Performers ‘free to be themselves’ at Burleskival

Crystal Bertholic, aka Crystal Explosion, climbed a few steps and stood behind the microphone on stage at nYne Bar & Bistro.

Her hair sculpted tall, her lips sparkling red, her corset black, she would deliver just a taste of her burlesque act this morning, she told the small audience.

Slowly, she lifted her leopard-print jacket from her shoulders and dropped it to the floor. Slowly, she bit one finger of one long black glove and tugged, then a second finger and a third, and slowly she pulled her hand free.

“For me,” Bertholic said, “burlesque is all about tease, all about slow, all about confidence – and all about loving your body.”

Bertholic took her turn behind the mic between go-go dancing demonstrations – speakers thumping as dancers from the Nocturnal Vixens team strutted in tall boots and tiny clothes – as part of a rainy-morning “launch party” for a variety show Friday at the Bing Crosby Theater.

For the rest of the show, you’ll have to go to Burleskival.

That’s short for burlesque festival, a four-hour-plus event that promises burlesque by local and regional performers, along with music, a go-go dancing competition (with audience voting) and a “sexy wear” fashion show.

One common theme is freedom, said Dale Strom, president of RSN Productions, the event’s promoter. Another is empowerment through performance. Another is inclusivity, he said, “unless you’re deeply opposed to the human body.”

No one on stage will be totally naked. But many will be close. Gaining popularity in the U.S. in the mid-1800s, burlesque is a genre of variety show that includes both humor and striptease.

The performers “want to be free to be themselves. They know some people don’t approve of it,” Strom said. “But it’s ‘I enjoy doing this so I’m going to do it. I’m going to be proud to do it, because it’s an art form I like.’ ”

Bertholic said she started performing burlesque about five years ago after attending a show by Pasties and Paddles, a burlesque group that performed in the Spokane area for eight years.

She’d had a baby six months earlier, she said, and she was “looking for a way to feel sensual again and to reclaim my body.”

She learned how to walk on stage, interact with an audience and craft an act. For her first solo, she embodied a “very classic, 1930s-themed Marlene Dietrich-girl dressed in a tuxedo, stripping down to pretty, gold, shiny underthings.”

Burlesque puts the performer in control, Bertholic said: “You’re writing the act, you’re picking the music, you’re doing the costuming. It gives you complete freedom.”

While audiences at nYne, Club 412, the Spotlight Lounge, Lion’s Lair and other venues have been following Spokane’s evolving burlesque scene for years, the show at the Bing offers a window in for a wider audience.

At the scene’s center has been Pasties and Paddles, a fluid cast of some 30 women at a time who staged half a dozen shows a year. At the group’s helm: Jewels Dietrich, aka the Divine Jewels, who’ll also perform in Burleskival.

Pasties and Paddles included mothers, lawyers, teachers and ballerinas, she said. Many were nervous when they started. What she’d tell them: “On an average day, someone can tell what you look like naked. There’s nothing you’re going to be able to hide with sweatpants or a sweatshirt. You are what you are.”

Dietrich said she’s found peace with her own body on stage. And as a performer, she’s moving on.

Her new group, Divine Productions, has about 15 cast members and will keep its tongue-in-cheek edge, she said. But its shows – the next is slated for Oct. 11 at nYne – are less about striptease and more about performance art, “more like visual art with your body.”

In a recent solo piece called “Hold,” performed during the art-and-music event Terrain, Dietrich placed herself within a wooden structure. Strangers jotted notes about what made them unhappy, and the tags were strung between a pole and Dietrich’s body. She held other people’s confessions for hours, before cutting herself free.

Bertholic, too, is exploring new roles. She’s producing a cabaret variety show this fall that will include burlesque.

“I plan on doing burlesque for at least the next 20, 40 years. I’ve seen 80-year-old women get up on stage and strip,” she said. “It’s different, but no less beautiful or empowering.”

Bertholic’s seven-minute “peel-and-strip” solo at the Bing will be a big deal for her. In the past, she said, she’s “hidden” from audiences, behind a character or behind other performers on stage. This performance is all her, and only her.

“Ideally, I hope the audience gets that it’s OK to be vulnerable,” she said. “It’s OK to be yourself.”