Banquet | Chevron Showgirls
Big femme energy took to the stage at the Triffid last weekend. It was a strange arrival, what with half the crowd there to watch Origin at four million decibels in the beer garden, and the other half dressed like they were on their way to an underground kink ball. New arrivals quickly identified their home team, so to speak.
Images including cover image: Joel Devereux
Banquet was touted as a feast for the senses, and it did not disappoint. From a brash and bare-chested beginning, we undulated through a range of group, solo and duo burlesque and sideshow acts that captured the full focus of the audience. The cast of Madeline Glasseater, Dahlia Gunn, Frenchie Darling, Lilith Revere, Archie Arsenic & Chris Braithwaite held nothing back, each with their own favourite skill to share. It was the most unashamedly brazen show I’ve seen in a while, and all the more refreshing for it.
Drawing down tropes from pop-culture occult such as American Horror Story, pulp fiction vampire novels, pagan symbolism and 19th-centruy silent movies, sultry burlesque routines were interspersed with a range of classic sideshow acts, including eating razor blades (Dahlia Gunn), bed of nails (Madeline Glasseater), sword swallowing (Lilith Revere), angle grinding (Archie Arsenic) and fireplay (um, everyone? But special mention of Frenchie Darlings spectacular costume). The evening’s performances were very controlled, each of the acts taking just as long as it took. There was no release from that slow build tension. A range of spectacular costumes was the icing on the cake. I’m a sucker for sideshow, and there were some very neatly presented skills on the stage. Better than that, the sideshow was wrapped up in beautiful daydream, where beauties wandered in and out of vision doing nonsensical, fabulous, dangerous things. Sideshow is often a showman’s trick, a five-minute throwaway routine with a big bang finish. This was different, it played with the skills, made them into little stories, eddies in a dream. It was very nice indeed.
There was some debate between my friend and I about whether the show was designed for the female gaze or the male gaze, and in reflection I am struck by how limiting that particular binary is (again!) Like, is there such a thing as the sexual gaze? Or the radical self-love gaze? Where’s the ‘I am high on my own power and do not give a shit’ gaze? Is there something in a consenting gaze, a gaze that says, step-into-my-parlour and drink this poisoned chalice… but with your explicit consent. It’s made me go back and start pulling that idea apart again. I think it is important to critique the sexualisation and fetishization of bodies, who is doing what to whom and why, but this sat outside of the usual channels of critique, in the way that it was for neither binary gaze but both and all. Because whilst the show was exhibitionist, it was also proud, and sitting in securely in its own strength. This was prime femme energy and it was booming big.
Burlesque as an artform is a critique, a caricature of serious works, an assessment of societal drudgery and protocol, of the channels of power. Burlesque is never ‘just’ a dance. Banquet took it another step in a different direction; it was truly an extravaganza. There is a history of illicit performance that stretches back as far as humanity itself. It is not a new thing to present the female body in all its wanton glory. But this has a fresh feel. Even in our so-called liberated contemporary society, we are mightily shackled by conservatism, by the edifices of Christianity that seep into all untended corners, by the tropes of Catholicism that are constant even for our increasingly secular society. In an interview with Madeline Glasseater earlier this month, she told us how there has been a shift in audiences beginning to allow themselves to enjoy, to experience this kind of performance art. And thank goddess for that. A quality time, would recommend. You should try it, you’ll probably like it.
Read our interview with creator of Banquet, Madelaine Glasseater, here.
