Introducing Hunter
Saturday, November 24th, 2007Hunter is all the rage…
Archive for the ‘Dance’ Category
Thank You All
Monday, November 19th, 2007I just got home after two months of doing “The Sensuous Woman” and now, after what was a nonstop whirlwind of activity I am really not sure what to do with myself. I want to thank everyone in the show, especially our NY cast members who joined us near the end, Jo Boobs and Tigger, and of course the incredible Dirty Martini. I was really anxious about losing Kelly and Pleasant, but Jo and Tigger rocked it every night, and I could never get enough of Dirty!
Thanks to everyone who came out to see us in Chicago and New York. I had so much fun with you all and I learned so much.
Now I am going to work on my new standup show, “Beautiful”….I am so ready to get out there and do standup again! But I am not leaving “The Sensuous Woman” behind! Kelly and Ian Harvie will be joining me on my new tour! Exciting!!!!!
Opening Night
Sunday, September 30th, 2007Here’s the cast of The Sensuous Woman at our opening night party!!
Fly Me To The Moon
Wednesday, March 7th, 2007Talk about topical! This is our Princess doing a NASA strip at “The Sensuous Woman.” Shot at El Cid by the fabulous Augusta aka Penny Starr Jr.
Sensuous Salomé
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007Friday’s “Sensuous Woman” show at Largo was amazing. We are now there the first Friday of every month, don’t you know. And I got to borrow Leela’s wonderful bellydance troupe SaloméJihad!!
Thanks to Leela and to her wonderful dancers!
Stiletto 2
Wednesday, January 10th, 2007I’ll be performing some insane numbers for this show on January 20 in San Bernadino, CA. If you are in the area, come on by!
Leela’s Arabia Exotica 2006
Friday, October 6th, 2006October 15th is Leela’s Arabia Exotica! I’m not in it this year, but i’m going to be cheering from the floor. It’s a great show, with amazing performers and rocking choreography.
High Art at Low Tide
Friday, September 22nd, 2006This video is so beautiful it made me cry: The stunning Julie Atlas Muz in “High Art at Low Tide.”
Woman, A Goddess
Thursday, July 27th, 2006Here is a great review of our “Sensuous Woman” show.
I think that the samurai dance is quite a journey, and so it is nice to hear that someone really gets it. If you want to see it for yourself, our next show in LA is August 23 at El Cid.
And if you are in SF, we will debut at The Plush Room on August 21! Tickets will be here soon.
Dear Margaret
Thursday, July 6th, 2006I am a 34 y.o. male who has had a serious eating disorder for 22 years. I am writing to you because I know you have also suffered from this disease. I am in the process of writing not only about my experiences as a male eating disorder sufferer, but also coming out as gay man. I thought writing this book would be liberating and freeing, but it has turned out to be the opposite. It has severely depressed me and made my eating disorder much worse. As a matter of fact, i just finished a huge binge of ice cream and threw it all up. I honestly don’t think I can continue in this way. Either the eating disorder will kill me as it has many of the people who I have known in treatment, or I will due to the overwhelming feeling this book has evoked. Can you help in anyway?
Oh I so know what you are going through…something about the process of looking back and examining your life can bring up terrible feelings, ones we would rather forget. My favorite way to forget is to dive into something sweet and chocolatey, but that isn’t the best solution. It actually makes things much worse because then I get angry at myself, because I am ‘fat enough as it is’ and ‘eating more doesn’t solve anything.’ It is horrible how we talk to ourselves. If we spoke like that to anyone we loved, we’d expect them to walk right out the door, yet for some reason, we find it completely acceptable when it is self inflicted.
You are right about feelings being overwhelming. Are there any other kind? I suppose I should be grateful, because I experience things so deeply, but it puts me in a state of perpetual agony. I think that eating disorders are very common, much more than anyone realizes. Millions upon millions of people have them. Some of them die, but most live with the disease, and are constantly in varying degrees of pain, and you have to think, “Is that life? I might as well succumb if I have to go on like this….”
