Skin Tight Outta Sight includes several performers and collaborators. What’s the process like for developing a show? Does a show evolve out of collective ideas?
Tanya: Usually I come up with the concepts although Sauci came up with Biblical Burlesque. Then we will pitch the idea to the troupe and see what ideas they can come up with in a brain storm fashion. We want to see if the troupe has existing acts that can fit into the theme and then work on developing the new ones. We usually workshop the new acts together. Even though we're a troupe per se, there's a lot of personal homework.
Sauci: Our process for developing shows has evolved over the years as well. When Skin Tight Outta Sight started performing burlesque in 1998, there was nothing else out there. We could have a generic theme and each performer could work on their own to develop a number. Tanya would sometimes choose music and help with costuming for each performer. At the very least, she made sure there was no overlapping music choice, gimmick or costume. Overall it was much simpler. No one in the audience really knew what burlesque was so it was our job to educate the audience with our interpretation, from what we had researched, looking at old film footage and pin-up magazines. We had to prove to the audience that this was interesting enough for them to want to return and see another show in the future, that burlesque was more than a passing fad. When the neo-burlesque movement started gaining momentum in 2003/2004 and there were more troupes and performers, Skin Tight Outta Sight shifted as well. We used troupe meetings to brainstorm our shows and outline our goals. We fine-tuned our themes so they stood out (we’re lucky that Tanya as Artistic Director is brilliant at capturing the zeitgeist of popular culture and also coming up with catchy titles and taglines!). We also started a workshop/rehearsal process for the shows, where we helped one another with the new acts and also started to develop group numbers.
2. Tanya Cheex, you founded the group in part to showcase fetish fashion. Are costuming and fashion still a large influence on your performances? What’s the relationship among the costume, the performer, the dancing?
Tanya: Absolutely! There is no striptease without the removal of a costume. The costume sets the stage for the fantasy so I believe it has to be tremendously over the top. You are creating unattainable desire. You want the audience to go "Ooooh, I want THAT!" not “I have that at home in my underwear drawer.” Other than the corsets, we make the majority of our costumes. Nothing off the racks can express what's in my imagination!
That being said, you do have to remove your costume in a seductive and artful manner. The way it comes undone all factors greatly in your musicality and choreography. The hit of a drum or the snarl of a sax indicates when that glove hits the floor. I'm always influenced by old Hollywood but lately I've been finding inspiration in my dreams or nightmares!
3. Skin Tight Outta Sight is billed as ‘Rebel Burlesque’ and the troupe has long been involved in community and challenging common conceptions about gender, body image, and diversity. Has burlesque’s increasing popularity in the mainstream helped or hindered your rebel aims?
Tanya: It has always been my aim to convince the audience that I may not have been their "type" when they got there but leave them dreaming of you when they leave the show that night! I think that's any performer's job!
The Rebel part comes from our punk rock background. We like to mix the traditional with revisionist. Kinda like a rhinestoned glove punch to the face! I'm not caught up really in body size stuff. I just believe in no one standard of beauty. You know you get bookers who say I want the skinny one or whatever. Really you just want a fabulous show guys! The media right now is having a love affair with curves, tomorrow the waif, who cares? We all remember ladies like Marilyn Monroe, flesh is sexy and sometimes scary, you can't get around it.
Sauci: One of our mentors, Kitten de Ville has this great quote where she says that burlesque is the equivalent of a punk rock band but for girls. When we look at burlesque in a cultural context, part of its power has been its ability to challenge those mainstream conceptions of what is beautiful and offer an alternative that’s more real and ultimately, for many, much more sexy. Skin Tight Outta Sight’s role in the community has been two-fold: 1) as trailblazers of the neo-burlesque movement in North America, we have done our best to help build a community of burlesque performers where we respect one another, work together and provide opportunities for both new and established performers, and 2), we see burlesque as part of the larger community and as such, are involved with such causes as the arts, women’s health, sexual health, anti-oppression and the fight for human rights. We’ve performed, raised funds and been interviewed on these issues, most notably for Boobalicious for The Weekend to End Breast Cancer, Casey House, The AIDS Committee of Toronto, The Stephen Lewis Foundation, and SPOC (Sex Professionals of Canada).
