"Les Fleurs de Shanghai" Trailer - Chinese jazz, dinner & burlesque!

The next show is Wednesday, May 30 featuring guest performer Ruby Valentine - The Alabaster Beauty. You may have seen in cameo in a little known TV series called "Mad Men". She played herself as a burlesque siren in the pilot episode.

It's All in the Presentation & Other Tips

I get many emails from performers visiting NYC who are interested in getting booked so I've compiled some of the best and worst practices I've seen and in doing so I hope this will provide some tips for anyone who is seeking for future bookings.

Introduce Yourself & Familiarize Yourself

If you are a local performer the best way to get your face familiarized is to attend one of the shows you hope to be booked in. Stay for the show and approach the producer afterwards, introduce yourself and express your interest in performing there. Follow up with an email and send video clips and descriptions of your act (I will go into this in more detail later). When a performer introduces themselves to me in person, it helps solidify who they are to me in my mind among a sea of faceless emails and complicated burlesque names. It also helps me to know that the performer already knows what the venue and the venue's clientele are like, and more importantly, what type of acts are booked and what type of stage (or lack of) she will be dealing with.

For instance my Thursday night show "Spanking the Lower East Side" at Nurse Bettie is extremely space-challenged. The bar is small with a maximum capacity of 70. There is a tiny small square stage that measures maybe 4' x 4' and to further complicate things, there is no dressing room. We have the back corner of the bar and pull close two curtains as a makeshift "private" area for ourselves. There is only one bathroom so using that to get oneself ready is out of the question. I even had to create a Do's & Don'ts document with critical information such as, "Don't bring your roller to this show" for new performers.

Nurse Bettie - tight squeeze on the stage

Friday night's show "Room69" at Hotel Chantelle offers another set of challenges. For one, there is no stage. The show is "in the round" and audience interaction is highly encouraged. Not always the best place for newer performers who are not comfortable improvising part of their act or need to be in position before the music starts otherwise it throws them completely off, or engaging with the crowd and owning the bigger floor space.

Hotel Chantelle - no stage, in the round. Photo by Francine Daveta.

Obviously all of the above applies only to local performers. I personally like it when traveling performers contact me and show that they know which shows I am currently producing. It's always good to show the producer that you are familiar with the shows they produce and that you did your homework to familiarize yourself with their work. Make it easy for me and I'll make it easy for you.

Make It Easy

Speaking of making it easy, a short and sweet PDF of performer information goes a LONG way in getting booked. What I dislike most is receiving emails with no pictures, no video links, and simply, "I really would like to perform at your show etc etc. My acts are XYZ." One can talk the talk, but I need to see you walk that walk! Images and clips are critical. I DO look at everything everyone sends me, and video clips are especially important. It doesn't need to be fancy or lit magnificently. I look for the following qualities:

• Stage Presence (Does the performer command the room? Does she exude confidence, joy, playfulness or intrigue the moment she's on stage? Does she say "Look at me" with her body?)
• Movement (Fluidity in movement, hand gestures, eye contact with the audience)
• Costume (There are some shows where I can be more lenient about costume quality, but some venues ask for more - and for those places I will NEVER book civilian clothes with some rhinestones passing as a costume)
• Overall Presentation (Does her hair, makeup, shoes, costume all work together?)

Also please don't write a lengthy email, just 2-3 short paragraphs will suffice. And 3 good video links that represent your best work are better than 20 links. Make it easy for me to watch your clips or visit your web site. Embed your links in your email. Please don't say, "You can find me on Facebook where I have pictures and videos." If I have to go on your Facebook and dig around to find a clip or comb through a million pictures to figure out what your act looks like, you are not making it easy when I have 20 other inquiry emails to read through.

Spell & Grammar Check Your Email

English is my third language. My native language is Chinese Mandarin. My second language is Spanish when we lived in Bolivia. So if I can spell correctly and type with proper punctuation marks and sentence breaks, there is no reason a native English speaker can't especially when we all have access to spell and grammar check.

