1) Dita Von Teese returns to the Crazy Horse in Paris.

From Reuters:

“I feel that Paris is a place that still appreciates its showgirls,” she told Reuters in an interview before a two-week run at the celebrated Crazy Horse theater from February 1.

…
Two years ago she emerged from a rhinestone-encrusted bubblebath as the first guest star at the Crazy Horse but the new show will have more specially designed numbers, including two songs she has recorded herself.

“I feel I have to raise the bar,” she said.

…
“I wanted to do something more elaborate this time,” she said. “Combine the Crazy Horse style with what I do which is classic American burlesque.”

2) Pinups remixed: Folk and Horror

Folk singers bare it all for a pinup calendar aimed at raising funds for health insurance. From Philadelphia Inquirer:

This year, after a year’s hiatus, marks Toohey’s return to making Naked Folk calendars aimed at funding health insurance for self-employed musicians through the Folk Alliance, a Memphis nonprofit.

…
Louis Meyers, executive director of the Folk Alliance, praised the calendars. One of his favorite shots in the 2009 lineup spotlights singer and songwriter Jim Photoglo (March). The veteran performer is usually rather reserved. Yet there he stands, in nothing but an apron and chef’s hat in his kitchen as he croons into a soup ladle.

“It’s the one that makes me laugh the hardest,” Meyers said.

Besides the chuckles, Meyers said the calendar – the latest is replete with notable folk history dates and festival schedules – can help expose the public to the breadth of talent embodied in folk music. It’s not just “old guys with banjos around campfires,” he said. “It is so much more. . . . It’s become the adult alternative.”

GhoulGirls.com puts a sexy, pinup girl twist to favorite horror icons. From an interview at HorrorYearbook:

HYB: What’s the one thing that you feel sets Ghoul Girls apart from other pin-up style sites?

CM: Well we aren’t gore porn or strictly pin-up we are tease and horror. What sets us apart from all others is that the style we shoot has never really been done on a large scale like Ghoul Girls before. Sure you have other sites with hot women dumping blood on each other, but it just seems to repetitive. Ghoul Girls has a theme with the gore and a theme with the classics. I mean, recently we started dumping a lot of blood on our models, but it goes without saying that your looking at the models and not just the blood.

[Ed: Photo from HorrorYearbook]

3) Minsky’s premiered last night at LA’s Ahmanson Theatre, officially running from February 6 to March 1 before it moves on to Broadway. From Playbill News:

Tony Award nominee Christopher Fitzgerald, the original Igor of Young Frankenstein, plays the title role, the proprietor of the famed Manhattan burlesque palace(s) where Gypsy Rose Lee and others tantalized crowds, and where comics told off-color jokes between strip teases. The content of the Jazz Age and Depression-era shows often prompted the cops to raid the theatres.

This new, original musical is not based on the film “The Night They Raided Minsky’s,” though the project began that way years ago. The libretto is by Tony Award winner Bob Martin (co-author of The Drowsy Chaperone), and songs are by Tony-winning composer Charles Strouse and lyricist Susan Birkenhead.

Link: Center Theatre Group

4) Milwaukee dancer Kelly Anderson pays homage to burlesque’s essential costume/prop with a modern dance concert, “The Bra Project”. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Anderson, 30, a thoroughly modern, independent woman, thinks it’s not only OK but also frequently hilarious to be sexy. “The Bra Project” has its serious moments, including testimony from breast cancer survivors. But mostly it is sketch comedy in dance form.

“I used to be angry – ooh, we’re objects!” she said. “But now I’m ready to embrace and enjoy it. It’s human nature. It’s the beauty in the beast. As dancers, we embrace our bodies, and today in modern dance, that means all types of bodies.

“There is so much intimacy to a bra, and it has so much to do with body image. Costuming is a significant part of dancing, and I love costuming. If you’re going to have a striptease, you just have to have feathers. You have to know how those feathers feel to get the movement right.”

Striptease is a theme in and an influence on “The Bra Project.” Anderson became fascinated with the New Burlesque movement when she lived in New York, where a younger generation of women has brought new techniques, humor and irony to the age-old, titillating art of clothing removal.