In my opinion, burlesque’s growing popularity has not had much impact on our rebel aims per se. if anything, I’ve noticed more acceptance among the mainstream of what was previously seen as “alternative.” Rarely do we get a request for a slim non-tattooed lady now, whereas in the past, this was quite commonplace with our corporate and private party clients. There is more competition though as more people are doing burlesque. This is the biggest challenge facing our community now. How does our community stay true to our principles of sisterhood, inclusion and respect? A related challenge is ensuring we maintain our attendance rates at shows given that there are more shows to choose from. At one time, we all knew each other and the shows were spaced far enough apart, so it was fairly easy. Now burlesque is growing so much, we end up with situations where we can’t keep up with all the new people performing and producing shows, and we sometimes have multiple shows over a week or even on the same night because there’s no easy way to communicate with one another. There are no simple answers to this but I’m hopeful our community, “old-timers” and newbies alike, can work through this.
4. How important are STOS’s workshops in the scheme of what you want to accomplish in your communities? How does teaching compare to performance in terms of connecting with community and affecting change?
Sauci: This depends on who you’re teaching. When we’re hired to do a bachelorette party, often the girls just want to have fun and they’re aren’t concerned about the political message of burlesque. Regardless, I may say something about body image and how doing burlesque can empower women to feel more comfortable in their own skin. I don’t make a big deal out of it but I do want to make sure the participants feel comfortable enough to experiment and “shake it!” Every once in a while, this message really resonates with one or a few women in the group. This is when we get lovely positive feedback such as “the workshop helped me feel more confident about my body, sexuality, etc.” and every once in a while, you get a participant who decides they want to take the next step and perform for an audience.
STOS tends to specialize in more advanced workshops for performers. Classes include “The Shameless Art of Self-Promotion” where we help performers fine tune their promotional tools and also discuss etiquette and ethics involved with this; “Puttin’ On The Glitz: The A to Z of Burlesque Show Production” and our class on “Burlesque Glamour Through The Ages” (we did this workshop in 2009 for the Montreal Burlesque Festival). For The Toronto Burlesque Festival, we work with Coco Framboise to develop the curriculum for our “Burlesque University,” where beginners and experienced performers alike can learn from the stars – we feature a Dance School Stream, Theatre School Stream, Glamour School plus Business classes. It’s when we teach aspiring performers and those who are all ready performing, that we have the biggest chance to affect change and create community. Through sharing knowledge, networking and building relationships in class, there is tremendous opportunity for the community to grow and for us to be inspired by one another.
5. You’re involved in the organization of Toronto’s burlesque festival – what have you learned from working on Toronto’s festival and how do you think both Montreal and Toronto’s festivals reflect their respective burlesque communities?
Sauci: Skin Tight Outta Sight is the spearheading troupe behind Toronto’s burlesque festival and I am the Executive Producer. I first had the idea to produce a Toronto Festival in 2003, after attending and performing in the first New York Burlesque Festival. It took five years of building the community locally, developing relationships with international performers, tons of networking and fine-tuning our show production skills, before we felt ready to take the plunge! I have learned so much from working on the Toronto Festival, I don’t even know where to begin. If I had to narrow it down to three main points, I would say: 1) Be aware of your goals for the Festival and stay true to them; allow them to direct your decision-making, 2) Know that you will make mistakes. Admit it when you do and always learn from them, and 3) Always treat all your performers and staff/volunteers with fairness, respect and dignity – you can’t have a Festival without them! Of course, this short list changes depending on what seems most important to me in the moment! I could say a lot about budget and timeframes too, mainly always to budget extra as there will be unexpected costs, and always give yourself more time than you need, LOL!
For the Toronto Festival, we have worked very hard to ensure that the diversity of our troupes and performers are reflected well in the performance schedule. We try to put any politics or personal issues aside and treat everyone fairly and equally. We look for a mixture of established and new performers, group acts and solos, plus we always leave room for variety numbers to break up the “titty parade.” Toronto has a great boylesque community, lots of troupes who do group numbers, plus a good mix of classic and neo-burlesque styles. We are blessed in that we are able to draw from such a strong community when selecting performances for the Festival. One of the goals of our Festival is to showcase Toronto talent to our international guest stars and audience. So far, this has seemed successful as we have received good feedback on the diversity and talent in Toronto’s scene. I don’t really feel I can comment on Montreal’s community since I am not a part of it, except to say I have felt welcomed by it (Skin Tight Outta Sight and I have had made quite a few guest appearances over the years!), and I am always excited to see Montreal performers take to the stage. The burlesque community in Montreal seems a little younger than Toronto’s, so it would be my hope that the Montreal Festival will create opportunity for their local artists, more interest in general in the burlesque scene, and last but not least, a hotbed of inspiration for all the performers involved!
