The neo-burlesque movement seeks to restore a sense of glamour, theatricality, and humor to striptease. Neo-burlesque performers strut their stuff in front of audiences that appreciate their playful brand of pro-sex, often gender-bending, feminism. Performance studies scholar and acclaimed burlesque artist Lynn Sally offers an inside look at the history, culture, and philosophy of New York’s neo-burlesque scene. Revealing how twenty-first century neo-burlesque is in constant dialogue with the classic burlesque of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, she considers how today’s performers use camp to comment on preconceived notions of femininity. She also explores how the striptease performer directs the audience’s gaze, putting on layers of meaning while taking off layers of clothing. Through detailed profiles of iconic neo-burlesque performers such as Dita Von Teese, Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz, and World Famous *BOB*, this book makes the case for understanding neo-burlesque as a new sexual revolution. Yet it also examines the broader community of “Pro-Am” performers who use neo-burlesque as a liberating vehicle for self-expression. Raising important questions about what feminism looks like, Neo-Burlesque celebrates a revolutionary performing art and participatory culture whose acts have political reverberations, both onstage and off.

Though burlesque has survived in the back of our cultural consciousness after being pushed aside by modern stripping in the '50s, the revival that began in the early '90s has finally brought burlesque back to the forefront of popular culture. Evolving from an underground movement to a nearly mainstream fetish, neo-burlesque embraces a wide variety of modern interpretations all based on the classic bump and grind and "taking it off" with a wink and a smile. From classic tributes to punk rock revisionists, women of all ages, sizes, and backgrounds are rediscovering burlesque and reinventing it. A sense of heightened imagination, empowerment and energy are being delivered to the stage, perhaps even more so than during the historic heyday, the Golden Age of Burlesque. Slipping behind the scene, Burlesque and the New Bump-n-Grind undresses the issues of feminism, modern popularity, and what exactly draws the unique and varied audience members to the shows. The women--and men!--of burlesque also receive their fleshed-out dues by a categorized peek into the various troupe styles including classical, re-creationists, revivalists, modern, circus, performance art, political, queer, bawdy singers and comics. Peppered throughout the book are full-color and black-and-white photographs that fully instill the picturesque dance into the reader's mind. Founder of one of the first neo-burlesque troupes, author Michelle Baldwin (a.k.a, Vivienne Va-Voom) has helped to bring the lost art of burlesque back to the forefront of pop culture. Baldwin has served as the creative director, choreographer, music director, costumer, financial head, and performer for her troupe, "Burlesque As It Was." Her deep immersion into this art form has provided her with a rare view into the growth and evolution of the revival.

Long regarded as a maudlin mental state, nostalgia is everywhere and has been reimagined as a signifier of good mental health. It is no longer the bailiwick of right-wing reactionaries but a crucible of critical thinking and revolutionary intent. This book explores the revolution in nostalgia and the nostalgia in revolution.

Stripped examines the ways in which erotic bodies communicate in performance and as cultural figures. Focusing on symbols independent of language, Maggie M. Werner explores the signs and signals of erotic dance, audience responses to these codes, and how this exchange creates embodied rhetoric. Informed by her own ethnographic research conducted in strip clubs and theaters, Werner analyzes the movement, dress, and cosmetic choices of topless dancers and neo-burlesque performers. Drawing on critical methods of analysis, she develops approaches for interpreting embodied erotic rhetoric and the marginal cultural practices that construct women’s public erotic bodies. She follows these bodies out into the streets—into the protest spaces where sex workers and anti-rape activists challenge discourses about morality and victimhood and struggle to remake their own identities. Throughout, Werner showcases the voices of these performers and in the analyses shares her experiences as an audience member, interviewer, and paying customer. The result is a uniquely personal and erudite study that advances conversations about women’s agency and erotic performance, moving beyond the binary that views the erotic body as either oppressed or empowered. Theoretically sophisticated and delightfully intimate, Stripped is an important contribution to the study of the rhetoric of the body and to rhetorical and performance studies more broadly.

The Costumes of Burlesque: 1866-2018 is the first volume to inclusively document burlesque costume from its birth in the 1860’s through the global burlesque movement in 2018. This lushly illustrated book presents the history and development of this American art form by documenting the origins, influencers, and genuine articles that created its aesthetic. Showcases of legendary performers, including Lydia Thompson, Gypsy Rose Lee, Sally Rand, Bettie Page, Kitten Natividad, and Dita Von Teese, demonstrate costume styles through the years. This guide gives readers a clear view of how burlesque costume looked and why. It teaches collectors, burlesque performers, and fans alike to recognize vintage pieces for what they are and to design their own costumes with inspiration from the originals. By including detailed costume documentation, over 400 images, and interviews with prominent costume designers such as Catherine D’Lish and Garo Sparo, The Costumes of Burlesque brings 150 years of burlesque costume history to life.

This book is a provocative new study of global feminist activism that opposes neoliberal regimes across several sites including Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America and the United States. The feminist performative acts featured in the book contest the aggressive unravelling of collectively won gains in gender, sexual and racial equality, the appearance of new planes of discrimination, and the social consequences of political economies based on free market ideology. The investigations of affect theory follow the circulation of intensities – of political impingements on bodies, subjective and symbolic violence, and the shock of dispossession – within and beyond individuals to the social and political sphere. Affect is a helpful matrix for discussing the volatile interactivity between performer and spectator, whether live or technologically mediated. Contending that there is no activism without affect, the collection brings back to the table the activist and hopeful potential of feminism.

This book is a collection of essays highlighting different disciplinary, topical, and practical approaches to the study of kink and popular culture. The volume is written by both academics and practitioners, bringing the essays a special perspective not seen in other volumes. Essays included examine everything from Nina Hartley fan letters to kink shibari witches to kink tourism in a South African prison. The focus is not just on kink as a sexual practice, but on kink as a subculture, as a way of living, and as a way of seeing popular culture in new and interesting ways.

This Handbook asks how competition affects the presentation and experience of dance.

Style-based subcultures, scenes and tribes have pulsated through the history of social, economic and political change. From 1940s zoot-suiters and hepcats; through 1950s rock ’n’ rollers, beatniks and Teddy boys; 1960s surfers, rudeboys, mods, hippies and bikers; 1970s skinheads, soul boys, rastas, glam rockers, funksters and punks; on to the heavy metal, hip-hop, casual, goth, rave, hipster and clubber styles of the 1980s, 90s, noughties and beyond; distinctive blends of fashion and music have become a defining feature of the cultural landscape. Research into these phenomena has traversed the social sciences and humanities, and Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change assembles important theoretical interventions and empirical studies from this rich, interdisciplinary field. Featuring contributions from major scholars and new researchers, the book explores the historical and cultural significance of subcultural styles and their related music genres. Particular attention is given to the relation between subcultures and their historical context, the place of subcultures within patterns of cultural and political change, and their meaning for participants, confederates and opponents. As well as Anglo-American developments, the book considers experiences across a variety of global sites and locales, giving reference to issues such as class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, creativity, commerce, identity, resistance and deviance.

The Burlesque Handbook is the essential manual to understanding and performing both classic and neo-burlesque. Written by Jo Weldon, award-winning founder of the New York School of Burlesque, this book features easy-to-follow suggestions and exercises for developing stage-worthy confidence, presence, and sexiness. You'll learn about the fabulous makeup, costumes—including pasties!—moves, grooves, and attitudes of burlesque. The Burlesque Handbook is the must-have guide for everyone interested in this vibrant and wildly popular performance art, providing inspiration and practical information that readers can take straight from the page to the stage!