It’s a cold, drizzly Friday night, but things are heating up inside the legendary El Mocambo in Toronto. Burlesque performer Rubyyy Jones takes the stage under the neon palm trees, wearing a frothy pale blue dress with sequins and a towering feathered headpiece.
The self-proclaimed “big, fat, fabulous queer Canadian” welcomes the audience to the second night of the Toronto Burlesque Festival before performing a striptease while singing their own version of “I Wanna Be Loved By You.” The packed house bursts into wild applause and cheers.
Over the course of four days, from Oct. 3 to 6, more than 70 independent burlesque, drag and cabaret artists from across North America performed. There were four performance showcases and workshops taught by renowned performers, such as hula formations with Ka’ena, a burlesque performer who began her career in Hawaii in the 1950s.
At a marketplace on Friday and Saturday nights, local business vendors sold costumes and accessories. On Sunday, the festivities concluded with high tea and a matinee.
Founded in 2008, the festival returned this month after a four-year hiatus caused by COVID. “In 2020, the entire world stopped and the organization crumbled,” said executive director and performer Steff “Ivory” Conover. “From the ashes, we rebuilt.”
Today, the festival is run by an artist-led advisory council that prioritizes diversity, inclusion and accessibility. The 2024 event featured a lineup of BIPOC and 2SLGBTQIA+ headliners performing sex-positive, body-positive and radical works.
“The artistry that happens on these stages is usually from years of practice. Most of us are art-school grads. Two of the board members have PhDs in burlesque,” said Ivory. “We are highly accredited and multidisciplinary, but because our art is also sexualized, it is often stigmatized. That’s why it’s so important to have an organization like the Toronto Burlesque Festival.”
We caught up with performers and audience members to ask them what makes burlesque worth celebrating.
Why is it important for Toronto to host burlesque events? “Toronto’s a world class city, and we boast about it all the time, but you’re not world class if you don’t have diversity in your arts. Burlesque has been around since the 1700s and right into the ’50s and ’60s, Toronto had theatres that specialized in burlesque. My big goal is to grow the festival enough that we get into the Elgin Winter Garden Theatre, because that’s where we belong—in theatres. If there’s one thing a big girl can do, it’s dream big. So we’ve got work to do.”
Tania Denis, audience member
What made you want to come to the festival? “My boyfriend has always wanted to come and it actually came up on my TikTok, so I was like, ‘Let’s do this!’ We’re burlesque fans. Why we didn’t come sooner, I don’t know. The festival is amazing. The costumes are gorgeous, the hair pieces are gorgeous, and everything is top notch. I think it’s important for Torontonians to recognize our scene. We have great, creative people. You’ve got to come out and support. Don’t think twice, just get the tickets and come.”
What made you get into burlesque? “I’ve been doing drag for almost 15 years. Exploring gender presentation through drag allowed me to be myself on stage and do the characters I wanted to do. But I had trouble with taking myself seriously as a sexy performer. So I took a burlesque class with Belle Jumelles and just gave myself over to it. From that came a piece that really explored being a masculine-presenting person in a female-looking body. I did a piece where I stripped right down. I was like, ‘You’re expecting masc, but underneath it all is basically a middle-aged woman’s body. Can you still accept me?’ It was beautiful and so poignant, and such a great experience.”
Texas Rose, audience member
What brought you here tonight? “I’ve been a burlesque performer in Toronto for eight or nine years. I know at least half of the performers onstage tonight. I come to as many burlesque shows as I can. This is such a great community. Everyone’s so supportive, so loving, so inclusive. Even if you come out alone, you know you’re going to find friends and community. My friend Janis [Jameson] was on stage; I saw her take her first [burlesque] workshops. So to see her on this big, gigantic stage, I’m having a proud auntie moment.”
What do you hope the audience will take away from your performance? “Culture and expression. My moniker is the Kulture King of Toronto, and tonight I’m performing an act that’s very much a Caribbean trope: that person who is freshly from the Caribbean in North America. They still have that twinkle in their eye, they are still very much vibes and bright colours, loud clothes. They’re fresh (hence the term ‘freshy’), so they still have all that pure Caribbean culture on them. After five or six years in Toronto, that goes away. So it’s playing up that archetype. I turn it up to 11 and play with some fun cartoony tropes as well. I always try to bring comedy with my acts, because you can’t be serious all the time.”