Sending out an email with misspelled words, long run on sentences that read like visual diarrhea, no sentence breaks, train of thought derailed and wrecked, oh and my favorite, using ghetto ass slang in the email all reflect poorly on the sender. It makes me think they are stupid. If not stupid then it makes me think they are unorganized (perhaps they will show up late?), messy (does she know how to do her hair and makeup?), and a hot mess (is her tampon string hanging out? is she going to be a handful backstage and flip out on stage?). When in doubt ask yourself, would I use this tone of voice or these choice of words at a prospective job interview? When in doubt, err on the professional side. You don't need to say "Holla!" or "Hit me back" to people you've never met before. Your personality will shine through your professionalism.

Your Burlesque CV/Resume

You don't need a big fancy web site to get booked, but I will address the most cost efficient way to create a web site for yourself with some working knowledge of the publishing software in the next section. For now, a good CV is all you need just like applying to any job. When I was in college I made some extra pocket money helping people put together their resumes so here is a general template for a solid burlesque CV's (Curriculum Vitae) that is a combination of the best ones I've seen for their information organization and communication efficiency. Don't forget to keep the PDF under 4mbs! Most servers will kick back file attachments that are too big. And you never know where the receiver will be when trying to download an extremely large document.

Your Name 

(Include your tag line if any, phone number, email address, web site URL or other social media presence)

Burlesque Bio/Statement

(This is the place to write your witty repartee. Three to four sentences that quickly describes your background such as "...with a BA in Theater and ten years of dance experience" or "armed with a self-taught passion for performance and theater", and then describe your style is such as, "Calamity Chang can be seen on stage covered with rhinestones and lush feathers stripteasing to vintage Asian music and other exotic classics...")

 

Solo Acts

(List all your solo acts one by one, paragraph by paragraph. Describe the style, the song/band name and length of song, costume appearance, props used, set up required, and final reveal costume. 

If you have pictures of each of the acts, include them along with the video URL)

Duet/Group Acts

(Same as above and please credit other performers and troupes where credit is due in these acts especially if the original concept is not yours)

 Press (optional)

(List up to 5 most recent press mentions. If it's something that you didn't scan, just pull the quote from the publication, list the publication name, writer's name, and date of publication. Like the bibliography information you used to do for college papers)

Performance History

(If you have performed in festivals, list them here. Or if you are a newer performer, list the shows and producers you have performed with thus far. This acts as the "reference" section in a typical resume)

Performance Images (optional)

(I personally like to see on the last page a big montage of the performer's live action photos. These are not professional photos but snap shots taken during shows. It makes the resume come to live, and who doesn't like seeing a ton of photos of the same thing all together?

The good news is, once you have this done you can send it out to a lot of people over and over until you need to update it. It is especially good to have when you are doing a private gig or a big holiday gig and the venue wants to approve the acts first. For example, here are two one-pagers that Stormy Leather and I submitted to The Beehive's New Year's Eve party in Boston, MA.

A sample of how to present your solo acts in CV-form for burlesque performers

A sample of how to present your solo acts in CV-form for burlesque performers

Your Burlesque Web Site

As I said before, you do not need to have a fancy web site to get booked. It's nice to have it because you can compile all your work in one place. But it's expensive to have a good web site that represents your style and aesthetic properly. It almost always mean you need to work with a good art director who can truly reflect your sensibility online. My background is in digital media. I've spent all my 13 years in NYC working as an art director in major advertising agencies. I design everything from logos (my least favorite), to full blown out web sites, Facebook applications, iPhone/iPad apps, to banner ads. The cost of having a web site is NOT cheap. Many people have asked me if I would be interested in designing their burlesque sites. It is not that I am not interested in helping but I know what burlesque performers can afford, and $200-800 is not going to get you a good web site. Especially since once the site is up, you have no way to update it on your own.

This is the most important advice I want to give on this subject. If you decide to get yourself a web site and trust me, you will at some point, don't dig yourself in a hole with a designer who is going to leave the country and leave you no way of updating the information on your own.

