Gurl on Girl-Gaming: Nerdlesque VIII: The Fast and the QWERTYest: Another Nerdy Review

Put on your Cylon best, pull up your Superman under-roos, and strap on those thigh-highs, it’s time for Nerdlesque! (Also, put on your skinny jeans and ironically thick-framed glasses, we’re going to Williamsburg, kids.)

I attended Nerdlesque, in its eighth incarnation, Saturday February 4th, at The Brick Theater, located on Metropolitan ave and Lorimer Street in Williamsburg, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. In case you’re unfamiliar with Williamsburg, it is located at the corner of the Pretentiousness Turnpike and Ironic-is-the-new-black Avenue. It’s a magical unholy hip place where I play my favorite game: “Spot the Hipster Doppelganger” Within the first 5 minutes of being in Williamsburg, I saw Hipster Amy Farrah Fowler and Hipster Wayne Campbell.

The theater is a bit tricky to find if you don’t know where it is (very chic mystérieux) but once inside, it was everything I could have really hoped for in a burlesque space. The box office and bar function as one and a velvety black curtain separates the house form the “lobby.” The Brick lives up to its name with the exposed red bricks on every wall in the black-box-style theatre space. It’s cozy, but the house can, surprisingly, hold approximately 50 audience members (provided a handful of people don’t mind sitting on the floor on the faux-fur rugs at the edge of the stage: Tres bohemian).

My friend, Ginny Gems, got us on The List for the show; Boyfriend was their last-minute-replacement cameraman so the dancers could each get a copy of their dance, and I was invited to support Ginny Gems, but also to enjoy myself and blog about the awesomeness that was to ensue. Being on The List, I got to go into the theater before the rest of the audience and to my delight, got to pick my seat AND got to sit and watch the College Humor guys interview the two Nerdlesque hosts, Makin’ Whoopee and Dick E. Lovejoy. Now, I will display some journalistic integrity here and wait before the College Humor interview goes online before I comment on it, but it was interesting to watch.

Overall, I had a swell time! The jackass sitting 2 seats over from me (since no one wanted to sit next to the girl in the pork-pie press hat scribbling furiously into a notebook) acted like he owned all the space in our aisle. Aside from him, the crowd was very well-behaved, or I guess I should say not well-behaved, since you do want whoopin’ and hollerin’ at a burlesque show.

Ginny Gems, the kitten for the evening, opened the show with a simple removing of her jacket and revealing her corsette. It was a subtle sign that the show had begun, and I’m pretty sure half of the audience missed it (this being a geeky/nerdy sexy fun time in Williamsburg, most people had their faces buried in their smart phones or other gadgets).

Our lovely Emcees, Makin’ and Dick E. entered next with a short, barely-scripted Skyrim cosplay/parody which concluded with a spirited nerdy striptease (probably the best way to start a show entitled Nerdlesque). Speaking of silly fun and nerdy, all of those words described the first dancer of the evening: Alice McCoy. Her “nerd-left-to-her-own-devices” lip sync act to Katy Perry’s “Firework” was hysterical. It was the perfect combination of absurd, joyful, entertaining with a dash of sexy for some spice-everything you want burlesque to be.
Following Alice McCoy was Iris Explosion and her Flash dance (no not the 80s movie). I don’t want to give anything away in case any readers get to see this act in the future, but her use of humor, music, and props (plus a little help from Ginny Gems to start the act) was just fantabulous!

After Miss Iris Explosion came a double boyesque (also sometimes known as burleyesque) act: Jonny Cochring and James Van der Pen (pronounce peen, “the e is hard”). James and Jonny’s act started off with good ol' goofy nerdy awkwardness but as the crescendo in Florence and the Machine’s Dog Days Are Over swelled, the act ramped up the sexiness factor, while still keeping a lighthearted feel. Very classic boylesque!
The lovely and stoic Stella Chuu was my favorite performer of the night (and not because she bared the most skin out of everyone). Some very carefully-placed pasties and choreography were all that separated her from us. Her beyond-sexy portrayal of Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion was a perfect combination of geeky and seductive.

