Burlesque to Broadway: Kay Meek Centre Fundraising Gala, Friday, June 5, 7 p.m. at Kay Meek Centre, 1700 Mathers Ave., West Vancouver. Tickets: $139, available at kaymeekcentre.com or by calling 604-981-6335.
Feathers will be flying, sequins will be sparkling and double entendres will be in heavy supply when Quinn Lemley and her troupe of backup divas shimmy into West Vancouver next week.
Direct from New York City, they will be performing Burlesque to Broadway, a musical revue with a theatrical twist that pays tribute to some of America's most iconic female performers.
"It's a wonderful celebration of the women who went from burlesque to Broadway and beyond," Lemley says. "A lot of these women have shape-shifted culture as we know it today. People like Mae West with her humour and her sensuality, Sally Rand with her fans, Cher, Bette Midler, Fanny Brice with her humour and her fabulous torch songs."
Lemley's variety show is the mainstage event at this year's Kay Meek Centre Fundraising Gala, which will also include a reception, desserts and a raffle. The red-headed vocalist and her divas will be accompanied by a 10-piece big band playing everything from Broadway show tunes to RB favourites. Standout numbers for Lemley include a feathered fan dance to "When You've Got it, Flaunt it" from The Producers, "Boom Boom" by John Lee Hooker, "She's a Lady" by Tom Jones, and the classic "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" by Cole Porter. With orchestral arrangements by Steve Rawlins, choreography by David Eggers, and eight cases of costumes designed by Wendall Goings, each routine has a completely different flavour.
While Burlesque to Broadway celebrates all things glitzy and glamourous, it also pays homage to the powerful women beneath the elaborate getups, big hair and heavy makeup.
"A lot of these women that were coming out of the '20s, '30s and '40s, they were working people that used their imagination and their creativity to really become legends and to earn a living at a time when women didn't really work," Lemley says.
Between songs, jokes and dances, she will share pieces of real history along with stories of her own journey to showbiz success, beginning with her early years in the American Midwest. "I think I came out of the womb being a performer," she says with a laugh. She studied opera in Bordeaux, France, and attended Interlochen Centre for the Arts in Michigan and Tisch School of the Arts at NYU before focusing her career on Broadway, jazz and the Great American Songbook.
Lemley developed an interest in the burlesque genre while starring as Rita Hayworth in the tribute concert The Heat is On! In the 1946 film noir Gilda, Hayworth's femme fatale character famously sings "Put the Blame on Mame" in a black strapless Jean Louis gown and matching gloves.
"It's really one of the sexiest moments in classic celluloid because it's a strip tease and all she does it take off one glove," Lemley says. "It's such a beautiful, classic dance. And that kind of got me interested in the whole burlesque movement." She emphasizes, though, that while Burlesque to Broadway draws on the humour, music, dance and scanty costuming of the burlesque movement, it is not a strip show.
"This is beautiful, it's elegant, it's about female empowerment, it's about using your mind and your imagination and going on a journey." After five years of performing her act all over North America, Lemley has a pretty good idea what people want to see. "We've developed it in front of the audience and so we really know what the audiences love. They love the glamour and the sequins and the feathers and the fans and the hard-hitting music and all the humour," she says. "People after the show usually are filled with energy and they're in a celebratory mood."
