot backstage, which wasn't what I wanted to hear but at least we were warned.

Waiting backstage I couldn't help but feel a dose of nerves. I had created the Psycho GoGo act for a pulp press launch and we didn't end up using it, going with Na Touche Pas instead. So this was actually to be the first real performance of this act and I felt like a new performer all over again. It's been a very long time since I debuted an act.

I needn't have worried, it all went brilliantly. One of the girls said afterwards that she wished it had gone on longer which is nice!

Throwing on my new 60s shift that I bought last week in London I dashed out to catch Domino's act which was just fantastic, and Sev's inspiring finale on the Burlesque ban in Camden. I'd love to see a licensing officer go a few rounds with her, she'd have them under the point of her stiletto before you can say Burlesk!

After the show I popped upstairs to sort my things out. Due to the heat no-one had opened any of the wine so I uncorked a red and poured myself and one of the girls who'd been helping out (and a budding burlesque contortionist!!) a glass and went down for a mingle and a nose through the Equilibrium stall onstage.

I contemplating spending my earnings from the night on a pair of sailor shorts and then thought better of it but did have a lovely chat with the owner who's other half was an absolute gentleman and helped me down the stairs with my bag and put me in a cab to the station.

I settled in for an uneventful journey back to Brighton but it wasn't to be as three lads jumped on the train about halfway along. You can always tell if people are safe or not and they were harmless enough, although one was exceedingly drunk and very amusing. In any case, listening to his drunken tangents passed the time until I arrived in Brighton and jumped in the first cab home. There is something to be said for performing mid week and that is that no-one is lining up for the taxi's at the station.

Oh the bliss of flopping into bed, exhausted after a long day! Now who says I'm not rock'n'roll...

Bella de Jac is a performer for BABC

Guest Blogger: Rosemary Furber

My mother was in hospital in Belfast having her lungs drained on the day I gave birth for the first time in London in 1984. We didn’t know as we cried down the phone to each other that she’d have nearly three months to live and would hold her grandchild only once.

I was 17 when she was finally diagnosed with breast cancer, after two winters of excruciating back pain. That’s the first thing I see that has changed where breast cancer is concerned: medics know what they’re doing much faster now. I’ll never forget answering the phone after school one day to find my best friend’s father, who’d just been the anaesthetist at my mother’s mastectomy, telling me that not just the lump but the whole breast had had to go. It was a dizzying moment that still haunts me, but surgery and follow-up are more subtle now. There’s less to fear.

My mother went from the north coast of Northern Ireland where we lived to stay with her sister in Belfast while she had radiotherapy and chemo, and she’d come home to us at weekends. The 60 mile journey nearly killed her: she’d become a frail little old lady in her mid-40s. The chemo removed her hair, as it still does, and as people still do, she toughed it out with scarves and laughter. The radiotherapy also left burns on her chest for months.

Two years later, a secondary lump appeared and I want to emphasise this to all you breast-lovers: the secondary grew from beneath her scar. That’s why I, 32B, would never have implants. Every time somebody mentions them, I remember sitting beside my mother while she was in the bath (one of her favourite places for us to chat), watching her soap that double, purple scar over where she’d once held us and fed us as babies.

One thing has changed enormously over the years and another thing has stayed the same. What’s changed is this: battling breast cancer is always a brutal business but nowadays I see more and more people survive it. People don’t just ‘survive’ as my mother did, with ever shorter remissions between torturous bouts of treatment – giving ever more heart-breaking opportunities to show how deeply courageous and wonderful these women can be - until the end. Nowadays people are genuine survivors, back to full health. Breast cancer is not Death Row any more. Not at all.

The thing that has not changed is the MacMillans. My mother decided on a Friday that she’d had enough and summoned us all. By the Sunday morning she had been gliding in and out of consciousness, but was still alert. The nurse came, as usual, to cleanse and soothe, and as she left, we said ‘See you later’. The nurse said ‘I don’t think so’. She was right. By 6.30pm that night, we were all sitting around my mother’s bed watching her last breaths. I can’t describe how deeply we appreciated those nurses being there. We knew our mother was in safe hands, and so were we. Their knowing gentleness is something I will never forget.


Rosemary Furber is an author based in London. Her latest book is called 'The Most Intimate Place' and is very good indeed. You can find out more at www.rosemaryfurber.com