The headliner for the evening, Miss Coney Island 2011, was Bea B Heart, who swooped ominously onto the stage dressed as Jean Grey/Phoenix from X-Men (the comic/cartoon, not the movie). It was clear right from the get-go that she is a seasoned burlesque dancer. Her moves were very precise and crisp, but still gave the feel of being spur-of-the-moment. Her act actually reminded me of Demi Moore from Striptease, and was more classically bawdy burlesque than some of the morwe playful acts we’d seen that night. Bea B Heart means business.

After the show, I got to sit down with two lovely ladies, Iris Explosion and Stella Chuu for a quickie impromptu interview. They were kind enough to bear with me while I tried to write down everything they said short-hand. They were kind enough to answer my questions in between shouts of success or groans of defeat coming from the game of strip Operation happening on the theatre stage.

Me: Where did your name come from?
STELLA CHUU: Chuu is spelled c-h-u-u and its like “chuu” (said in high pitched girlie voice while miming blowing a kiss). It’s kiss in Japanese. And Stella came from a song called Stella about a hooker from downtown. It’s sung by Ida Maria.
IRIS EXPLOSION: I don’t really have an exciting story about mine. It just clicked.
SC: It clicked and BOOM!
IE: Right! Exactly. It just exploded.
Me: What made you first want to get into burlesque?
IE: Well I had just graduated from NYU with a BFA in theatre and then I realized I just like getting naked in front of groups of people and maybe I should just do this and make a go of it.
SC: I had a friend I was working with at the Molly House-
Me: The Molly House?
SC: Yes, the Molly House, it’s a Victorian brothel interactive reenactment improvy theatre group. We all dress in Victorian garb and show the nape of our necks. (Laughing while running her hand down her neck) And my friend did burlesque at D20 and was like you should totally come. I saw Hazel Honeysuckle for the first time and my jaw dropped to the floor.
Me: I’ve heard of Hazel, but I have not seen her.
SC: Oh!!! You have to go!
IE: It’s worth every penny.

Me: What other troupes have you worked with?
IE/SC: D20, storybook burlesque (audition show next Friday)

ME: Do burlesque dancers also have reels like actors?
IE/SC: oh yes.
IE: Most competitions don’t take nerdy. [burlesque]
Me: Really?!
SC: Yeah competitions are more about classic.
IE: Not a lot of characters in competitions.

Me: What is a big misconception you think people have about burlesque that you want to set straight?
SC: There are a lot of misconceptions, mostly people think it’s stripping; it is stripping but it’s more than just that.
IE: I think the biggest misconceptions are mostly about the audiences. People think there big burly men, and we sometimes get burly men-
SC: (laughs) Yeah sometimes.
IE: And while there are a lot of guys who come to our shows, the biggest audience is women. It’s mostly women who come to see burlesque.
SC: Yeah we get all kinds, couples but a lot of women. Also, we don’t do this for the money.
IE: No, it’s very much a labor of love.
SC: It’s expensive too. Most of the costumes you see the dancers make themselves. Pretty much all of what you saw tonight was handmade.

Me: I’m sure you get asked this all the time, but how do you get the pasties to stay on?
SC: Pastie ta-
IE: No!!! Magic.
SC: (laughs) Oh that’s right, magic.
IE: Yes. Magic. Magic and fairies.

A special thanks to Stella Chuu and Iris Explosion for sitting down to talk with me after the show, I know you ladies were tired. A super special thanks to Ginny Gems for getting me in to the sold-out show. I was, quite frankly, intimidated to sit down with dancers. They were both quite lovely and gracious and very passionate about their art. This encounter with them only fueled my interest in burlesque. Maybe, I will actually kick my anxiety disorder in the face and get up on a stage in my superman under-roos and dance my heart out...or at least start by attending a burlesque class. Baby steps. Baby steps.