Visit Our other Sites

The Sugar Blue Blog

Welcome to the church of sin in Mardi Gras Tease – Perth Now – 20th February 2012

Posted 21st February, 2012 by

Welcome to the church of sin in Mardi Gras Tease

  • by: Sarah Dunstan 
  • From: PerthNow 
  • February 20, 2012 3:30PM
Mardi Gras Tease

Sugar Blue Burlesque presents Mardi Gras Tease. Source: PerthNow

SUGAR Blue Burlesque welcomes you into their gospel church of sin, complete with faith healing and many a ‘praise boobies.’ After being passed complimentary hankies, the ‘Shrove Tuesday’ inspired celebration of song and dance begins.

Decked out in their Sunday best, two faith-crazed, church-going women perform a highly energetic dance that cleverly includes hands of prayer. You almost expect a live snake to be brought on stage, or somebody to start speaking in tongues – though just as exciting events are about to unfold on stage.

The Americana theme continues throughout Sugar Blue’s production, in all hues. There is a cream cake petticoated, parasol-toting lass who quickly overheats in front of some straw-chewing hicks and has to undress down to her shimmering bustier and silky bloomers. Another “Southern belle” performs a Tom Waits song on ukelele in a prom dress and crystal slippers. There are heavily pregnant rednecks playing the banjo and a strong-man with a Southern drawl and tiny animal print shorts, as well as the regular burlesque trappings like sexy washer-women and hula hooping pixie cut vixens.

In perhaps the most thought-provoking and stunning routine, an androgynous figure dressed like the New Orleans voodoo deity Baron Samedi appears in a haze of incense to restore “the Spirit of Jazz.” With a skull-like face, long dreadlocks and a black suit, this dance routine involves fire-eating, a little help from two frightening voodoo spirits in dark body suits and eventually a demure strip-tease down to a glittering bralet.

Also particularly inventive was a ballet-burlesque fusion routine influenced by the Mexican Day of the Dead festival performed by two skull-faced dancers wrapped in roses and camellias and donning cherry red slippers.

Sugar Blue truly engages the audience with this light-hearted mardi gras, the energy continuing well until after the performance in the Spiegeltent has ended, with all the performers bidding the audience adieu outside. It is the little extras, like being constantly blessed in a tongue-in-cheek way, and the attention to detail in the immaculate costumes that makes this performance a treat for the audience. As the host, dressed in garish white like a televangelist, proclaims: “You will be SAVED!”

Site by Clever Starfish