Facts:
1. The word Burlesque derives from: Italian burlesco, which means a joke,
ridicule or mockery.
2. Burlesque in a few critic’s minds led two lives: one in ancient Greece
and then eventually all over Europe, where it was more focused on being a
“play” and comedy – the other in America, where it was known more as a
“striptease.”
3. In the 1840s, burlesque comedy skits entertained the lower and middle
classes by making fun of (or “burlesquing”) the operas and the upper
classes.
4. I’ve ready many articles that say that burlesque goes way way back to
Athens where this writer named Aristophanes create and wrote plays in which the
wives of Athenian soldiers hole up in the Acropolis, depriving their husbands of
sex until the war was done. Basically the women were teasing their husbands,
guiding their minds towards sex, and then locking that shit away. Sounds like
burlesque to me!
5. When burlesque made its way to London – the first credited burlesque
performance goes to a lass by the name of Lydia Thompson. She had a group of
bleach blonde women called “The British Blondes” – the public was pissed and
outraged that such women with fleshy legs big hips and big boobs would wear such
revealing costumes – and her troupe grossed over 300,000 pounds in a year!
6. The same lady Lydia Thompson brought her group over to NYC in the 1860s
and that was where burlesque began to boom. Burlesque clubs were associated
with booze – hence when prohibition began it took a serious hit.
7. After World War II the pinup brought back the hay day of burlesque and it
has been rocking ever since. There are hundreds of thousands of burlesque
groups today – and whether they are modernizing the traditional art form, or are
keeping it old school
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