Re-Vamping History: Neo-Burlesque and Historical Tradition

Considering two performance trajectories that have emerged from the varied dramaturgical history of the burlesque genre, epitomized by superstar Dita Von Teese and by the Toronto collective The Scandelles, this article demonstrates how neo-burlesque can usefully be divided into that which approaches burlesque as a noun and that which deploys it as a verb. Where Von Teese’s recreationist approach relies on, and reifies, notions of “the historical” to contain and contextualize her act as more tasteful than contemporary stripping, The Scandelles’ active burlesquing, which relies on irony, camp, and social criticism, calls the very essence of such monolithic narratives into question. Ironically, while the performance of The Scandelles has often been considered to be more akin to the “avant-garde” than to the neo-burlesque, I will show that it is, in fact, strikingly similar to the earliest, and least contemporarily familiar, years of North American burlesque.