This is why I advice performers to look into a myriad of other online options out there where you pay a minimal monthly fee to pick a template you like, upload your pictures, write your information, and make other customization choices to your site where you can edit, change, or revise it whenever you want from your own computer with your own password and log-in name. People are visiting your site to A) look at pictures of you B) find out more about you C) want to see where you perform next. You don't need a "cinematic experience" or an "immersive sound environment" - burlesque sites are what we in the industry call, "brochure sites." Information. Information. Information.

Lastly, do NOT get a full Flash web site. Flash is becoming obsolete because smart phones don't support Flash. The only time I create anything for Flash now-a-days at my day job is for banner ads and the face of online advertising is changing as I write. Who knows where Flash will be used in the next fiscal year? Based on my own web site's statistics, many people are looking at my site on smart phones (probably hiding from their wives or work people) so it is absolutely essential for your site to be smart phone-friendly. If anyone tries to convince you to get a Flash site cause it moves and makes noises, just say NO.

So some of the DIY sites I recommend are:

• http://www.picaholic.com/ - a big favorite among photographers who want their photos to be showcased XL much like burlesque performers. This site requires more advanced knowledge of how to use their software like customization your own site. But its WORTH it!
• http://cargocollective.com/#/howitworks - just discovered this group, comes highly recommended by my photographer and blogging fanatics
• http://theme.wordpress.com/ - WordPress remains the most accessible and powerful free platform to me for our purposes
• http://www.webs.com/pricing.htm - another new one that I just started poking around in out of curiousity

Anyway, so that concludes this post. I love booking out-of-town performers so hopefully this post will help expedite the booking process so everyone is happy!

Jungle Asians

I forget which comedian it was who introduced this term to me. All you Asian peeps out there know what I'm talking about. When Asians say "so-and-so is Asian" we mean Japanese, Chinese, or Korean. "Asian" to Asians does not include Filipinos, Vietnamese, Thai, Indians, Indonesians and other Southeast Asian groups. So how do Asians describe this "other" Asian group? The comedian called them (and himself) "Jungle Asians." I thought this was the funniest shit ever when I heard it. Because it's true! I personally have the impression that "Jungle Asians" are more musical, better at dancing, eat spicy foods, and less sexually prohibited. My impressions are embarrassingly colonial.

Recently, I created a new act inspired by a vintage green dress that I found on eBay. The dress is bright green with yellow accents and a beautiful floral pattern. It has been sitting in my closet for almost 6 months because I couldn't find the right music or act to go with this beauty. So sadly it was the "Dress with No Name".

The green floral dress

Then one week at Shien's "Nuit Blanche" show at Brasserie Beaumarchais (every Wednesday from 9-11pm), the theme was "Exotic Garden of Eden". I took out the dress and added some flowers to the halter area and wore it for that night. I love the dress. It makes you feel floaty and pretty. But I still needed to find the right music to go with it. Of course, tiki culture is an obvious choice but I do not want to dress up as a hula girl with a grass skirt. That's as cliche to me as being a school girl (which I have done). I started researching vintage Hawaiian music from Hawaii and that's how I stumbled on a Facebook invitation that simply said, "Hawaiian Music - LIVE in NYC for one night only...." - and of course I went and made Michael go with me.

The event took place in the downstairs lounge of a Japanese noodle shop called Jebon on St. Marks Place. I had no idea what to expect and not knowing who the musician was either. Michael was hoping for slack steel guitar, I was just happy to be out and be entertained rather than entertaining. The space was very intimate with lots of low Japanese style tables and low ottoman-like chairs. There was a really nice hardwood floor stage in the corner, quite sizable. One would have never expected a performance space downstairs from Jebon which was populated by NYU-age students.

