A Va-Va-Voom Boom

Gallery

The Art of the Tease

Burlesque enjoys a revival in Washington with three new shows that range in style from vaudeville to cabaret to performance art.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

"What man wouldn't?" Sangosse says.

And the pasties?

"I thought, 'Why not?' "

"Enjoyyy it," Thompson says in a Clara Bow accent as Sangosse returns to her seat. Then Kitty, who makes the pasties herself, begins to slink around to the achy strains of Etta James's "At Last," pouring an oversize bottle of vodka into an oversize martini glass while daintily ridding herself of those pesky gown parts. About 50 people sit on couches or mill around, watching her strut and pivot in the middle of the narrow room bathed in a wash of blue light. Some patrons get into the PG-13 naughtiness, whooping when she strips off something as innocent as a glove.

At the bar, D.C. resident Carlos Salanova, 30, assesses the scene. The vibe reminds him of clubs in his native California. "A lot more tasteful than a strip club," he says. "I like the ambiance, the people, the offering of cigars, the vintage '50s style or whatever."

The cabaret is nothing if not earnest. The lounge singer comes in a few bars early during the instrumental track of "Fly Me to the Moon." During one set, an albino Burmese python gets tangled in Kitty's hair, which, though disorienting, is not as bad as getting bitten on the forehead by one. That's what happened to another practitioner of burlesque, Thrill Kill Jill, at the Miss Exotic World Pageant last year. ("That's what people are waiting for anyway," says Jill, who lives in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., and kept the act going after the bite. "If the act gets that good, why stop it?")

After several performances throughout the evening -- which also features jazz musicians, an illusionist, DJ London Shadows and Lindy Hoppers from the Jam Cellar swing dance group -- Kitty takes a break in the cluttered, overly lit backroom. She's wearing a chartreuse gown and heavy makeup. Her python is in its heated cage.

"He's a perfect travel buddy," she says, casting a heavy-lashed glance toward the cage before addressing how Golden Triangle Cabaret fits in with the burlesque resurgence. "We're trying to bring back the old style, the classy music. We want to bring big bands into the venue. It's definitely moving somewhere -- we're getting more hype, a bigger crowd. People want this classy style."

The Golden Triangle Cabaret. Thursdays, 7-11 p.m. Ozio, 1813 M St. NW. 202-822-6000. http://www.dccabaret.com or http://www.oziodc.com. $20.

The Message Behind the Mascara at the DC Gurly Show

A woman leans over her makeup kit and looks into a mirror, layering her eyelids with color, slowly becoming CoCo Monroe in a corner cabana in the upstairs VIP lounge at Be Bar, a slick, swank gay bar in Shaw. In one hour CoCo will be down on the stage, at least 20 times as sassy as her real-life counterpart, combining the old-fashioned art of striptease with modern music.

After studying ballet in Latvia, dancing with an opera in Germany and doing some stripping, CoCo retired from professional dancing and moved to the District in 2001. At the now-shuttered Club Chaos near Dupont Circle, she caught a performance by the drag troupe DC Kings, which featured burlesque. A friend suggested she try it, but CoCo balked.

"I'm certainly not in top physical health like I used to be, and I'm a black woman who's 250 pounds, so I said, 'Are you crazy?' " recalls CoCo, 28, a health educator who lives in Silver Spring. She was introduced to Kitty Victorian, who told her burlesque isn't limited to certain body types. (Her first assignment was to Google "Dirty Martini," a famous curvaceous performer.)

So CoCo attended one of Kitty's classes, adopted a stage name and was in on the ground floor of the DC Gurly Show burlesque troupe, which eventually had its own night once a month at Chaos and has since relocated to Be Bar. The Gurly Show, with its 15 regular dancers, performs once a week as part of Be Bar's "alterna-queer dance party," called Be: XX.

There, in cabanas in the upstairs VIP room, the gurls and the DC Kings get dressed, put on the lipstick and paint on the sideburns.

"My entire life I had been looking for a way to express who I was, and not who someone thought I should be at the time," CoCo says. "Never in my performing life have I been given so much autonomy over every aspect of the piece, from the costume to the choreography to being able to make a piece that has a message or something that's just for fun."

Burlesque dancers have always sent some kind of message. The first wave of performers in the first half of the 20th century made a point simply by being: These were women who earned a paycheck for themselves and often commanded billing above male comics and musicians. But one of the hallmarks of today's burlesque movement is the injection of a message into the act. Such as dressing up as a housewife, preparing a pie onstage and then sitting in it.

CoCo is one of the last performers on the bill. When her time comes, she bounces up the Be Bar dance floor to Lenny Kravitz's "American Woman" and stops near the steps to the main bar area. She wears a red silk blouse and workplace-appropriate black skirt. A stack of magazines sits on a chair on the stage. CoCo pages through them, scoffing at the rail-thin models pictured. Then, as Kravitz digs in, she tears out the pages and crumples them in defiance.

To drive home her point, the clothes come off next, revealing a supernova beauty and an eyeful of raw emotion.

DC Gurly Show. Wednesdays at 10:30 p.m. Be Bar, 1318 Ninth St. NW. 202-232-7451. http://www.dc-gurly-show.com or http://www.bebardc.com. $5 cover after 10 p.m.