Kiki Valentine will be shutting down her act on Sunday in protest of the Hollywood movie, which, she says, totally distorts her art form. (Lizzy Snaps Sullivan)
Jo “Boobs” Weldon objects to the lack of actual striptease in the film. (
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Burlesque performer Kiki Valentine has got her G-string in a twist. She’s so sickened by the new Cher/Christina Aguilera movie “Burlesque,” she’s decided to call it quits.
Valentine, who asks to be identified by her stage name, will be putting her fishnet stockings and naughty Sarah Palin costume in storage when she ends a two-year “Sunday Night Show” at the East Village’s Ella lounge on Sunday. Although the lounge booked her indefinitely, Valentine says she doesn’t want to be associated with a movie that makes her look ridiculous. “What do I do in my show you wouldn’t see in that movie?” Valentine asks incredulously. “Burlesque!”
According to Valentine and many of her fellow performers, Hollywood has dumbed down and cleaned up the burlesque world with the badly researched flick, which opened in theaters Thanksgiving weekend. Valentine, who’s baffled by the film’s neon sets and Broadway-like costumes, says burlesque is a personal and political statement, rather than just a commercial song-and-dance show, as portrayed in the movie.
“Burlesque is a way to parody things that are going on in our lives,” Valentine says.
“My show is very political in its nature. I also make fun of America’s obsession with celebrity. Even in the film ‘Cabaret,’ they’re making fun of the Nazis. [‘Burlesque’] just misses the mark with that title. They could’ve called it something else. Maybe ‘The Adventures of Cher and Christina.’ ”
In the movie, Aguilera plays Ali, a small-town waitress who moves to LA to make it big at a neo-burlesque club. No one from the film was available for comment.
But DeeDee Luxe, a 15-year burlesque veteran, seconds Valentine’s opinion.
“It had nothing to do with burlesque, and that’s a shame because people will see it and say, ‘Oh, that’s burlesque,’ ” laments the performer, who appears at Lower East Side vaudeville club The Box as often as five nights a week. “It’s definitely not educating anyone.”
Burlesque has existed in America since the 1800s and came to prominence around the turn of the last century, when the striptease element became a main ingredient.
According to Luxe, only about 2 percent of burlesque performers sing in their acts, and the film did not display any of the hallmarks of the art form, such as creative storytelling and risqué anecdotes.
“I guess ‘Cabaret’ and ‘Showgirls’ were taken [as titles],” says Jo “Boobs” Weldon, founder of the New York School of Burlesque and a 30-year veteran.
Indeed, real burlesque performers complain that there is nary a pasty or a sex toy, let alone a striptease act, in the PG-13 film, which completely misses the medium’s satirical tone and bawdiness.
Weldon, who has not seen the film, did see a clip of Aguilera performing the song “I’m a Good Girl.”
She wasn’t impressed.
“It’s a song that’s in ‘Crazy Horse,’ which is an all-women revue of female dancers in Paris and Las Vegas,” she says. “She’s doing a number they do without clothing — in clothing. She doesn’t strip, and to me burlesque is striptease. That’s what makes it unique.”
“It was just so painful. It was embarrassing. It’s really a terrible movie,” adds Luxe.
Valentine is even afraid the film will wreak permanent damage on the future of her art form.
“In the 1980s, break dancing was a form of expression that became exploited by companies like McDonald’s and then copy-catted by Burger King, who featured break dancing in commercials,” she recalls.
She’s also concerned that the movie could discourage future dancers from getting into the act.
“The beautiful thing about burlesque is that women of all body types and shapes and sizes and colors are empowering themselves through the art form,” she adds.
Weldon, whose school has 20 instructors and more than 100 students, shares Valentine’s worries, saying, “My concern is more that people will see the movie and think they have to lose 10 pounds before they can do burlesque.”
For now, Valentine will focus on her day job as a studio manager at Mixology, in Manhattan. When asked if she’ll ever return to the stage,
she says: “I’m waiting out this ‘Burlesque’ storm.” Hopefully, she adds,
“The movie will be forgotten in four months.”