Stripped Bare

Queer cuties, pack your pasties

The word “burlesque” carries some heavy heterosexual baggage: flashes of the (godawful) Christina Aguilera romance or Dita Von Teese splashing around a champagne glass come quickly to mind. But Audrey Huang, troupe mom and co-founder of the queer performance group Quiver and Tempt Society and the maestra behind Wise Fool’s Queer Burlesque class, wants to shift that narrative.

“I get a lot of AFAB people feeling slightly off about their femininity, and they come to this class hoping to learn to be sexy—but not in a feminine way,” Huang tells SFR.

However, she also hopes her workshops offer something that’s missing in the wider local performance community—a safe space for newcomers to play.

“There’s not a whole lot of opportunities in New Mexico to practice your craft until you want to jump into the deep end of [performing],” she says. “My goal at the end of six weeks is that someone should be able to roughly improvise one and a half minutes that they feel good about.”

That means classes aren’t routine-centric. Instead, each session is tailored to the folks who show up, guiding them as they explore a performing persona. And the radical ethos behind the course is arguably even more important than its content.

“I’m not being inclusive—I’m centering,” Huang clarifies. “I’m not interested in queer gatekeeping. [Students] both get to witness someone in their power and be witnessed in theirs.”

That experience of being seen can produce some powerful shifts in how attendees view themselves outside the classroom, too.

“One of my troupe members was classically trained in ballet,” Huang recalls. “I remember running rehearsals, I just kept telling them, ‘You’re doing the ballet thing. Your movements are great, but this is about bringing your energy, your motion, your fun to life—not about executing movements right.’ I remember the moment that clicked. Several months later they’ve had this entire gender journey, they go by a different name, they’ve incorporated aspects of what they found on the stage into their personal identity.”

So if you’re feeling curious about your relationship with yourself, try stripping some layers off with Audrey—you never know what you might find underneath.

(Siena Sofia Bergt)

QUEER BURLESQUE WITH AUDREY

7:15 pm Tuesday, Feb. 21

$22 drop-in or $108 for a six-week session

Wise Fool New Mexico, 1131 B Siler Road (505) 992-2588