An ukulele player opened the show then the headliner came out. He is San Francisco’s Kawika Alfiche who is apparently the Led Zepplin of Hawaiian music, one of the organizers told me. He sang along with a very cool looking Japanese bass player with his hair slicked back in a ponytail. Actually I'm not sure if he is Japanese or not because everyone there looked like they could be Asian or Jungle Asian. It was obvious that everyone there belonged to the API community, or as the guy who sat across from me said, Asian Pacific Islanders. He too looked like he could be Filipino mixed or Japanese mix. I do love that ambiguity. Pacific Islanders have such an interesting history. I've met Hawaiian people from so many different backgrounds ranging from Chinese to Japanese to the more indigenous Polynesia background. Our lead singer Kawika looked Polynesia for sure but without the floral Hawaiian shirt, I might have thought he was Asian-Mexican mix. Anyway, as you can see, I am fascinated by racial ambiguity.

Kawika opened the show with traditional Hawaiian chants to various goddesses (there sure are a LOT of goddess in Hawaiian mythology). Then the hula dancers came out. There were two women and three men accompanying Kawika all night. Kawika played the ukulele while another accompanied him on guitar.

All the songs they sang were in Hawaiian so I don't know what the songs were about, but the melody and the drum Kawika used were very moving. 

He was really funny too in between songs. He talked about his own mixed heritage, Mexican, European, and more. He spoke about hanging out with the mariachi bands in Mexico and how much he loves mariachi music. Apparently hula is HUGE in Mexico and Tennessee! Go figure.

The hula dancers both men and women were absolutely mesmerizing. The women's dresses were pretty covered up but you would never want to see more skin as you do in burlesque, because their hip, hand, and torso movements were so fluid and so sensual. Absolutely beautiful. I spoke to a few of the musicians afterwards and found out that last year when they came to NYC, they performed at Symphony Space in the Upper West Side. Most everyone attending this show are members of the  Halawai Community. I think Michael and I were the only people there who attended carte blanche. It was inspiring to see what one can find a community for ANYTHING in NYC. Towards the end of the night many of the hula class students also joined the dancers on stage. Everyone sang along to some of the old Hawaiian songs, and I left the place in such a great mood, inspired by the sheer joy the dancers exhibited and the uplifting spirituality of the songs. Michael said he thought it was cheesy all the praying to the gods stuff and he didn't like that aspect, but I thought it was moving and made me stop for a moment in my materialistic life of rhinestones, trims, makeup, glamour, etc and think about the space I dwell in. I think its specially hard to feel connected to nature living in NYC, and I live in a giant high rise building and I am not near any parks. I have astro turf on my balcony. It was refreshing for me to experience mythology through music and dance that night.

Here's a clip from another live performance from another tour:

"Even Rich People Have to Shit"

The title of this post is inspired by something my friend and fellow performer and producer of "Coup De Grace Burlesque" at the uptown Triad Theater Grace Gotham said one night after my Thursday night show at Nurse Bettie. I was complaining about some of the challenges as a MC (for me at least) one of which that annoys me the most is how different the audiences are in varying neighborhoods.

In my experience which range from working in venues in downtown Lower East Side, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, TriBeCa, to the Meatpacking District, I have found that the "downtown" crowd is rowdier, more vocally expressive about their excitement, less hesitant about interacting with the MC and/or performers, puts in $1 bills and coins (ggggrrrr!) in the tip bucket, and tends to be already informed about "Burl-etiquette 101". The "uptown" crowd is a lot more reserved, do not like to "talk back" to the MC, puts in $10 and $20 bills in the tip bucket, and is generally hesitant to vocally express excitement during a burlesque striptease. Often while performing to an uptown crowd in a non-downtown venue I feel like the tree in the forest. If I fell, would anyone notice? As an MC, ice breaker questions at the beginning of the show such as "Who has seen burlesque before?" or "How is everyone doing tonight?" (Miss Astrid recommends against the last question but I think it's okay once but no more than twice through the entire show) fall on deaf ears and you are greeted with a sea of still-sober faces looking slightly skeptical and...constipated.

