On Burlesque with Raven Noir and Deadly Nightshade

The Marr's bar sits, discreetly in a Worcester side street. Leaving a dark, damp pavement, I walk up stairs to a VIP bar, where staff are beginning to prepare for the nights burlesque show. Welcoming me, they point me towards a narrow staircase, leading to the green room. The green room, an upstairs front room with a huge sofa, a bike hanging on the wall, a TV playing radio and a lonely drum kit, is a curious mix of living space and hospitality lounge.

Raven Noir smiles and hugs me. It's good to see her again. Deadly Nightshade waves and smiles. 

Raven and I have talked a few times since we first met at the tattoo convention in cheltenham.  Seeing her that day, she quickly made an impression on me with her statuesque elegance, her strength in poise and her captivating, hypnotic movement. 

Back then, breaking from her performance, she and I began to talk. Raven told me about her great nan who performed in burlesque, fan dancing and able only to share her dancing with her family when her husband was out. This emotional connection with her past and what it meant to Raven that her Nan performed at a time when morality and propriety made burlesque taboo, left me wanting to explore what burlesque means, today, to performers and audience. 

We sit on the sofa, Raven and Deadly Nightshade begin to make up.  Raven talks as Deadly Nightshade accentuates rich lashes.

Raven thinks that her Yorkshire accent doesn't suit her character. As soon as she meets her audience, she feels she needs to step out of the Raven and back to herself. Her voice is warm, deep, confident without hint of diva. 

Raven had asked me, as we stood, earlier, with our backs to the sink, when the interview might begin. Smiling, I had told her that we had already begun. She seemed surprised, as if this had been too easy. 

Raven Noir is an extension of an aspect of herself an extension that, she feels, only suits her in performance. As soon as she has make up,  I can see the change in her. Raven takes shape and becomes strong, ready to fly and to twist her feathers, to dance and hunt. Silent, she shimmies and snakes across a stage, trapping her captive audience. 

We discuss what Burlesque brings to a performer.  Deadly Nightshade and Raven debate the empowerment, sometimes lauded as a benefit, that performance might bring. Raven doesn't buy it. She prefers to promote the art as a performance and to focus on the pleasure of that performance. With an audience of around 80% women, burlesque inspires admiration from women who wonder at the bravery of the performer. Men feel less comfortable, conscious of their gaze, torn between instinct and guilt, not knowing quite where to look. 

The control that a woman has over her audience is stronger, I imagine, than that of many performers. Ensnared by a captivating performance, the audience remains in the artists spell, until that last move, the finale and the stage is left with just discarded clothing to retrieved by a stage hand, the "knicker picker" or "stage kitten". 

"Empowerment" suggests that the artist gains some greater degree of personal liberty, some elevation in esteem that takes the persons sense of potential and self forwards. Although performance affords the performer a degree of power, during those minutes of performance, over an audience, it's a transient power.

Raven and  Deadly Nightshade both feel that a performers negative body issues can be heightened or aggregated by exposing themselves to a critical audience. Celebration of a the body, in its diversity, it's changes with age or with the confidence in its presentation are dependant on the audience and their perception of what constitutes beauty. 

With honesty, I tell Raven, that I could enjoy her performance,  just as much, if she remained covered. Just seeing her move, colours and shapes shifting under coloured light, is spell binding. Raven began performing as "Foxy lady".  She wore many layers, assuming that the audience wanted, most of all, to see things being removed.  

 As she pastes double sided tape to a small object, a pasty,  that is designed to protect the body from complete exposure, Deadly Nightshade talks to me about her own confidence as a 'vamp', her want to be able to be a stage vixen. Her role on stage is often comedic or dramatic. One of her performances, tonight,  is full of sexual confidence, a woman in black, with a riding crop, revealing her inner power to take what she wants for herself. Deadly Nightshade seems to want to be able to play this part. As a woman, she seems to want to be able to portray that want to be able to take control, to show other women what it is to take that control and to revel in the bliss that this brings. 

As Raven and Deadly Nightshade get closer to performing, the room becomes busier. The men; compares, a singer, Raven's partner and I are sent towards our various supporting roles. Raven and Deadly Nightshade are ready to steal the stage, to seduce us all and to leave us applauding their stunning, enticing selves. 

