The new burlesque puts a sassy spin on the ol' bump 'n' grind

A parade of modern Gypsy Rose Lees, beset with tattoos and sultry red lips, gyrate through retro-stripteases every night of the week at a number of sold-out venues downtown.

As stars like Dita Von Teese steal the national limelight and 40s-era glamour makes its way into major fashion magazines, the burlesque revival — or "neo-burlesque," as it's called — is getting trendier by the moment.

But, as is the case when any underground movement goes mainstream, the artistic avant-garde has begun to yawn and move on. Only this time, they're taking burlesque with them, using the elements of striptease as a springboard for a new type of performance art.

The result? Flapperish cabaret meets Marquis de Sade meets Marcel Duchamp. It's neo-burlesque gone surrealist, with a bit of kooky political activism thrown in for good measure. Sound totally bizarre? It is.

"Some of it is really weird, freaky, out-there stuff," says Chris Snell, owner and manager of the Can Can cabaret and restaurant in Pike Place Market. "You've never seen anything like this before on stage."

Last month at the Can Can, three men in red go-go shorts writhed in a pile of women's stilettos, while lip-synching to a cult-favorite YouTube music video ("Shoes") and peeling off layers of glitzy costuming. Part burlesque, part punk-rock drag and part manic, Dada-inspired chaos.

After the performance — which also involved worshipping an 11-foot faux fur coat and the liberal usage of a can of blue paint — Ultra, the starring male burlesque performer (male burlesque is sometimes dubbed "boylesque") addressed the packed crowd.

"Don't worry, everyone. I know what you're thinking: 'It's, like, all sexy and scary and a little off-putting,' right? But, it's good for you!" The crowd — a mish-mash of Seahawks-hat-wearing manly men, middle-age couples and punked out 20-somethings — cheered in agreement.

Debbie Noggles, 48, of Bothell, who came with her husband, describes herself as "usually conservative." "It was a bit more than we had anticipated, but I thought it was a really unique performance," she laughs. "We kept saying, 'No he didn't ... no he didn't!' "

Oh yes he did. And with the avant-garde pushing the limits of both neo-burlesque and experimental performance, there's more where that came from.

Last summer, the Swedish Housewife, an icon of Seattle burlesque and the hostess of the weekly revue at the Pink Door, abandoned her sparkling Mae West get-up for an American flag and one false-eyelash, which she attached to her upper lip like a Hitler-style mustache. Instead of winks and coy kisses, the audience got a goose-stepping anti-war activist-cum-seasoned stripper. This is not a woman who is merely emulating the past.

And then there are some performers, like Ultra and his cadre of go-go-shorts-clad men, who are abandoning the structure of classic burlesque (hyperbolized striptease, ribald comedy) altogether, in favor of conceptual surrealism — not unlike something you would have seen at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916, only with a contemporary edge.

At the Pink Door, Lily Verlaine dresses as Yoko Ono and wordlessly scissors the clothes off John Lennon (Atomic Bombshells host Jasper McCann). In New York, Julie Atlas Muz famously squeezes red paint from a "bleeding heart" onto her almost-naked body, then walks off stage. Meanwhile, Polly DeLish, also from New York, spends her three-minute routine eating a rack of ribs.

None of these performances included any explanation. While Max Ernst would be proud, all this begs the question: How is it that one-glove-at-a-time, sultry striptease — we're talking the very thing you think of when you think of "burlesque" — and this new-age performance art are both considered neo-burlesque?

"People argue over what is and isn't burlesque all the time," says Miss Indigo Blue, who performs with the Atomic Bombshells and runs the Academy of Burlesque, a local dance school. "The truth is, burlesque can be anything. It's a derivative art form that has always been, and still is, about mocking society."

In the heyday of classic burlesque (the 1930s, '40s and '50s), performers lampooned the high-brow arts, the bourgeoisie and the monolithic expectations of "high society," she says. "Back then, ladies stripping to their underwear was risqué enough."

Nowadays, in the heyday of neo-burlesque, performers lampoon traditional gender identity, second-wave feminism and the state of American foreign policy. But, unlike the Tempest Storms of yesteryear, neo-burlesquers don't turn a dime on the intrigue of striptease alone.

"No one comes to a burlesque show to see naked women anymore," says Miss Indigo Blue, explaining that modern society is "over-sexed." "That gets boring, right? The real performance is what we're saying while we take off our clothes."

Part of that "real performance" is no longer about mocking the high-brow arts, either. It's about embracing them:

International burlesque star Dita Von Teese performs her striptease on pointe; Agent Rhinestone of Heavenly Spies Cabaret began as a ballerina; the Can Can Castaways, Snell's in-house troupe, features contortionist Rainbow and John-the-Acrobat, both Cornish-trained. Snell himself is a classically-trained opera singer.

"It's not like these people were driven to this stage for lack of choice," Snell says. "They're highly educated and talented artists who are choosing to use burlesque and cabaret as their mode of expression. They're really pushing the limits of the art."

Partly due to the caliber and seriousness of the artists involved, and partly due to the ubiquity of nudity in modern pop-culture, neo-burlesque has begun to gain foothold as an American folk art.

"It's much more acceptable now," says the Swedish Housewife, "but we're still not preaching to the choir. People who have no idea what to expect will hear about 'the burlesque revival' and just show up. We have the chance to push the envelope and show them things they wouldn't otherwise see."

Happily, for those interested in front-row seats for the evolution of neo-burlesque, Seattle is a great place to be.

"We're seeing a lot of high quality, intelligent, progressive and politically oriented burlesque coming out of there," says Laura Herbert, a trustee at Exotic World Burlesque Museum in Las Vegas. "In terms of the whole national scene, Seattle's is extremely vibrant. It's really exciting."

"We're just now at the point where people are busting out and doing really new, innovative things," says the Swedish Housewife. "We're still experimenting now, but trust me, something big is coming."

Haley Edwards: 206-464-2745 or hedwards@seattletimes.com