Like I always say at the beginning of my shows, "There's nothing sadder than a stripper stripping to silence." This, along with a couple of other "Calamity Chang Guidelines", help a bit in making the uptown crowd less tense and more comfortable about seeing nudity outside of a strip club. It feels like I am giving them permission. I also intro the show by way of example by asking the audience to "channel their inner most construction worker" and make a lot of appreciative noise when a performer is taking off her clothes - not a kosher comment but at least I'm being class-ist and not racist. People always laugh when they hear this. And they always laugh when I warn them about having "porn face." That is the face you make when someone catches you looking at porn, well, you'll have to come to one of my shows to see my impersonation of that look. To prevent having that stupefied, stunned look on one's face during a burlesque show, I advise the audience to sit back, loosen their ties and unbutton the top of their collared shirts, simply enjoy the view and the drink in their hand, and make a lot of noise - because rich people have to shit too. 

At my monthly show "Drunken Dragon Nights" at Macao Trading Company in Tribeca. The audience here RULES! Never quiet. Always fun. But that's because Macao attracts a great crowd that knows how to have fun without being douchey.

A photo by an anonymous fan from my old show Beatles Burlesque in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

But at the end of all this, as long as the audience is appreciating the show and paying attention as opposed to texting on their phones all night, I don't care if they are making noise or not. It's more fun if they are excited and it certainly helps build the overall energy of the event and my energy as well, but it's showbiz and you can't control everything. I do think it is worth noting  that sometimes the most uptight crowd is the most inappropriate after a few (and then plus) drinks. They have propositioned performers for "private shows", asked for our phone numbers as if we were escorts fronting as burlesque performers, try to dance on the stage WITH us DURING our acts, and the list goes on. When they shit, they don't care where!

I have long suspected the difference between the crowds have everything to do with socio-economic background, then I stumbled across an interesting op-ed article on The Daily. It is about why burlesque is seen as "acceptable" by the middle class, which in this case, includes me and the majority of burlesque performers and burlesque appreciators.

The piece is called "Barely tolerated: Why the bourgeoisie accepts burlesque and disdains stripping" by a Elisabeth Eaves who saw me perform at last year's benefit function for Planned Parenthood NY.

Here's me performing & hosting the burlesque portion of PPNY's benefit party in 2011. Read Bust.com's coverage >

She posits that although burlesque has become tremendously popular in mainstream culture and acceptable as a form of entertainment appealing to couples/bachelorettes/bachelor parties going to a strip club has not caught up with the times. The stigma and societal disapproval of going to strip clubs remain strong as ever whereas burlesque, hell, there's even a Hollywood movie made about it. I personally have found that in the last couple of years, EVERY restaurant and bar wants burlesque on New Year's Eve or other major holidays. The writer argues that there are two crucial differences that make burlesque acceptable and stripping not. She writes:

The first is aesthetic. People from middle-class backgrounds favor the burlesque show over the strip club as a matter of taste, the same way they favor Restoration Hardware over Target. Burlesque costumes display fine stitching and retro glamour; they are visibly part of a historical spectrum. They are time-consuming to create and maintain, like teak furniture and craft beer. Stripper gear, on the other hand, is shiny and cheap. It’s tacky. Trashy. Low class.

The second is financial. With few exceptions, performing fan dances and other burlesque favorites is no more a way to make a living than, say, sculpting. Stripping in a strip club, on the other hand, can pay the bills. And so it’s no great surprise that stripping attracts more poor women, while burlesque attracts more women from the middle class who have the luxury of treating it as a creative pursuit.

I really enjoyed reading her article. It is one of the more erudite and academic analysis of the difference between a burlesque show vs. a strip club show. And I agree with her. It is true that burlesque does not make money compared to stripping in a high-end strip club or in Vegas. It is also true that many burlesque performers I know are on unemployment paychecks yet will not consider taking a full-time job to make more money or to put away for retirement. Let's face it, looks don't last forever and when that goes, one's earning ability goes as well. There is a sense of living in the creative moment, living the bohemian artist lifestyle and with that, believing in the romance of being true to one's artistic self by going against corporate America and denouncing the life of an office drone.

