I made my international burlesque debut in the 2023 Montreal Burlesque Festival in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Receiving an invitation to perform in the event was a career long goal (and a fantasy before it became a goal), a true prize in itself. While there, I also received the Lili St. Cyr Award for Best Act. I had never considered this honor would be placed on me, it was the farthest thing from my mind, so it came as a shock and surprise. Even reflecting upon it now, the whole experience seems magical and a little surreal. The experience of the Montreal Burlesque Festival and receiving the Lili St. Cyr Award was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life and will be forever cherished.
I have very mixed feelings about awards. At their worst, they are arbitrary popularity contests and meaningless commercial tokens. At their best, they can be a nice way to recognize someone and communicate a larger appreciation and sentiment. Awards have exactly the value you place on them and will serve you how, or if, you decide to use them. The Lili St. Cyr Award is one of the first awards I value more than, at worst, a shiny prize of validation or, at best, something that will sound good in advertising. This one hit me on a soul level.
Competitions and the thought of being evaluated directly in comparison to others tends to make me sick to my stomach, so I reframe every “competition” in my mind as a “showcase.” The Montreal Burlesque Festival is exactly that – not a competition, but a showcase and celebration of burlesque. The Lili St. Cyr Award, named after the iconic striptuese from the golden era of classic burlesque, is a special recognition bestowed upon one of the performers on opening night by a panel of the esteemed headlining performers that are participating in the Festival that year. It is because this recognition comes from my peers – and with its receipt I feel I can truly call them my peers – that it holds such monumental weight.
Classic burlesque is an endeavor I started in 2020. I have been a “burlesque” performer since 2016, but a very “neo” style of burlesque as a club feature entertainer. Classic burlesque is a very different style. It’s like historical reenactment in a sense. After I set an intention to create a true “classic” burlesque act, it took a couple years to create and polish a piece that was “classic” but still true to myself.
It felt as if I was being told “welcome” with open arms and sincere validation that I didn’t even know I subconsciously needed (wanted?) until I felt it. It was just a beautiful, full feeling that all the work I have put in over the years has been seen. Being seen in burlesque is a conduit for emotion in itself, but being seen IN burlesque BY burlesque is extra special.
I love burlesque so much and to feel the love back is so powerful and moving. As someone who has lacked community and support in much of my life, and who found such beautiful community in burlesque, to feel so welcomed in a broader sense by receiving this award goes deep.
As I returned home with this title, I felt so proud to be bringing it back to the Michigan burlesque scene. What good is a crown that sits on a shelf and only serves the ego? Where does the esteem and meaning of a crown come really from? A “queendom” is only powerful because of the people who recognize it. I know receiving this award will put more eyes on me, and therefore more eyes on Michigan burlesque. That brings me great joy because just as I am being seen, my community deserves to be seen for they have helped build me. The crown is mine, but it is ours.
Lili St. Cyr (1918-1999) was THAT BITCH in the 1940s through the 1950s. One of the highest paid burlesque dancers and actresses on the scene, she was the ultimate glamour and sex symbol. Audiences loved to love her for stardom and scandal, she could easily be considered her generation’s “Kim K.”
She even has a post-mortem cameo in the Christina Aguilera & Cher movie “Burlesque” – she is the woman in the vintage black and white photograph pinned in the mirror when Christina’s character enters the dressing room for the first time. The movie could have chosen to feature ANYONE with that photograph, and they chose Lili St. Cyr. I think that speaks volumes to the icon that she was, and it’s a detail in the movie I absolutely love them for including.
About 4 months prior to the Montreal Burlesque Festival, I visited Los Angeles for the first time. Reading on planes is one of my favorite things and the title I was reading at that time was Goddess of Love Incarnate: The Life of Stripteuse Lili St. Cyr by Leslie Zemeckis. I was in the thick of it, reading about all these iconic places and theaters she performed at, and many of them were in Los Angeles. It painted such a rich picture of a golden era Hollywood. The next day, I was exploring and seeing in person those very places I was reading about. That connection brought the history of the glittering landmarks and buildings amongst the palm trees to life, it was incredible.
Months later it gave me chills to receive an award named after her in Montreal, another city I read about her performing in very often in running big shit on, and to be in the very streets and theaters she graced. The capacity she was there in was burlesque – the same art that continues to give me the world.
“Lili St. Cyr was, in the words of legendary reporter Mike Wallace, the ‘highest paid stripteaser in America.’ Wallace was so fascinated by Lili that out of all the presidents and celebrities he interviewed over a long career, she was the one he remained fixated on. Her beauty had that kind of effect.
Lili led an incredible life—six marriages, romances with Orson Wells, Yul Brenner, Vic Damone, arrests on indecency charges, a number of suicide attempts, all alongside great fame and money. A bigger star than Gypsy Rose Lee, Lili was named one of the world’s ten most beautiful women alongside Ava Gardner and Brigitte Bardot. Yet she lost it all, becoming a recluse in her final decades.
Goddess of Love Incarnate is the definitive biography of this legendary figure, done with the cooperation of Lili’s only surviving sister. But the book does more than fascinate readers with stories of a bygone era; it reveals that behind the g-strings and the pasties stood a ‘complicated, eccentric, brilliant’ woman, much loved and little understood. As an award winning documentary filmmaker and writer, Leslie Zemeckis restores Lili to her rightful place in American history in a way no other writer could.”
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Learn more about the History of Burlesque:
Behind the Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America
by Leslie Zemeckis
Burlesque: A Living History
by Jane Briggeman
The Costumes of Burlesque: 1866-2018
by Coleen Scott