Tanya: Usually I come up with the concepts although Sauci came up with Biblical Burlesque. Then we will pitch the idea to the troupe and see what ideas they can come up with in a brain storm fashion. We want to see if the troupe has existing acts that can fit into the theme and then work on developing the new ones. We usually workshop the new acts together. Even though we're a troupe per se, there's a lot of personal homework.
Sauci: Our process for developing shows has evolved over the years as well. When Skin Tight Outta Sight started performing burlesque in 1998, there was nothing else out there. We could have a generic theme and each performer could work on their own to develop a number. Tanya would sometimes choose music and help with costuming for each performer. At the very least, she made sure there was no overlapping music choice, gimmick or costume. Overall it was much simpler. No one in the audience really knew what burlesque was so it was our job to educate the audience with our interpretation, from what we had researched, looking at old film footage and pin-up magazines. We had to prove to the audience that this was interesting enough for them to want to return and see another show in the future, that burlesque was more than a passing fad. When the neo-burlesque movement started gaining momentum in 2003/2004 and there were more troupes and performers, Skin Tight Outta Sight shifted as well. We used troupe meetings to brainstorm our shows and outline our goals. We fine-tuned our themes so they stood out (we’re lucky that Tanya as Artistic Director is brilliant at capturing the zeitgeist of popular culture and also coming up with catchy titles and taglines!). We also started a workshop/rehearsal process for the shows, where we helped one another with the new acts and also started to develop group numbers.
2. Tanya Cheex, you founded the group in part to showcase fetish fashion. Are costuming and fashion still a large influence on your performances? What’s the relationship among the costume, the performer, the dancing?
Tanya: Absolutely! There is no striptease without the removal of a costume. The costume sets the stage for the fantasy so I believe it has to be tremendously over the top. You are creating unattainable desire. You want the audience to go "Ooooh, I want THAT!" not “I have that at home in my underwear drawer.” Other than the corsets, we make the majority of our costumes. Nothing off the racks can express what's in my imagination!
That being said, you do have to remove your costume in a seductive and artful manner. The way it comes undone all factors greatly in your musicality and choreography. The hit of a drum or the snarl of a sax indicates when that glove hits the floor. I'm always influenced by old Hollywood but lately I've been finding inspiration in my dreams or nightmares!
3. Skin Tight Outta Sight is billed as ‘Rebel Burlesque’ and the troupe has long been involved in community and challenging common conceptions about gender, body image, and diversity. Has burlesque’s increasing popularity in the mainstream helped or hindered your rebel aims?
Tanya: It has always been my aim to convince the audience that I may not have been their "type" when they got there but leave them dreaming of you when they leave the show that night! I think that's any performer's job!
The Rebel part comes from our punk rock background. We like to mix the traditional with revisionist. Kinda like a rhinestoned glove punch to the face! I'm not caught up really in body size stuff. I just believe in no one standard of beauty. You know you get bookers who say I want the skinny one or whatever. Really you just want a fabulous show guys! The media right now is having a love affair with curves, tomorrow the waif, who cares? We all remember ladies like Marilyn Monroe, flesh is sexy and sometimes scary, you can't get around it.
Sauci: One of our mentors, Kitten de Ville has this great quote where she says that burlesque is the equivalent of a punk rock band but for girls. When we look at burlesque in a cultural context, part of its power has been its ability to challenge those mainstream conceptions of what is beautiful and offer an alternative that’s more real and ultimately, for many, much more sexy. Skin Tight Outta Sight’s role in the community has been two-fold: 1) as trailblazers of the neo-burlesque movement in North America, we have done our best to help build a community of burlesque performers where we respect one another, work together and provide opportunities for both new and established performers, and 2), we see burlesque as part of the larger community and as such, are involved with such causes as the arts, women’s health, sexual health, anti-oppression and the fight for human rights. We’ve performed, raised funds and been interviewed on these issues, most notably for Boobalicious for The Weekend to End Breast Cancer, Casey House, The AIDS Committee of Toronto, The Stephen Lewis Foundation, and SPOC (Sex Professionals of Canada).