Maybe this is a middle class mentality, a new American bourgeois fantasy of desiring "creative wealth" as opposed to material wealth.

Hudson Opera House Photo Shoot

I just worked on an amazing photo shoot at the historic Hudson Opera House upstate in Hudson, NY. The photographer is David Bowles who is the director Oddities on Science Channel. As you know, that is my favorite show and I was one of the featured buyers in Season 3 in an episode called "Seeing Scars."

We've been planning this shoot for a few months and finally we synched up this week. We went up to the location bright and early and worked some magic together! The space is incredible, I have to say, I felt like I didn't have to work as hard in a venue like that. The venue did a lot of the work. I just had to stand there, although I am still sore all over the next day like after every photo shoot I do.

The space is simply amazing. It was abandoned and left to disrepair for years before a group of locals got together to save it. It used to be a vaudeville theater among many other things, and the stage is HUGE with three dressing rooms on each side. In one of the upstairs dressing rooms you can see remnants of old show posters on the wall. When I first walked in the space I got a really good feeling. No weird haunted ghostly feelings as in some old historic buildings. This place had a happy feeling... like an inspired sensation as if good things have happened to people here. Since the shoot came out so beautifully, I think the ghosts of the past were happy we created such beautiful pictures there!

See the set at my web site >

Here's one of my favorites - see the rest at my site http://www.calamitychang.com/Gallery.html

This image looks so familiar to me...am I thinking of something from Georges Meliés?

You can see the artist's name here.

Some old chairs were scattered around. They looked fantastic.

Two old pianos on the stage.

LOVE this Pic! - iO Tillett Wright: she's reaching.

iO Tillett Wright: she's reaching.: TT time! Burlesque at Macao.

I love this picture because it's not typical. 

Your China Collection Is Lovely

This is a traditional Chinese dinner table. A plate for a whole fish is essential!

The other weekend my boyfriend and I finally made our trip to Ikea in Red Hook, Brooklyn to get some things for the house. We even rented a car because we knew we had to get some big items that would be a pain to lug around on the free Ikea bus. We’ve been planning to go for many weekends but between my freelance day time job in advertising, my night time burlesque show schedule, and his photography travel schedule and long days on set and on location, we have compiled a running list of items to get.

One of the key items high on the list was more plates and bowls to accommodate family members who will be visiting us. When we moved in together two years ago I volunteered to throw away my shabby dishes and utensils because he owned nicer things. Most of my kitchen stuff I had found on the sidewalk in Park Slope where people often threw away boxes of dishes (this was pre-bed bug epidemic). Nothing I owned in the kitchen matched. It was all a mish-mash of things. The only “set” I owned that matched were a set of brown plates and bowls that had strawberries on them. They looked like they were from the 70s, chipped corners and all. This set I held on through college and through all my apartments in NYC (7 in total!) for sentimental reasons. It was the first set my parents bought in the States when we first immigrated here from Bolivia, South America. They bought it at a grungy flea market in Tampa, Florida.

Western style plate collection. Lots and lots of plates.

So I kept it. But I appropriately retired it to the lower shelves in the kitchen where it remained hidden out of sight away from all the nicer, matching things when we finally settled into cohabitation. I honestly do like his set more. I marvel at his dedication to symmetry. There are four of everything. Everything is the same size so they stack together nicely and not at all a twisting spiraling Tower of Pisa like what I’ve grown up accustomed to seeing at home. Everything is also the same color - white. White dinner plates. White serving plates. White bowls. White larger bowls. White smaller plates. White useless oval plate to put a cup on for no reason. By the way I don’t know my china terms for different sizes and things. I marvel at this Western tradition of china collection!

