The Boston Babydolls

To the untrained eye, burlesque looks simple: girls with ridiculous stage names dance on stage to provocative music, wearing tight clothing that they eventually take off.’ Couple that with a man dressed in a bright red suit moving these girls on and off stage. Any post-pubescent boy perks up with excitement: it’s a strip club!

But burlesque, by definition, isn’t stripping. The music isn’t electronic, there’s no spinning pole onstage, the man in red isn’t a pimp and no no-no places make an appearance.

In burlesque, the music is old jazz, the stage is set for each scene with lavish props and the man in red only exists because he is a character. Sure, both strip clubs and burlesque shows feature women flaunting their assets, but burlesque, as any sequined dancer is quick to point out, is art.

MAKING THE DOLLS

The Boston Babydolls is Boston’s premiere burlesque troupe, revealing themselves to the Hub since 1995.’ The Babydolls began when Miss Mina, a Connecticut prep school and Ivy League graduate, began putting on burlesque shows in bars and needed a hand with management and production. That is when she found Ol’ Scratch.

‘ Scratch is the Babydolls’ manager, stage crew, director and accountant. He even acts as the narrator for their shows. He is what makes the shows happen on and off stage.’ After his shows with Mina grew, so did their need for more girls.

Along the way the Babydolls found five more topless-fun-loving members. Originally the other girls were just a way to give Mina time for costume changes, but they have grown into burlesque stars in their own right.

Betty Blaize has always been a performer and choreographer.’ Dainty Melons is a former schoolteacher.’ Honey Do is a lifelong ballet, tap and jazz dancer.’ Joy De Vie is a contortionist and circus performer. Ruby Von Vaughn Vaughn began as a merchandise-selling volunteer for the Babydolls and now appears scantily clad on stage.

ON WITH THE SHOW

The Babydolls produce shows for different holidays. Their most recent Valentine’s Day revue was ‘Unlucky in Love’ about a man (played by Scratch) who is trying to write an epic love story where the girls represent different types of love.

The Babydolls’ scenes ranged from ironic and comical to emotional and passionate, sometimes moving from genre to genre without rhyme or reason. In one scene, a dancer may run around stage, creating a comedy of errors as props fall and break, other props light on fire and her dress falls to pieces, but can be followed by an emotional scene in which we watch a woman through a prop window, dancing through her bedroom as the music blares.

Image and story are key, Scratch said. ‘Music enhances the story, and no stories are exactly the same.’

Each dance presents a story and emotion from the performer to the audience, and in the Babydolls’ case different kinds of love, but overall, when the music ends and the girls are in underwear and pasties, the audience realizes that the show is not to be taken too seriously.

A TWIRL OF THE TASSEL

In an attempt to prove the point that dancing can be emotional but also very, very funny, burlesque reinvented the tassel. Recent high school graduates associate tassels with cardboard hats and getting a degree, burlesque looks at the world differently.

More advanced (and better endowed) dancers put tassels on their pasties. The performer gives a slight shoulder shimmy and the tassel twirls, and then it’s impossible to be serious. Burlesque does draw that line – equal parts art, emotion and boobs.

‘I’m going try some day to light my tassels on fire,’ said Honey Do.

Still, comedy plays a big part in many burlesque numbers.

‘We love Monty Python, the Marx Brothers,’ said Ruby Von Vaughn Vaughn. The influence was seen throughout the show.

Comedic numbers never shied away from making people laugh as girls performed stripteases, even using nudity to be funny.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

‘ ‘I don’t sleep with the girls. At least, not anymore,’ Scratch insists. He is the only man in the troupe and sees the girls perform daily.

Scratch does, however, play a big part in the production of each dance, scene and show.

‘What happens is that the girls see something inspiring,’ Scratch said, ‘and they come running to me saying ‘Scratch, I have this idea!’ and a scene is born.’

Not surprisingly, music plays an integral part in creating -and staging – a scene. ‘I look for a lot of stuff from the same time period – we call it the golden age that never existed,’ said Scratch. ‘We look for a lot of stuff from the 30s and 40s, or stuff that sounds like it. We don’t use anything straightforward, like Motown.’

Honey Do agreed that music is king in burlesque. ‘We love all of our songs,’ she said. ‘If the numbers were only okay, the show would be a mess.’

‘We’ll be listening to a song and suddenly have an image,’ Ruby Von Vaughn Vaughn said. ‘and we’ll create a scene from it.’

Burlesque all about the ridiculous. However, it’s easy to get carried away.

‘I’m also the architect of my own demise,’ Scratch said. ‘All of the insane props you see on stage were built by me. I’m always saying ‘how hard can it be?’ and getting myself into trouble.’

The costumes work in much the same way. ‘We have several costume designers, one of whom is my mother,’ said Honey Do, ‘and [the costumes] take many months to put together.’

About the number in which the dancer’s dress is supposed to fall apart, Honey Do quipped: ‘It took us months to put together a dress that was basically supposed to fall apart on stage.’

‘ ‘We all made a pact to get at least one other talent that we can do on stage,’ said Miss Mina. ‘We’re going to try to put everything into one show eventually.’

Throughout the show, girls displayed these talents: there were a number of scenes in which one of the girls sang, performed magic or juggled. Miss Mina, not to be outdone, performed a number in which she completed a striptease while hula hooping.

All of the girls seemed to shrug off the onstage nudity involved in their jobs, because it is something that they love to do and share with the audience.

‘I actually had a wardrobe malfunction one night,’ said Honey Do. ‘Both of my pasties fell off, and the etiquette for a situation like that in burlesque is to cover yourself with one arm and keep going, but I didn’t know that it had happened, so I kept dancing normally. I walked off stage wondering if I had done really well, because everyone was so excited!’

WHY THEY DO IT

Even with the looming threat of wardrobe malfunctions, the girls look forward to every opportunity they get to show some skin.

‘Do I wake up every morning dreading having to take off my clothes later that night?” said Joy de Vie. ‘No.’ It’s more like ‘oh, yay, I get to take my clothes off tonight!”

The girls like to keep their lives offstage very separate from their tassel – twirling nights.

‘We’ve always operated under the assumption that what we do during the day is not nearly as interesting as what we do at night,’ Scratch said. Pointing to his right, Scratch smirked: ‘But Betty here works for the government.’

Betty grinned. ‘I’ve got security clearance,’ she said.

Like Betty, none of the girls are to be trifled with: out of the six performers, five have at least one advanced degree, said Scratch, laughing. ‘We’ve been called the smartest troupe in burlesque.’