Bringing the excess and sexiness of the Big Band-era to the present is the hot MegaFlame Big Band and Cabaret’s mission. Jazz music combines with burlesque and torch singers to recreate a Prohibition-era San Francisco. Tonight, they’re playing at San Francisco’s Cafe Du Nord. Luck Be A Lady will feature The Bond Girl and Delilah vamping and camping it up with the Big Band dames and daddies.

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The first ever Australian Burlesque Festival is about to hit everyone Down Under. Over two weekends in June, across Sydney and Melbourne, women (and a few delicious men!) will dress up, dress down and take to the stage in a myriad of costumes in shows which will cross states, venues, classification and mind-frames.

Whether your predilection is for acrobats, aerialists, hilarity, wiggles or giggles, the debut event promises to taunt, tease and titillate your palette. And with a range of international stars, local ladies and burlesque babies, there’s a plethora of talent to choose from. Organised by a team which includes Chaz Royal, the producer of London Burlesque Week, and Australian producers and performers Dolores Daiquiri, Rosy Rabbit and Sapphira, the show has been put together with precision. Could this be the beginning of a beautiful marrying of burlesque productions across the world? I’d twirl my tassels to that!

Illustrator Molly Crabapple is inspired by Victorian culture and the sexy, bawdy world of burlesque. Her illustrations are colourful and erotic, her voluptuous female subjects bursting out of their corsets while eying off the viewer with undisguised lewdness. Having worked on numerous commercial projects, organised her own shows and illustrated several graphic novels, Crabapple also created Dr Sketchy’s Anti-Art School in New York City in 2005.

How fitting! This performance of Star Wars Burlesque, featuring a Stormtrooper striptease by Courtney Cruz, has been on show at the Los Angeles club Bordello, which opened on the site of an old Los Angeles whorehouse. Other characters in the performance include a risque Princess Leia, a sparkling C-3PO, and a rather revealing Jabba the Hutt. [Photos by Shannon Cottrell]

Ok, so I’m a big fan of any show that features sparkles, feathers and nipple tassels. Which explains why I’m so excited about the London Burlesque Festival. Come April, the city will be taken over by scantily clad women, vaudeville acts, dimly lit evening burlesque performances, and more outright wackiness than you can poke an ostrich-feather tickler at. If you’ve never been to a burlesque show before, and are a sucker for a suspender belt flicking or two, get ready for some heavy handed glamour and an experience you’ll never forget. And if you, like me, love an excuse to dress up in full costume and then take it off again to crowds of appreciative fans – raid the London vintage stores now for a costume and apply through the website to put yourself on stage. Applications close 31st December. [photo by Lisa Kereszi]

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