I am a little better than I was, but I am certainly not cured. I have done it all, binged and purged, been anorexic and bulimic, been hospitalized and analyzed and sponsored and callipered and trained and hypnotized and acupunctured and juiced and detoxed and retoxed and all of it, but it hasn’t brought me the perfect body or perfect peace with who I am. I am trying to just settle into a kind of contentment with my physical self. I am just deciding to be perfect…and that oddly enough, works pretty well. That perfection is something that must be protected carefully. It is fragile! I can’t ever go into dressing rooms with anything that doesn’t stretch. I never put anything on that looks like it might be too small. I give everything that doesn’t fit to someone who can wear it, no matter how expensive or nice it is. I look at myself in the mirror and I don’t say anything, if the thing I say is likely to be mean. I don’t let comments about my weight or my looks ’stick’ to me, you know, like when someone says something stupid, and then you cannot stop hearing it in your head, echoing over and over until you want to just end it all just so you don’t have to hear it anymore? And I just go on like that… and it is a good life, if I watch myself. Kind of like when I used to diet, but now instead of limiting calories, I will not allow negative self talk. I cut out insults like I cut out carbs and it is hard as hell because I crave self abuse like hot, fresh sourdough bread, but you know you have to be nice to you if you are going to live together.
Another thing that helps is my burlesque show “The Sensuous Woman.” There are all kinds of bodies on display in the show, so many beautiful women and men, and it is such a healing thing to see someone who may not be the typical ‘model’ type flaunting their gorgeous butts and legs and breasts and everything, because I am so used to hiding myself and hating myself, that when I see someone who doesn’t, and is enjoying their body, telling a story with their body, with a beginning, middle and end, not worrying about their body, simply sharing their body, it’s like I am getting this weird permission to love mine, and it is incredible, because it is this little reprieve from the hell of my own making, this entry into a world where I am the most beautiful creature alive. I take off my clothes in the show, and everyone is screaming, not out of horror like I feared they might, but because they love it, and I love it. Nobody wearing pasties can ever be ‘fat’ or ‘ugly.’ It is about celebrating your body, and that was utterly unthinkable to someone like me. Come to our show if you can. I honestly believe that we save lives, and we would love to save yours.
Bellydance Showcase
Monday, June 12th, 2006
Miss Exotic World Photos
Thursday, June 1st, 2006
Miss Exotic World Pageant
Tuesday, May 30th, 2006This weekend, El Vez, the Mexican Elvis, and I hosted the grand spectacle that is the Miss Exotic World Pageant. I have been a longtime fan of El Vez, and emceeing with him was a lot of fun, and incredibly hard work. Not that it is hard to share a stage with him, but we, in tandem, had to bring up what felt like hundreds of burlesque performers, from all over the world, most with complicated intros and set ups, with the cast off complications of the previous acts strewn about the stage and needing to be removed by the diligent and unflappable stage crew.
Still, it was an unforgettable night, despite the lack of food, down time and overabundance of tequila. My feet were pounding hard from my unforgiving pumps which felt not at all like a sneaker, and so about halfway through the show, I abandoned them and put on my trusty but ugly orthopedic clogs. That is a hard night, when you have to change your shoes. Yet, the worst part of the evening was that I had to stay stationed backstage, and so I didn’t get to see every performer, and that was a tragedy, because judging from the reaction of the crowd, and the few acts I was able to watch full frontally on my precious few moments away from the stage, this was the best show in the world.
The winner was the incomparable Julie Atlas Muz, who did a showstopping number with a giant inflatable balloon. She began with playfully batting the balloon about the stage like a kitten, then she actually climbed inside! There was an absolutely breathtaking moment when she opened the balloon and the escaping air blew her lovely golden hair all about. Then she stuck her pretty head in, and her impressively lean and lithe body followed. We were all aghast, stammering and screaming at this gorgeous girl now standing inside this giant balloon! She looked just like a Varga girl, a bubble bombshell, an airborne fantasy floating off a champagne flute. Then, she pulled a pin out of her clever g-string and popped the balloon from the inside! I was weeping and clapping and hoarse from screaming “WE HAVE A WINNER!!!” before the contest had even finished!
I have a longtime admiration for burlesque, and I am convinced there is nothing as beautiful as a woman’s body unclothed. Being able to celebrate the female form is feminism in its most genuine and heartfelt incarnation. When some “feminists” cry out against burlesque, claiming that it supports the ‘male gaze’ and call it ‘porn’ they are merely revealing their inherent misogyny. The ‘male gaze,’ although present at burlesque events is so far outnumbered by the ‘female gaze,’ that someone might suspect that we are lesbian separatists.
In fact, many of us are headed for that exclusive state. I myself have just had enough of men. I have been working in comedy, probably the most male dominated industry next to contact sports, and frankly I am just sick of dick. I have all these dents at the back of my throat and I just don’t need any more. Let me spackle it over and start anew. At this point in my life, I want to be left alone with the women, and thank God I am not the only one.
