Backstage

What happens backstage in a burlesque dressing room? I almost feel like I shouldn't tell, but I am :) It never seems to matter the size of the dressing room, it is never big enough! The lovely ladies fill the room with chit chat, feathers, sequins, shoes, fans, chairs, lace, hairspray, make up, costumes,fishnets and glitter. There isn't room to think.

What goes on backstage is quite a bit of organized chaos. Girls are in various stages of dress. Some are getting into elaborate costumes with layer upon layer. Others have just performed and are in pasties and a G-string. And still others are in between these stages. There is endless chatter, any thing from joking around to discussing if you can die from inhaling glitter to discussing an act and walking through steps. Glitter and hairspray fill the air with a floral scented glittery cloud.

Almost all backstage dressing rooms are too dark, sometimes way too dark. And strangely for a dressing room there are not enough mirrors. What does this mean? It means lady's overlap each other to put their face in a small square of it, or they are darting back and forth in front of it all trying to catch a quick glance of themselves. These faces all painted and sparkly transform the lady's into exciting burlesque dancers.

There is a set list. This is a list that tells you when it's your turn, who you are after and when you need to be ready by. As the show goes on it is critical to watch this list and pay attention to what is going on. You don't want to be half dressed when you're up next!

A few weeks ago a freak heat wave hit San Francisco and the dressing room. Just imagine a room crammed in with all of this and adding super hot temperature. Now, glitter sweat is dripping off all the pretty faces as they lace up into corsets and garters..... Not quite the picture of glamor! What a night, we ALL needed a cold drink that night.

The strangest "dressing" room I've ever been in was a small office space just off large kitchen of a bar and grill. The kitchen was empty of cooks, so it worked. We make do with what is available. And the smallest, wasn't really a room at all but a bend in a dark hallway that served as the coat check.

Back stage for me is great, it is the time for me to connect with my burlesque friends. It is when we share glitter and carpet tape. We help lace up corsets, get a drink, have mini freak outs, calm eachother down again and have a great show. I need this to transform myself into Dangerous Delilah.

I hope you've enjoyed this little peek into our private world.

xo
Dangerous Delilah

October

October has been the month of performing for me. I have four shows. Wow. That's a lot considering I usually only perform once or twice a month. It has been a whirlwind of a month. As well as performing I also came up with a new dance and made a costume to go with it. I'm tired and my last show will be tomorrow night.

The first show was a last minuet invitation to perform with Blazing Burlesque on October 2nd.

It was a long long drive, up near Sacramento. It was a lot of fun and I met two really great people, Lizzy D. Vine (http://www.misslizzydvine.com/) the producer of the show, performer and all around fun lady and quiet photographer named Jamie Hughes, find him here (http://jetnjme.blogspot.com/) and you can see some beautiful pictures of me. Thanks Ms. D. Vine & Jamie!

For the two shows I did in the middle of the month were for the beautiful Bombshell Betty and her Burlesqueteers! For this show the theme was a Halloween spectacular! For this show I wanted to do something new, it had to be sparkly and spooky. So first came finding a song, back in the 90s there was a popular song that I loved by Concrete Blond called Bloodletting. I loved it then & I love it now, perfect song. In the song she sings about vampires, but I didn't want to be a vampire so I thought I could decorate my costume in spiderwebs. As you can see it turned out beautiful. Silver spiders everywhere and even spiderweb pasties :)

This isn't the whole costume, you should see the whole thing, it looks so good. You have one more chance to see this great costume and sexy dance tomorrow night. My fourth and last show of October will be in Santa Cruz!

It has been quite a month and hopefully I'll have many more shows to come.

xo,

Dangerous Delilah

Procrastinating

Here it is on Sunday Oct. 10th at 3:30 pm and I have a ton of things to do on my costume for the show on Tuesday, and I can't stop watching the T.V. show I Shouldn't be Alive. What is wrong with me! Maybe I do my best work under pressure, but I sure don't like it, I want to be done with this costume and practicing the dance.

What I'm having trouble with is the corset. I have a pretty black corset that I am trying to drape in black spider cloth. I can't figure out if I just want to tack on a silver web here and there, or put the whole cloth covering the corset. I'm hoping to be able to possible preserve the corset to use another time. Burlesque costumes are expensive so I want to be able to reuse what I can.

I still have to make pasties and some final sparkles on other costumes pieces. With all this to do, I'm drawn to this show still!

So, please come to my show and see if I've finished this costume! It's October 12th at the Elbo Room, 647 Valencia street San Francisco CA

See you there,
xo
Dangerous Delilah