In Search of a Different History : The Remains of Burlesque in Montreal

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
In Search of a Different History : The Remains of Burlesque in Montreal
Abstract
The author looks at two eras of burlesque in Montreal — the 1940s-50s and 2012 — tracing a shifting landscape of popular entertainment, politics, religion, and social attitudes toward female sexuality. She notes that there is a central question underlying her examination: Why burlesque? Why now (or, rather, again?). The author argues that burlesque offers an archive that evokes a different, more glamorous history than the one passed down to women by second-wave feminism. Furthermore, she notes, burlesque also provides an alternative to popular culture’s commodification of female sexuality, technology’s mediation of social life, and heteronormative culture’s privatization of sexuality, giving women—and men—a stage on which to make fun of our cultural fixation with sex and the female body. The author concludes that both nostalgically looking back and eagerly reaching for the new, neo-burlesque repeats the past as it simultaneously reinvents it. Includes information on Tina Baines Brereton, a dancer in the first all-Canadian Black chorus line in Montreal, and on Lili St. Cyr.
Publication
Canadian Theatre Review
Volume
Vol. 158
Pages
7-12
Date
Spring 2014
Language
en
DOI
10.3138/ctr.158.002
Citation
Mansbridge, Joanna. “In Search of a Different History : The Remains of Burlesque in Montreal.” Canadian Theatre Review Vol. 158 (Spring 2014): 7–12.
Find in a library
Permalink