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Photo by Flashes and Lashes |
You
are a burlesque performer, tell us more about the character Rose Desire and
where the name comes from?
I chose Rose
as its French for pink and I have a lot of pink in my sleeve tattoo, something
that makes me stand out and I also wanted a name that can be
used and recognised as an actual name. In the burlesque
‘industry’ we’re referred to as our stage names, our real names
are often a mystery which I find adds to the character and the
whole idea of being that alter ego on stage – the audience always want
more, but can only have what you give them. A seductive circle
perhaps?! Desire was originally thought up as Desire-Belle for a play on
the word desirable, but I felt and found that this didn’t work as intended and
so it was kept short and sweet to Rose Desire.
Photo by Flashes and Lashes |
When
did you get into burlesque and why?
I’ve always
admired the pin up and burlesque world for as long as I can remember
but didn’t have the self confidence. And then a lot of things changed
and in 2008 I delved into some classes
and started researching it in more depth and creating costumes.
I started performing on my own in 2010. I never get tired on burlesque; it’s always
reinventing itself and developing with more varied and unique performances. I
can endlessly watch burlesque and gaze at the costumes and get lost in the
story of the act. You can’t help but get lost in the magic of it.
Photo by Flashes and Lashes |
Where do you get inspiration for your acts?
This can
happen in so many different ways. You can get inspiration from music,
movies, fashion and everyday things. My Surprise act came to me when
I joked about being able to fit in a large box at work (I’m quite
petite) and the idea of a jack in the box/present like act came to me.
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Photo by Flashes and Lashes |
Sometimes,
you can hear a piece of music and hear the story of a new
act evolving from it and see it happening in your mind. Whenever a
new idea comes to me I quickly put pen to paper and jot it down. I have quite a
few scribbles in my filofax. I love it when I get excited about a new act
idea.
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Photo by Flashes and Lashes |
Do you have a
burlesque icons?
So many! As
much as the burlesque stars of now amaze and inspire me, I tend to find a
lot of the classic burlesque enthralling. I can spend just as many,
if not more hours gazing at their costumes in the books of black and
white photographs I have as I do the modern, colour images. I love
performers such as Blaze starr, Lili St Cyr, …the list can go on.
Photo by Flashes and Lashes |
Any
secrets or back stage gossip?
There’s always
advice and passing of information floating around,
keeping each other in the loop and networking of course. I’ve
made some great friends in burlesque and I love being on the bill with them
again as its like a friendly catch up. I’ve been able to go on some burly road
trips, a car full of us off to perform somewhere together. Even as well as just
sitting in our pj’s after the night before chatting
the weekend away or going out and sipping cocktails.
It's a lot of fun and never gets boring.
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Photo by Martyn Boston |
Any secrets…?
Hmm they would be secrets if I told them now would they!? But in all seriousness the only secrets that we tend to keep are new act/costume ideas and any bookings we can’t announce yet. But of course that is all for the benefit of the stage and you get to see it all in the end.
Hmm they would be secrets if I told them now would they!? But in all seriousness the only secrets that we tend to keep are new act/costume ideas and any bookings we can’t announce yet. But of course that is all for the benefit of the stage and you get to see it all in the end.
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Photo by Grace Elkin |
Making
costumes is a big part of being a performer, on average how long does one
costume take to make? How many hours do you spend a night embellishing?
Soo many
hours! I guess if you include everything from the initial
idea sketches and then taking them to the stage, I don’t think any
performer could say, but it’s a lot. To ensure no detail is left out and
sourcing the right items to sewing and then choreographing can take
at least a few months. And its not even over once its on
stage because until you perform it to a live audience for the first
time you don’t ever really know if its going to work how you want to and
so there’salways tweaking after shows to ensure a garment comes off
exactly how you want it to and perhaps move a few things. In my
experience, nothing happens on stage how it happens when rehearsing.
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Photo by Ralph Barker |
You
are a full time vintage glamour dame, you dress 50s vintage in your ‘real’ life
too. What is your favourite out fit to wear?
Argh, this
is hard! My favourite vintage pieces I have to say is probably my
yellow circle skirt and my yellow summer dress, its too hard to chose, I have
some nice pieces.
I also have a
LOT of BBKC favourites of course, as they’re exactly what I
dream of wearing. My glitter leopard wiggle dress my beau ordered for me
when he was overseas for 7 months and knew I had my eye on the fabric
and my tiki dress, I love tiki, are my top favourites though.
What’s
the weirdest venue you have had to perform in?
This one
is easy; I didn’t happen too long ago and was one of our burly road
trips. I’d been booked along with Foxie La Roque, LuLu
Belle Ferrari to perform for a World War German
re-enactment group. This entailed us getting changed in a world war
tin hut, which had a furnace in which we stocked with wood to keep warm and
turned out to be the warmest and most spacious changing room I’ve ever had! We
then had to trapes in our somewhat minimal costumes (especially
my fan dance) guided by a torch in muddy gravel into another small
tin hut which encased about 20 WW2 German soldiers (just to clarify these
weren’t Nazi soldiers or continued anything of the sort otherwise I wouldn’t
have been able to take part) anyone who knows me personally, will know
this is very, very strange for me and opposite to my working life – let
alone for the other girls. We then had a small and intimate space to
perform in and it felt a bit like a stag party, being an audience consisting of
only men. But to be fair to them, they were lively and loud which is
exactly what a performer wants. It was a very strange, funny and unique
experience. But thanks to our super star stage maid Soozie Floozie everything
went so well and it was actually a lot of fun and the guys, once they’d calmed
down, we really lovely. We all said it was hands down the weirdest ever
place to perform at but it was so much fun and we all had a giggle :)
Check out Rose Desire on Facebook, twitter, blog and instagram. For bookings check our her website
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Photo by Flashes and Lashes |
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