Pocahontas

Is this kind of imagery okay again? I ask because I have a "Pocahontas" act that I am thinking of putting into early retirement. Not because I'm afraid of offending the left-wing ultra PC liberals who are incensed if you say "sitting Indian styled" or "Indian giver", but because I think it has - as it is now - weak choreography. In this act, I'm dressed like a Native American and I'm standing inside a caged box (a wooden frame structure with no real glass sides). The idea is to evoke the dioramas one sees in natural history museums, and what Mieke Bal calls the "museology" of racial and sexual representations from positions of cultural privilege. I break out of the box and undress and at the end of the song (Amy Winehouse's Back to Black), I go back into the box (which can symbolize the trappings of a self-imposed ethnic identity, and/or the imposed idea of ethnic identity by a cultural institution such as a museum). I return to the same position as I started out in.

Of course, that was the theory behind the idea. When I actually debuted the act, I didn't think my costume was right enough, the gestures weren't spot on, the story and character were not clearly communicated to the audience, and I was not pleased with my dancing. I think the box needs fake grass and tumbleweed along with a background landscape of sky so it looks more like a diorama.

I may need to take Dr. Lucky's Character Development class at the School of Burlesque and seek for help from higher burlesque places.

For now, I'll work on the kinky nun act for the Nurse Bettie show on Feb. 4.

-Posted on the fly!