February 14th – the designated day for heart shaped chocolates, romance and roses. How are you going to bear it?
The Dangerettes, Sasha Van Bon Bon and Pussy La Mieux, will be spending the night getting it on and getting it off at their Valentine’s Burlesque Spectacular at Lee’s Palace.
“It’s thrilling. It’s hilarious. Once you get your pasties spinning [pointing at her partner in crime], I’m screaming. No, I’m squealing!” gushes La Mieux.
Pasties? “The little circular things that you put on your nipples,” explains Van Bon Bon nonchalantly.
No, it’s not an audience dress code, but if you’re lucky you might get one to take home.
La Mieux and Van Bon Bon have been performing a traditional burlesque show at venues like The Opera House, The Church and The Bovine Sex Club since June of last year. Each performance promises a night of entertainment for everyone.
“All our friends and everyone we don’t know is having a fabulous time,” says La Mieux. “It’s nostalgic, it’s everything their uncle told them about what it was like going to a strip club back then.”
“It’s fun,” agrees Van Bon Bon. “And when you do see people in the audience having fun, fuck man, you wanna go sit in their lap and kiss them and stuff.”
“One woman said, ‘Oh my God, you made my girlfriend’s night,’ because I licked somebody from head to toe at one point,” La Mieux says of their performance during Pride week last year.
“We like to interact with our audience on a fairly low level,” explains La Mieux. “There have been times when [people] have come up on stage [and we] have sort of molested [them].”
“But we would never compromise an audience member,” finishes Van Bon Bon.
But burlesque is not just sexy women twirling their pasties. It’s a performance that borrows from the Bettie Page era and pin-ups. It’s about how women performed before they took off the pasties and G-strings. For La Mieux and Van Bon Bon it’s about pleasure and fun.
“It appeals to that side of you that wants to get out your Elmers Glue and put sparkles on things and perform for people,” insists Van Bon Bon. “It’s very playful, it’s about being silly and sexual.”
“For both of us it seems so natural, so innocent and so much fun,” La Mieux adds. “It isn’t in any way seedy in overtones or undertones, we make it impossible to happen.”
The duo’s sense of fun, with their self-described Simon and Garfunkel relationship, is probably why the crowds they draw are so diverse.
“There is a mix in the audience – the groovy kind of straight people and the groovy kind of gay people – all in the same room. And it’s not necessarily one or the other. I tend to see everybody as very young and as people who want to have fun and pleasure.” Van Bon Bon continues: “We are all kids in a way and we all like entertainment.”
La Mieux delves further. “If we’re talking about sexual orientation, it’s all over the place. This one gal came and it was her birthday and she works for the TTC. I signed a photo for her, ‘Hope you get some pussy for your birthday.’ And it’s hanging in her [co-ed TTC] locker. And she’s just like, ‘Whatever boys.'”
On Valentine’s Day, La Mieux and Van Bon Bon will stir your sensations with a bursting balloon dance, some jungle fever, the infamous cat fight and many more dance numbers. They’ll be backed by the tease-me tunes of Jack the Ripper and the Major Players.
Valentine’s Burlesque Spectacular.
$14. 9pm.
Mon, Feb 14.
Lee’s Palace.
529 Bloor St W.
(416) 532-1598
Why you can trust Xtra