My first strip show was held in my own home, during a slumber party celebrating my 9th birthday. We were kids but we weren’t kidding. We had no pasties, no g-strings and no shame, and when my mother caught us, she was so embarrassed she couldn’t even punish us, because then she would have to admit that we were doing something wrong, and for her name it would have forced her to explain it to us, and that was far more intolerable to her than just letting us get away with it. I’ve been getting away with it ever since!
Sensuous Woman Review
Thursday, April 20th, 2006THE SENSUOUS WOMAN - A SHOW REVIEW
BY LELLA
On Wednesday, April 19, 2006, comedian- activist-turned- belly dancer Margaret Cho kicked off the debut show of her new live monthly variety show, “The Sensuous Woman,” at El Cid Restaurant in Hollywood, California. Co-produced by Iris Berry and Miss Ava, the Sensuous Woman is heavy on belly dance and burlesque performers, and will not only feature new acts every month, but each event also serves as a benefit for a worthy cause- this month the price of admission went to Habitat For Humanity, who are busy building and re-building houses in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.
El Cid Restaurant, which usually features a dinner Flamenco show and Jillina’s Sahalah Dancers, is a Hollywood landmark, and its perfectly preserved early-Sixties, Spanish-themed décor, heavy on the red velvet drapery, was the perfect vintage-looking location for the show about to unfold.
The evening began with Margaret herself doing an intro and her trademark cutting-edge comedy, followed by a stellar line-up of women, from nationally-known Oriental dancers to the performers from acclaimed burlesque shows like The Velvet Hammer and Lucha Va Voom, whose founder Ursulina was the first dancer. Up next was Princess Farhana, and partner Brian Chic, who did a precision bullwhip act, “Lipstick And Lashes,” featuring the pair as a master and his naughty dancing slave girl. The audience gasped as Chic cracked the veils off Princess Farhana’s body with his whip. He whipped her around the abdomen and neck and she spun out of it effortlessly. Dancer Penny Starr, Jr. did a ski-bunny striptease on crutches that were completely covered with Swarovski crystals…later, the crowd found out that she really DID have a broken leg! She was followed by outrageous comedian Bruce Daniels. A couple of belly dancers then tried their hand at burlesque: Jamilla, a featured dancer at LA’s Dar Maghreb, performed a cute retro number, as did Palmdale, CA-based dancer Sedona, who brought the house down with a naughty nurse strip-tease under the stage moniker Renee Du Jour. Margaret Cho came back and did a burlesque-influenced act with two huge Cobras (ok, they weren’t real, just cleverly manipulated puppets) that managed to be sexy and funny at the same time. One of the last performers to hit the stage was Rachel Lazarus -Soto of Devadasi and Blue Damsel, who did a stunning Geisha Girl number, complete with precision fan-work and a scarlet kimono.
El Cid was totally sold out, with many luminaries present. Not only were there a few tables full of people from Comedy Central Network, but among the standing-room-only crowd were Oriental dance troupe Leela and Salmome Jihad, Margaret’s husband LA-based artist Al Ridenour, burlesque star Venus DeMille, MECDA officer Politti Ashcraft, and Bellydance Superstar Sonia with Miles Copeland in tow! The Sensuous Woman was everything the name implies- fun, hot, sexy and sensual- well worth the price of admission! It will run on the third Wednesday of every month at least through September, and is well worth checking out if you are ever in the LA Area. For more info, go to www.myspace.com/thesensuouswoman or www.margaretcho.com
The Sensuous Woman
Tuesday, April 18th, 2006At the historic and glorious El Cid, I am starting up an exciting and different kind of show. The Sensuous Woman takes its name from a notorious bit of vinyl someone had at some point, which was a recording of a very articulate woman during a vigorous lovemaking session. I just remember she said “Shit!! Shit!!” a lot. Anyway, it seemed perfect. I wanted a place for women to feel safe, to feel seen, to be sexy, to feel good about themselves, doing their thing. We will have some burlesque, from first timers to stripping superstars, bellydancers of all denominations, the best comics and God only knows what else. And I will be doing something that defies everything described here, which could be worth the price of admission itself. I think it will be the show of the century, everything that anybody every wants to see, at least for me. I wish I could have this show in my living room every night. For now it will be at El Cid in Silverlake, tomorrow, April 19th, 8pm, Doors 7pm. Reservations recommended, but come if you don’t have them anyway. Admission is a $10 donation to Habitat for Humanity.
I am hosting, and then there’s:
Ursulina
Faizeh
Lipstick and Lashes
Lisp
Sedona
Bruce Daniels
Me with my snakes…
Fancy Free
Alia
Jackie Beat
Augusta
Rachel Lazarus Soto
Bobby Pinz
We are gonna rule the school…