Tuesday Laveau

Tuesday sees me at the counter, I turn my head and we smile, warmly at one another. 

She joins me at the counter and orders me a coffee as I scan the chalkboard menus before choosing a bowl of pumpkin soup. 

We find a table and settle amidst a busy lunchtime at The Kitchen, part of 'The Station', a YMCA refurbished, former Bristol city fire station. Red wood, white walls and objects retained from The Station's former life are a canvass against which customers talk, have Christmas lunches complete with crackers and hats, as Tuesday and I begin to talk. 

Her eyes, under loaded black lashes, move sensually, switching from her hands, clasped with electric nails and a turquoise flower ring to an invisible point, floating above her long, black hair. She leads the conversation, we make small talk about Bristol, the city, it's life and how we relate to it. She speaks, with a soft, flowery, part American accent, about her journey, born in Bristol, moving away, spending time in New Orleans and returning again, to this city. 

As her head lifts and falls, her necklace slips around her collar; Tuesday, revealed and concealed. Her hands move like fans, her fingers stretch like feathers in pointing wings and her lips curl and move as shining eyes express pleasure and warmth.

When it feels right, when we have established that connection, she asks me what it is that I want to do. She knows a little about my exploration of burlesque, my questions about how a woman comes to and experiences performance, within burlesque. 

I tell Tuesday that I wonder about what it means to a woman to perform, to assume that identity and what it is that the audience take from this.

Tuesday doesn't buy the empowerment argument, believing that its a cliche used to justify engagement in an adult entertainment industry. Instead, she advocates a freedom of sexual expression in performance. As Tuesday, she lives that indulgence, takes that freedom and Tuesday Laveau lives as long a day, as completely Tuesday as opportunity allows. 

Tuesday quotes Oscar Wilde;  "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth". 

The fear we live with, the fear of approval, is suspended when the mask is worn. 

Sexual prejudice, morality around sexuality and the repression of thought and expression are challenged by burlesque. Burlesque celebrates the body, whatever its shape. The revelation of body, the movement of dance, the narrative of performance, the chemistry created between performer and the audience has the potential to progress the freedom of expression, of body, of sexuality, of comedy and experience. 

Tuesday and I part in the city, she bounces away, full of life and I admire her greatly. 

Sophie Ryder

            

                                        

                                                   

                                                   

                                     

                          

I find the track, driving over dirt and loose stones, I stop at the gate, briefly, to check hand written visitor instructions. The gate is open, so I drive on. Passing giant, galvanised, sleeping feet, slumbering on a grass bed, I glimpse Sophie ahead, in blue overalls, moving between a van and outbuildings. 

Within outbuildings is a studio, a space where Sophie works on casts, building in scale, until sections of megalithic wire sculptures emerge. Sections that will be united, outside, in public and private spaces in being seen, to be considered. 

We move indoors, I follow Sophie and I see a space, consumed with a history and a present. Hare,  Minotaur, dog, horse, animal heads on human bodies; casts, created at 1/16 and 1/8 scale keep each other company, frozen intimately, as they witness the construction of their giant progenies.

Sophie shows me how she works. Pliers, treasured in her gloved hands tease strands of steel wire across joins between mesh panels, to create a mosaic skin over a steel skeleton.  To be a piece called 'Rising', sections, grouped across the floor, await their skins, brown oxidised steel wire, to be galvanised before they unite, outside as a body.

Later, Sophie poses for the camera, alongside and on top of works in her garden and in her her indoor, home studio, alongside of a 2d wire Minotaur and a 8ft tall framed drawing of a pair of human, animal hybrids.  Pedro, one of three family dogs, stays close and takes to her arms whenever he can. 

Our photography is broken at around 11, stopping for tea and cake, we take a little time to catch up with what's happening in a busy home. I admire works that have become part of the interior. The temple to 200 rabbits, a piece I first came across at the Royal West of England Gallery, sits on the floor in the hall. All around the walls, works compete for attention among the trappings of a home.

Questions, I might want to ask of Sophie seem too intrusive. Art, personal and  fuelled perhaps by thought, love, touch, the body, desire, fear, intimacy demand a respectful, sensitivity, without assumption and pretence of an understanding. 

Hels Belles Boutique 24th February 2013

The Malverns, 17th February 2013