Laurie Hagen - Reverse Strip

Laurie Hagen - 2019 Icons & All-Stars Showcase from Burlesque Hall of Fame on Vimeo.

If there were a Rotten Tomatoes for burlesque acts, Laurie Hagen's Reverse Strip might be closer to achieving a 100% positive rating than any other single contemporary number.  I've spoken to several performers, not just fans, PERFORMERS, who mark this as their favorite act. I've seen it twice in person, and I may have been even more thrilled the second time I saw it because I knew how good it was going to be. There was no surprise, just sheer excitement that I was witnessing a master at work.

A reverse strip is somewhat common in burlesque, and it's exactly what it seems. Instead of starting an act with clothing on and removing it throughout the course of the number, the performer of a reverse strip instead begins with their clothing off and puts it on during the act. Pretty simple, really, and most often there's a story or character bit which motivates this opposite action. Or the simple idea conjured by Laurie Hagen, "What if this act was on video and it got rewound"?

No words I could type could replace watching the footage provided and marveling at the hours upon hours of conceptualizing, rehearsing and then outright owning the stage from the moment she sets foot upon it with this routine. While I maintain that all acts are better when they're witnessed live, this one translates pretty damn well virtually. Please enjoy.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Faye Havoc & Donna Boss Rogers- A Pantomime Horse

Faye Havoc & Donna Boss Rogers - WINNER, Most Comedic - 29th from Burlesque Hall of Fame on Vimeo . Where do I start with A Pantomime Horse? I'll begin with the end. The end of this thing is so memorably, twistedly absurd that it almost makes you forget what led up to it, which is itself so absurd that saying something could overpower its absurdity would have been scoffed at 3 minutes before it actually happened. This act is scored by "Goodbye Horses" by Q. Lazzarus, a song so indelibly linked to a moment in cinema that I would argue few know of it outside the context of Buffalo Bill's dance.  When the titular horse prances onstage, I kept waiting for something completely different than I was seeing to occur, and in anticipating, two things happened. One: I didn't quite register how smooth and well-considered the horse trainers, Faye Havoc and Donna Boss Rogers, choreographed and executed moves with the implicit question, "What would burlesque performe...
Read more

Lola Frost & Cherry On Top - Cleo and Mummy

Image
A city that has something in the water and continually produces sublime burlesque talent is Vancouver, British Columbia.  Though Lola Frost has relocated, this act is still full of the sheer energy and sensuality I've come to rely on from those with Vancouver roots. "Cleo and Mummy" is another act I first encountered during my initial trip to Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend in 2012, and I admittedly have a special enthusiasm for many of the numbers I witnessed in those shows.  Lola and Cherry are a well-matched, well-rehearsed pair and clearly display loads of chemistry and trust when dancing together.  There is dynamic power exchange, an ebb and flow, driving the action in this number. Both performers claim moments for their characters individually, especially Lola in the act's intro, but this is very much about the duo. This act needs a big stage to properly hold it. There's so much energetic movement from Lola and Cherry, and those twisty moments of torque-fil...
Read more

Tittiana Sprinkles - Still Not Ginger

Image
First off, I should begin by stating that I'm not a viewer of Doctor Who. Nothing against it, I suspect I'd enjoy it, but my compulsions as a completist would have me starting a watch with the origins of the show in 1963, and ain't nobody got time for that. That said, the iconography of the show and its ability to continually and periodically reinvent its main character with new lead actors is something with which I'm quite familiar as a geek, in general.  Everyone has a favorite incarnation of the Doctor, and every actor cast in the role has a different interpretation, lending color and shape to the ongoing narrative and disallowing the show from growing too stale at any given time. So what if you could have a bunch of versions of the Doctor on stage one after the other? I imagine a Doctor Who fan would love that very much, and the reactions in this video prove that point. Utilizing some quick change trickery common in stage magic and some thoughtful costuming on top, ...
Read more