In February 2000, while traveling on the old Route 66 midway between Victorville and Barstow, I stopped in the town of Helendale to visit the Exotic World Movers & Shakers’ Burlesque Museum and Striptease Hall of Fame. Director and former burlesque dancer Dixie Evans — a spirited and raspy-voiced woman approaching eighty years of age — led me through the crumbling ranch-style home with its series of even shoddier additions. As I observed the racy black-and-white photos, splashy print posters, dusty feather boas, and colorful but faded paste-ons, I recognized the artifacts of a culture that had disappeared long before I came into the world.
As if sensing my archaeological approach to these tools of her forgotten trade, Ms. Evans confidently predicted — quixotically, it seemed — that burlesque would once again return to its prominent place in our popular culture.
Five years later I found myself at the Mirabeau Room on Queen Anne, watching a performance of the Atomic Bombshells, one of the most celebrated troupes performing this recently-revived art form.
For those not familiar with burlesque, it is important to emphasize that it is a very specific art form — a type of theater and dance as rigid in its practice as Kabuki. Facial expression, movement, and the process of revealing the body are all executed according to some seemingly ancient but unwritten dictates. Female sexuality attains mythic stature (as well as real power) through the slowly-unfolding performance of seduction.
The five women who make up the Atomic Bombshells are all extraordinary practitioners of this art. To be this sexually suggestive, lasciviousness requires all the discipline and restraint of ballet. And while it was easy to be overwhelmed by the immediacy of their presence on the small stage, I could not help but marvel at the thought of their training and study.
Each dancer performed a brief solo in a disappearing outfit that conjured up a specific (and fantastic) exotic locale. The forbidden intrigue of the harem in Istanbul, the coquettish allure of China, the sultry self-expression of Brazil at Carneval, and the dark voodoo magic of New Orleans were all brought to life before our eyes. One of the Bombshells (I had had too many gin-and-tonics by then and cannot remember their names) surprised me by ably singing a Carmen Miranda-style number in which she likened the pleasures of her body to mangoes, papayas and other tropical fruit.
What was most striking about the evening’s performance was the innocence and purity of its retrograde charm. The true nature of our sexuality — entangled as it is with the complexities of personal relationships — is given a brief holiday. With the pervasive presence of such realism in our contemporary art and cultural sensibilities, the Atomic Bombshells offer a curiously welcome respite.
Dixie Evans would, I think, be proud.