In my opinion, burlesque’s growing popularity has not had much impact on our rebel aims per se. if anything, I’ve noticed more acceptance among the mainstream of what was previously seen as “alternative.” Rarely do we get a request for a slim non-tattooed lady now, whereas in the past, this was quite commonplace with our corporate and private party clients. There is more competition though as more people are doing burlesque. This is the biggest challenge facing our community now. How does our community stay true to our principles of sisterhood, inclusion and respect? A related challenge is ensuring we maintain our attendance rates at shows given that there are more shows to choose from. At one time, we all knew each other and the shows were spaced far enough apart, so it was fairly easy. Now burlesque is growing so much, we end up with situations where we can’t keep up with all the new people performing and producing shows, and we sometimes have multiple shows over a week or even on the same night because there’s no easy way to communicate with one another. There are no simple answers to this but I’m hopeful our community, “old-timers” and newbies alike, can work through this.
4. How important are STOS’s workshops in the scheme of what you want to accomplish in your communities? How does teaching compare to performance in terms of connecting with community and affecting change?
Sauci: This depends on who you’re teaching. When we’re hired to do a bachelorette party, often the girls just want to have fun and they’re aren’t concerned about the political message of burlesque. Regardless, I may say something about body image and how doing burlesque can empower women to feel more comfortable in their own skin. I don’t make a big deal out of it but I do want to make sure the participants feel comfortable enough to experiment and “shake it!” Every once in a while, this message really resonates with one or a few women in the group. This is when we get lovely positive feedback such as “the workshop helped me feel more confident about my body, sexuality, etc.” and every once in a while, you get a participant who decides they want to take the next step and perform for an audience.
STOS tends to specialize in more advanced workshops for performers. Classes include “The Shameless Art of Self-Promotion” where we help performers fine tune their promotional tools and also discuss etiquette and ethics involved with this; “Puttin’ On The Glitz: The A to Z of Burlesque Show Production” and our class on “Burlesque Glamour Through The Ages” (we did this workshop in 2009 for the Montreal Burlesque Festival). For The Toronto Burlesque Festival, we work with Coco Framboise to develop the curriculum for our “Burlesque University,” where beginners and experienced performers alike can learn from the stars – we feature a Dance School Stream, Theatre School Stream, Glamour School plus Business classes. It’s when we teach aspiring performers and those who are all ready performing, that we have the biggest chance to affect change and create community. Through sharing knowledge, networking and building relationships in class, there is tremendous opportunity for the community to grow and for us to be inspired by one another.
5. You’re involved in the organization of Toronto’s burlesque festival – what have you learned from working on Toronto’s festival and how do you think both Montreal and Toronto’s festivals reflect their respective burlesque communities?
Sauci: Skin Tight Outta Sight is the spearheading troupe behind Toronto’s burlesque festival and I am the Executive Producer. I first had the idea to produce a Toronto Festival in 2003, after attending and performing in the first New York Burlesque Festival. It took five years of building the community locally, developing relationships with international performers, tons of networking and fine-tuning our show production skills, before we felt ready to take the plunge! I have learned so much from working on the Toronto Festival, I don’t even know where to begin. If I had to narrow it down to three main points, I would say: 1) Be aware of your goals for the Festival and stay true to them; allow them to direct your decision-making, 2) Know that you will make mistakes. Admit it when you do and always learn from them, and 3) Always treat all your performers and staff/volunteers with fairness, respect and dignity – you can’t have a Festival without them! Of course, this short list changes depending on what seems most important to me in the moment! I could say a lot about budget and timeframes too, mainly always to budget extra as there will be unexpected costs, and always give yourself more time than you need, LOL!
For the Toronto Festival, we have worked very hard to ensure that the diversity of our troupes and performers are reflected well in the performance schedule. We try to put any politics or personal issues aside and treat everyone fairly and equally. We look for a mixture of established and new performers, group acts and solos, plus we always leave room for variety numbers to break up the “titty parade.” Toronto has a great boylesque community, lots of troupes who do group numbers, plus a good mix of classic and neo-burlesque styles. We are blessed in that we are able to draw from such a strong community when selecting performances for the Festival. One of the goals of our Festival is to showcase Toronto talent to our international guest stars and audience. So far, this has seemed successful as we have received good feedback on the diversity and talent in Toronto’s scene. I don’t really feel I can comment on Montreal’s community since I am not a part of it, except to say I have felt welcomed by it (Skin Tight Outta Sight and I have had made quite a few guest appearances over the years!), and I am always excited to see Montreal performers take to the stage. The burlesque community in Montreal seems a little younger than Toronto’s, so it would be my hope that the Montreal Festival will create opportunity for their local artists, more interest in general in the burlesque scene, and last but not least, a hotbed of inspiration for all the performers involved!
Photo by Frank Fiumara
