Whether you’re unlucky in love or in a relationship, Cardiff Cabaret Club are helping audiences celebrate
FOR many, Valentine’s Day conjures up feelings of warmth and excitement, mini-breaks and candlelit dinners.
For the more cynical, however, never-ending displays of heart-shaped cards or foil-wrapped chocolates, can conjure up feelings of dread.
Cardiff Cabaret Club is looking to cater to all those fed up with romance this Friday, with their sold-out Anti-Valentine’s Burlesque.
“There’s a lot of people who aren’t in relationships, or maybe are in relationships and aren’t in love. Life’s hard and let’s not pretend it’s not. We can still have a good time,” said club founder Stephanie Gawne.
The show at the cabaret venue at Wales Millennium Centre will feature the troupe’s unique burlesque mayhem and marks the first time the group will perform alongside headliners Eva Von Schippisch, and mime performer Enrico Touché.
“It’s a smorgasbord. There’s something for everyone,” said the burlesque performer.
The show goes far beyond the traditional idea of the “beautified Hollywood starlet dressed to the nines”, encompassing the wide range of acts that makes British cabaret and burlesque unique.
“Burlesque means satire. It’s everything. There’s good, bad and indifferent and excellent. There’s so many different genres. I think what audiences love, especially British audiences, is pastiche and comedy burlesque,” said Ms Gawne.
The cabaret club challenges audience expectations. It has staged anti-Christmas events, and even “celebrated the resurrection of burlesque” on Easter Sunday.
It is this willingness to challenge and have fun that has kept audiences returning to watch the club over its 18-year history.
“When we started it was quite an underground movement, it felt quite niche,” Ms Gawne said.
The group has appeared across the Welsh capital at The Coal Exchange, regular appearances at the WMC and even the Masonic Hall. This year it is a finalist in the Cardiff Life Awards.
A trained belly dancer and showgirl, Ms Gawne has performed all over the world, from Hong Kong to Sweden’s National Circus.She has had money showered over her in the clubs of San Francisco.
She started the group in 2007 and began teaching burlesque to help balance her career as a performer alongside life as a single mum.
After a few months the troupe performed its first show, Return to Fanny Street, to a small but packed audience at the now closed 10 Feet Tall.
She describes her burlesque persona, Foo Foo LaBelle, as “a massive drag character”.
Foo Foo performs dressed as a caterpillar, does a parody of The Terminator and even plays pass the parcel with a marrow (an item of clothing is removed each time the music stops).
Of her courses at Chapter Arts Centre, Ms Gawne said:“With Cardiff Cabaret Club the community is the legacy. Everybody’s welcome. We teach whoever comes through the door.”
The workshop sessions culminate in a performance.Through the shared experiencing of performing and rehearsing a community is created, said Ms Gawne.
“People have come out of abusive relationships, we’ve had cancer treatments, we’ve had deaths in the group, we’ve had babies in the group and I know that the support and the networking and friendships that have been formed, that’s the legacy.”
‘It’s all about connecting with different people’
That sense of community extends to audiences.
“There is quite a loyal band of people that just follow us around, it’s great,” said the founder.
This is in part because of the way that burlesque breaks the fourth wall.
“There’s an immediacy to it. It’s a lot more tangible, the relationship between the audience and the performers. It’s connecting with different people.”
Ms Gawne fondly remembers when two elderly women came along thinking they were about to watch a pantomime. By the end of the night they were chatting away to performers in the troupe.
“We are all fundamentally the same. We all enjoy ourselves, we all see the beauty and comedy in something.
“Together we can make the world better by having this understanding and having this shared experience watching this ridiculous art form unfold. It’s riotous and its joyous and we’re celebrating bodies and creativity,” she said.
- Look out for The Cardiffian’s coverage of Cardiff Cabaret Club’s sold-out show on Friday.
- Photos and video of past shows and details of upcoming performances and opportunities can be found on:
- Tickets for the group’s Burlesque March Madness are available now.
