THE PASTY POSTULANT: Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting Miss Dee Flowered!

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THE PASTY POSTULANT: Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting Miss Dee Flowered!

POSTED: Wednesday, March 24, 2010, 9:15 PM

Emily Currier

Emily's burlesque outfit. You'll have to wait
for the video to see how she looks in it.

We sent admittedly shy Emily Currier to Annie A-Bomb's Philadelphia School of Burlesque at the Walking Fish Theatre to learn about the vaudevillian art form. Each week, she'll file a report of her progress from the tasseled and bedazzled frontlines. Catch up on Emily's first, second and third adventures.

Shopping for a burlesque costume is a bit like a scavenger hunt, taking you from hardware, craft and fabric stores to stripper-wear stores on South Street. At the fabric store, I pick up a few yards of tulle, as I tell the shop owner, to make a bridal veil. He practically tears up at the idea and wishes me luck in my new life on the way out the door. Sorry, shop owner (and parents), at this rate I'll sooner see a stripper pole than a wedding aisle. At the stripper-wear store, all the workers are eager to help me. What, does it look like I don't know what I'm doing? Bitch please, I'm practically a professional.

And then, a funny thing happened on the way to the burlesque performance ... I am running late, anyway, and decide to take a new route to save time. Naturally, I get hideously lost. I ask a reasonably trustworthy-looking fellow if I'm going the right way to reach Frankford Ave. "No ... It's actually the exact opposite direction." After he explains the directions to me, as if I were a child, he warns, "Be careful." Now half an hour late, I'm practically sprinting and still manage to get catcalled by several bleary-eyed old men. By the time I reach the Walking Fish, my cheeks are fire engine red, I'm sweating through my shirt and have worked up a nice musky odor. Boys, get ready for me!

Backstage, it's all tits and liquor. "Now don't drink too much that you get wobbly and fall down," Ruby advises me maternally. On my long list of fears, falling down is chief among them, but there's also not being able to get my dress off, missing my music cues, having my pasties fall off, projectile vomiting ...

Anna/Annie A-Bomb is dressed as a disapproving nun and clucks her tongue at us "naughty girls" as an introduction to the show. For only three girls, the night features a diverse range of performances. Ruby Cheex takes the sensible comedic route, pouting and strutting as a picked-on schoolgirl. Leaving feathers in her wake, Sadie VonSinna works "woos" from the crowd as a zombie.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting Miss Dee ... Flowered!"

(That's right, I have no shame left.)

Last on the bill, my mind is basically frozen with fear as I come on stage. As the opening chords of Bat for Lashes' "What's a Girl to Do" play, the dead bride routine I've rehearsed over and over comes to me as a fight-or-flight response. I rise from the grave and sashay down the aisle, clothes are removed and surprisingly I don't get tangled in anything. I try to ignore the audience of unrecognizable and mostly silent strangers when I'm down to my stockings and lingerie... then just my lingerie ... and then it's just me, my veil, my panties and pasties and oblivion.

My burlesque odyssey has come to an end, and what have we learned? Am I a newly empowered and confident young woman now? Let's not get too carried away. I did enjoy myself more than expected and I take away some new clothes-shedding buddies, the knowledge that a group of strangers has witnessed me shaking my ta-tas and my very own pair of pasties.

Stay Tuned for a video of Emily's performance.

Interested in learning le art of burlesque? E-mail Anna Frangiosa (better known as Annie A-Bomb) at afrangio [at] yahoo [ dot] com for more information about and dates of her upcoming one-day workshops and four-week classes. Want to see some titties twirling, but not your own? Visit cabaretredlight.com for the dates of their ongoing show "The Experiment."

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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