Comic Strip
A new wave of ‘nerdlesque’ style burlesque troupes like The Geekenders are taking the stage using pop culture to challenge views about women, identity and body image through performance SARAH ROSE Features Editor
Before the doors open and a storm of spotlights and glitter descend on the Rio Theatre, 30-year-old Fairlith Harvey takes a moment to sit down and prepare. She muses on the past seven years of work as the executive director of The Geekenders, a burlesque troupe where the acts are as comedic and warm as they are sexy. “It’s like a club of friends,” Harvey says with a smile, her hazel eyes always finding their way back to the stage. Below her, Belle from Beauty and the Beast is getting ready for tonight. His beard has almost as much glitter as his delicate rose corset and lace stockings. They’re grateful to rehearse here instead of the church basement they were in earlier. Vancouver has a limited number of available spaces, at high costs. But tonight, she’s just here to do what she does best: perform. Showtime creeps closer and the last of the eager patron’s trickle in from the brisk November rain in search of a rare last-minute seat. A sexy stormtrooper and Luke from Star Wars come on to wet the audience’s appetite with a short comedy routine. “May the floss be with you,” the stormtrooper says in a final send-off before the stage empties and the band strikes a tune. Bathed in garish fuchsia lights, Trixie Hobbitses offers a coy wink as she glides across the stage. Her 5’9” frame is like a painting of glitter and fishnets with a Harley Quinninspired diamond tattoo peeking out from her right shoulder. Trixie artfully peels off a handmade sequined aquamarine gown, offering expert shimmies and spins to the beat of the seventeen-piece big band (of Capilano music program alumni) playing “The Scare Floor.” Her mom claps along in her favourite seat, four rows back on the aisle. Of the hundreds of characters Trixie’s embodied in lingerie over the years, tonight, she’s Scully from Disney’s Monster’s Inc. In the final bars of her number, the adhesive holding her pasties gives way unexpectedly, unpredictable in the way people and bodies can be. Bare chested, the spirited Trixie dances as Scully with the kind of confidence that only comes from a woman who knows she is anything but a monster. The routine concludes to a 410-seat full house of roaring applause that waxes but hardly ever wanes for the rest of the two-hour performance. 44
Before she takes the stage tonight as Trixie Hobbitses, Fairlith Harvey is the woman in the unicorn onesie and red glittering bra behind the scenes of Vancouver’s pop-culture burlesque sensation: The Geekenders. The Vancouver native never imagined when she left for New York that her ideas would transform Vancouver’s members-only burlesque scene. At 18, Harvey studied musical theatre at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, the alma mater of Grammy-winning artists like Janelle Monae. A kindred spirit to her Dirty Computer alumni, Harvey brought home a dream of redefining what it meant to be a woman onstage. In six years, The Geekenders shimmied their way from an underground club show, Geeks After Dark, to the shortlist for the Georgia Straight’s ‘Best of Vancouver’ for three consecutive years. This year, several regular cast members held best actor nominations from Broadway World Vancouver. Their overnight success in a city that had never seen anything like it before was unprecedented – and rare. Harvey runs a hand through her waterfall of pink and purple hair. “Every show could be our last,” she says. “That means we always try to make things as good as they possibly can be.” For the last decade, as the conventional strip club fades, burlesque has had a quiet renaissance. At the same time, Harvey’s self-dubbed ‘nerdlesque’ shows have also emerged on the scene. She can’t say exactly what the magic ingredient is, but she knows the formula draws deep from the historical, political roots of burlesque. The Geekenders nerdlesque brand uses pop culture as the medium to explore identity through performance. “It’s a political act to love myself on stage,” Harvey says. The Geekenders now have an agreement with the Rio to use the space, but Harvey adds, “we had to prove ourselves.” The proof came in the form of her first feature: a vaudeville style routine of the first Star Wars movie where she says The Geekenders had their lightning in a bottle moment. “We sold out four shows immediately, we had to turn away over 200 people at the door, ” she says, reminiscing. Rio owner Corinne Lee credits part of the Rio’s rescue