I haven’t thought about my brown strawberry plates from the 70’s until that weekend at Ikea when we stood amidst the Houseware section trying to decide about plates. He had very specific ideas, and he was also very adamant that everything had to be a set of four in the same color. I suppose it gives dudes a sense of order to have these domestic design rules. I didn’t care what plates he got or whether they matched or in a complete set. I wanted to go eat some meat balls! I just didn’t see why it was so important to have matching sets of things like this. Left to my own I would have gotten whatever struck my fancy. A couple of the gorgeous rich plum-colored plates, maybe two of the Tiffany Blue colored-bowls, and just for the hell of it, some fun plastic ones. But I didn’t. Part of me think it’s not very grown-up to have mismatched plates in your house. Another part of me think it’s very Chinese (and thus VERY charming) to have a potpourri style of plates and bowls.

This table doesn't look fun to eat at to me.

I am reminded of the time when my older brother got married ten years ago. It was a big to do because he was marrying a non-Chinese. In the Chinese tradition the bride’s family pays for the wedding, and since she’s not Chinese, my parents had to follow the Western tradition of paying for the wedding and the rehearsal dinner. All I remember was the arguing and fighting over CHINA! My mom being the one who likes to play nice more than my dad felt that we had to buy new sets of everything from crystal to china.  There were many trips made to both high end homeware stores to Wal-Mart looking at the variety. We would need at least two sets of everything if we were going to entertain our side of the family and hers for the rehearsal dinner. The plan was to host it at our home and have the food catered by one of the many Chinese friends of my parents who owned amazing restaurants nearby. Then I mentioned that for the kind of food we wanted to serve, we would only need the big plates and bowls. We wouldn’t need the other size plate, the bowls, certainly not the butter container nor the gravy boat. The total amount was climbing at an alarming rate. Also I don’t know where the hell my parents were going to store all this “fine china” and crystals because no Chinese homes I’ve ever been to have fancy plates or a “china cabinet” to store and display one’s collection.

A fancy china cabinet. I hope I never have to own one of these...

 My mom argued that it was critical for us to make this humongous purchase to show the other family that we could...hang (so to speak) with the Western ways. My dad disagreed fervently. He said we shouldn’t to change the way we were just to “blend in” even if it was as mundane as having sets of matching china to serve dinner guests. I absolutely agreed with him as usual. I hated the idea of playing someone else, or as I imagined it, sitting around all prim and proper with napkins folded over on our laps, drinking tea (not even Green Tea but Earl Grey!) with our pinkies up or saying “ching, ching daaaahlin” to each other. I hated the idea of pretending to be “white” for their sake. So what if our cupboard isn’t an immaculate sea of matching china? So what if our cutlery is a mish mash of things that don’t match? Who cares? The food - and its DAMN delicious Chinese food that my Mom spend days in advance to prepare and hours to cook means way more than what it’s served out of.

We left the matching sets at the store that day, and my parents decided to have the rehearsal dinner at a friend’s Chinese restaurant where everything does match - in a Chinese way. As for our kitchen there is now four plum-colored plates nestled among the white ones in alternating colors, of course, so it looks intentional.

Birthday - Dress Form!

My birthday is this month on April 21, and look what I found when I came home late one night from a show!

A red dress form from Michael! I've been wanting one for a long time but never spend the time to research it. I sew and construct simple costume pieces all the time, and I never realized how useful this is until now! I was sewing elastic one day and had to hold one end of the piece with my teeth and the other end with my toes so the fabric stayed stretched out, and sew with one hand. Now that I have this baby to drape and hang everything on, I won't need to be so acrobatic when I make my pieces.


This form is by Singer Model 150. It is adjustable in the bust, waist, hip, and neck area. I noticed that when I used my actual measurements on it, some of the dresses won't fit on it. That is because the dress form is stiff and does not have any give the way real bodies (ie: boobs) are.

The first thing I've been using it for is altering the straps for this Jovani dress that many of you have probably seen me wear.

The straps are quite thin and they've always bugged me. Then I saw this same dress worn on GCB and they've altered Amanda's straps with a big applique! So I hussled over to B&Q and got myself a yard. This will be one of the fabulous dresses I'm taking with me to Vegas at the end of May for Burlesque Hall of Fame weekend!

By Francine Daveta at Beatles Burlesque