Main take-aways from my Vegas trip, in no particular order...

[usernamenumber]

1. I've enjoyed the trip, but I think Vegas, or at least the strip, is just not my kind of town (says the guy who doesn't drink, gamble, eat meat or get Disney Land, so... what a shock).
2. Totally loved the Akamai conference. Got to meet lots of cool customers and co-workers, and give demos of some awesome visualizations of our network (which continues to blow me away with how complex and badass it is), which gave me a fix of what I used to get from teaching. Nothing like starting out talking to one person and ending up drawing a crowd with a cool presentation. Also, parties with live bands, stiltwalkers, hoopers, and aerial silks.
3. If you ever find your self with after-hours access to a convention booth with a 90" screen, it is time for movie night.
4. The Cirque Du Soleil show Zumanity is way more umm... explicit than I'd expected (but cheaper than their other shows, starting at $69. Har har), and I have some issues to unpack with regard to attending burlesque shows. It's still Cirque, though, and has some amazing performances.
5. If you are ever in Vegas, holy crap see the Jabawockeez show at the Monte Carlo. It combines mime, hip-hop dance, comedy, and AV spectacle into the best time I've had in a theater in a long time. Seriously, I would totally go back tomorrow if I was still in town and could get a group together to go with me. Sadly this video doesn't really do it justice, but it's a start.

...now to sleep, work the booth for another few hours in the morning, rush to the airport, fly from 11am Vegas time to 11pm Boston time, go home, hug M, sleep (optional), get up, drive to the middle of nowhere, and spend the rest of the weekend helping to wrap up an amazing multi-year long larp.

I might not survive, but I aim to have a damn good time doing it anyway.  

Comments

[laurion]

As a frequent crewmember of an area burlesque troupe I'd love to hear more of your thoughts. Talk my ear off.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

Sorry I've taken so long to get back to you on this.

Just to be clear, my reaction isn't a judgement thing about burlesque-- well, mostly not, at least. there's always a bit of stigma from my upbringing that informs things in subtle ways, but...

While I still haven't untangled all of it, I think I can break my reaction down into three main components:

• There's something about being a passive, public spectator of erotic performances that makes me uncomfortable. Suffice it to say that there are... other situations in which I can quite enjoy watching eroticism, but the experience is not something I'm comfortable sharing with the random person sitting next to me, which leads to...


• Being part of an audience for that sort of thing really triggers my knee-jerk "don't do what the crowd is doing" response, and I find myself actively not *wanting* to get turned on-- and when I do I alternate between feeling taken advantage of and feeling like I'm a total sketchball taking advantage of the people on stage so fast it makes my head spin. I'm aware that neither makes sense when held up to scrutiny, but they're both still there.


• And the last big reason I can point to is just that, for me, sex doesn't mix well with other things when I'm a spectator (being a participant is a different story). To put it bluntly, if I want to be turned on, I can look at porn. If I want to watch someone dance, do a circus act, or whatever, I would prefer to just watch that. When combined, the two are more likely to distract from one another than complement one another for me.

[laurion]

That's fair. I too would be uncomfortable in cases of erotica like that. I think, I think you might be a little surprised by burlesque though. Yes, there is striptease, yes there is innuendo, but little of what I've seen would be strongly classified as erotica. It -isn't- about sex, in general. It -is- flirting with the taboo of the human body though.

And it is celebrating the human body. I've seen people of all shapes, sizes, and ages (above 18) performing. But it is no more salacious (and often less so) than what you'd find in a hollywood movie. The tensions are less about sex and more about how much they'll show, and when, and how. With the clear acceptance on both sides that they'll never show it all - this is burlesque, not erotic dancing, a topless bar, etc.

And dance or circus acts don't have the striptease, which, it turns out, is an artform in and of itself. I've found myself admiring the way a person removes a glove, or the artistic choices as to when in the song to remove a stocking, and how.

Now, of course, I can't speak to all burlesque, and most of my experience has been with 'retro' burlesque, of the sort performed in the first half of the 20th century, and I suspect that modern burlesque, much like that Cirque show, tends to inject more eroticism in the day and age of internet porn.

And I think if you were to go see the current Wrathskellar production, for instance, you'd probably have a positive reaction to the experience.

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in your thoughts on burlesque, too, because I have some issues with it myself. It's complicated.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

i think they're mostly summed up in my response to laurion above, but I would love to have a conversation about it some time. Ask me the next time we get the chance! :)