Do you celebrate Valentine’s Day in a special way, either personally or professionally, within burlesque?  

I love a romantic moment any day with my partner. And for some reason valentines feels like a red wine holiday. This year I’ll be dancing at the Fleur de Tease Valentines Revue at Tipitinas! 💘

Burlesque is often an art of transformation. How has it changed the way you understand and experience love—not just in relationships, but in how you give and receive love in your everyday life?

Beyond the obvious cultivating of self-love, Burlesque has also taught me that it’s all about the energy exchange. Sometimes it’s there. Sometimes you gotta give a lot more because there ain’t much there. And sometimes it’s funky. But you can work with what you got while still maintaining your own and raising that around you.

Have you ever had a performance that felt like an act of love, whether for a partner, an audience, or even your past self? What did that moment reveal to you?  

Yes. Some acts, well songs really, it’s the song that’s the glue. Some songs just fit people and moments like puzzle pieces. I have an act I do now that was a love letter. They’re no longer in my life and doing that act is reliving our desire and tender moments and devotion all over again in front of an audience. Those acts, those moments are time machines. It’s heartbreaking all over again. But it’s a lesson for me on time being nonlinear. Past, present, future all running parallel and simultaneously. You can never outrun yourself.

 Burlesque celebrates both illusion and truth. Do you find that performing allows you to express love in a way that feels more real than in other areas of life? Why or why not?  

Ya know, I think they’re separate. I think that my expressions of love in other areas of my life are less performative so I’m having trouble with the how performing allows me to express love. It’s an act of love. I guess we’re bringing the audience joy or the story we want to tell or the feelings we want to invoke and that’s giving a gift in a way. In some ways you can challenge an audience member’s previously held beliefs when they come into your show and experience a moment of clarity. OK so now that I’m now that I am considering it more yes there is definitely a connection between performing and expressing love.

If burlesque could rewrite the cultural script about love, what new myths would you want it to tell?  

Oh, the cultural script about love? Which cultural script of the many scripts? In some ways I feel like love has really gone the way of yoga and organic juices and eat pray love. Lol But the myth I would want to infuse would be a myth about a garden. Love is Not always flowers. You have to get on your knees and till the soil and dig up roots and prune dead branches. To love is to attend a garden. Yours or somebody else’s or maybe the garden is all of ours and we’re all tending it together.

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