Nerdlesque
Following my assignment with Orbis in Peru, I made my way back to the UK via a stop-off in New York to visit the Getty Images office and to see what was around for me to photograph over my brief stay. Scanning the weekends events, a number of items came up but the editors decided that I needed a bit of Nerdlesque in my life.
For those of you who, like me, had no idea what that is, it's the result of the clash between burlesque and the nerds who love pop culture. If that still doesn't help, let me give you a brief spoiler in that one of the performers at Nerdlesque did a striptease while wearing a costume of the character "Red" from "Fraggle Rock".
Reaching the venue involved jumping onto the Q train to the end of the line, all the way to 1208 Surf Avenue in the legendary Coney Island area. I've visited New York a number of times but will admit that, despite steering clear of the horrors of Times Square, I had never ventured quite as far out of town as this.
The battered, characterful venue is also home to the Coney Island museum. The sign on the wall listing the people who have been added to their honorary freaks hall of fame is exactly what you expect to see here and sets the tone for what is celebrated and displayed throughout the building.
Arriving early enough to see the technical rehearsal, my contact Lefty Lucy showed me around the characteristically shabby venue. Before photography, I spent a number of years playing drums in various groups so being in a place like this, untouched by development and gentrification, was an absolute pleasure. Peeling paint and photocopied signs stuck to walls with tape were visible everywhere. The evenings performers sat around chatting, dressed in regular clothes but with the styled hair and elaborate make-up giving away the game of their potential involvement in the entertainment.
The Nerdlesque festival not only celebrates popular culture but also, and this is a phrase I'm loathe to use, "real" men and women. Aside from a few who appeared to be full-time professional dancers, the majority of performers had the type of bodies that you wouldn't normally see onstage in this type of show, and that made the whole evening so much more enjoyable. Everyone had such a sense of fun with their performance, be it through huge amounts of self-parody, through to outright comedy. To me, the people that didn't sit as well were those who were overtly sexual, which is not something I thought I'd write about a burlesque show of any kind.
This sense of fun stayed throughout the evening, as during the half-time interval, the lady in front of me began to knit as the two go-go dancers performed on stage with audience members interrupting their conversations to occasionally pop up to slide another dollar into their stockings.
As you may know from previous posts about cosplay and Comic-Con events, I'm a big fan of people who dress as they want, defying the expected conventions of society. It's a far braver thing to choose to do this than it is to put on a football shirt and fight someone outside a bar on a Saturday afternoon but for some people, this culture is laughed off.
One of the most eye-catching performers of the evening was "Little Brooklyn" who appeared from within the audience and walked onstage, carrying an iPad. After nervously looking around, she held the tablet up to reveal a video of her face, but wearing the make-up and style of a burlesque dancer. She proceeded to "strip" without removing a single item of clothing, allowing the screen to show her gloves being removed and her dress falling to the floor. The finale of her act was definitely the winner of the evening as she pressed the screen to face of a shocked audience member as it displayed the HD film of the high standard of her tassel-twirling skills.
My thanks must go to Lefty Lucy and all of the performers and crew who worked on the evening. It was a thoroughly entertaining night and again reminded me how amazing New York City is.
