History of Burlesque

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The genre of burlesque originated in the 1840s with original shows featuring comic sketches, often lampooning the social attitudes of the upper classes and their music. These would be alternated with dance routines.

The popular burlesque show of the 1870s through the 1920s referred to a raucous, somewhat bawdy style of Variety Theater. It was inspired by Lydia Thompson and her troupe, the British Blondes, who first appeared in the United States in the 1860s, and also by early "leg" shows such as The Black Crook (1866). Its form, humor, and aesthetic traditions were largely derived from the minstrel show. One of the first burlesque troupes was the Rentz-Santley Novelty and Burlesque Company, created in 1870 by M.B. Leavitt, who had earlier feminised the minstrel show with her group Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels. 

The genre often mocked established entertainment forms such as opera, Shakespearean drama, musicals, and ballet. The costuming increasingly focused on forms of dress considered inappropriate for polite society. By the 1880s, the genre had created some rules for defining itself:

• Minimal costuming, often focusing on the female form.
• Sexually suggestive dialogue, dance, plotlines and staging.
• Quick-witted humor laced with puns, but lacking complexity.
• Short routines or sketches with minimal plot cohesion across a show.

In the 1920s, the old burlesque circuits closed down, leaving individual theater owners to get by as best they could on their own. The strip tease was introduced as a desperate bid to offer something that vaudeville, film and radio could not.

There are a dozen or more popular legends as to how the strip was born – telling how a dancer's shoulder strap broke, or some similar nonsense. In fact, it had been around since Little Egypt introduced the "hootchie-kooch" at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and had always remained a mainstay of stag parties. Burlesque promoters like the Minsky brothers took the strip tease out of the back rooms and put it onstage. While stripping drew in hoards of randy men, it also gave burlesque a sleazy reputation. As moralists once again expressed outrage, male audiences kept burlesque profitable through most of the Great Depression.

The strippers soon dominated burlesque, and their routines became increasingly graphic. To avoid total nudity but still give the audience what it wanted, the ladies covered their groins with flimsy G-strings and used "pasties" to cover their nipples.

In the 1930s, a social crackdown on burlesque shows led to their gradual downfall. Burlesque managers relied on their lawyers, who kept coming up with legal loopholes for more than a decade. But most burlesque dancing shows had degenerated into a series of bump and grind strip routines interrupted by lifeless comic bits. Reform-minded Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia closed New York's remaining burlesque houses in 1937, dismissing them as purveyors of "filth." Burlesque managers were so resilient that LaGuardia outlawed the use of the words "burlesque" or "Minsky" in public advertising. The end of burlesque and the birth of striptease was later dramatised in the entertaining film The Night They Raided Minsky's focusing on the now legendary raid on Minsky's in Manhattan.

Today it is enjoyed by thousands of women nationally as a great way to work out and built confidence, while having fun at the same time. Polestars burlesque classes will teach you to release you sexiness and use your femininity in to charm and tease! Guaranteed to be a giggle, our burlesque classes not only helps you to build confidence but it will change the way you see your body too. Polestars burlesque will push your comfort zone and leave feeling empowered with masses of sex appeal, having learnt a few tricks to use at home!

The four week beginner’s course (2 hours per week) covers four different styles - modern burlesque, striptease, military and showgirl. This will give you a good understanding of what burlesque is all about. There is no nudity involved and the classes are taught in an all-female environment. Not only are our classes a great way of keeping fit and building confidence, it also is a fantastic way to meet new people and make new friends.

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