One of the things that I struggle with is the fact that if there’s something that I want to be doing creatively, I want to spend 100% of my time doing it and if I can’t do that, I don’t really want to do it at all.
I had a burlesque show last night. The show went fine. I can’t really complain about that, but it was one of those nights where everything felt off and the last place that I wanted to be late on a Friday night was at a bar covered in glitter dust.
I perform with a troupe called Darkwave Burlesque, a group of burlesque and sideshow performers that was largely formed out of last summer’s Coney Island Sideshow School‘s Burlesque Master Class graduates. (There’s apparently a new session starting in April, in case you happen to live in New York City and want to get on the fast track to becoming a burlesque dancer). The troupe has sorta been falling into a habit of doing a monthly performance usually somewhere around the middle of the month… and this month… well, it snuck up on me.
When I was seeing the emails last weekend reminding us that our music had to be in by Tuesday, I started panicking. I hadn’t done anything at all to prepare for this show. I hadn’t even been listening to music trying to decide what song I ought to do. While I know that it’s not mandatory to create a new act for every show, I’ve been trying to make an effort to create new act acts as often as possible. I’m a new performer. I ought to be putting things into my arsenal.
Tuesday came along and I was sitting at work frantically listening to Celtic punk bands trying to figure out what I ought to do for a St. Patrick’s Day and almost picked Flogging Molly’s Devil’s Dance Floor. Then I started thinking about costume and then realized that it was going to be totally impossible for me to pull together a costume in three days and said fuck it… I’ll just do an act that I’ve done before and know I can do well.
So, I chose to do my act that I developed when I was going to the Burlesque Master Class. An act where I shave the face off of a styrofoam wig head to a song James recorded by band named Telecom called Cheech. No one’s ever heard of it, but everyone seems to like it.
All in all, it was a good, safe choice.
It just didn’t change the fact that come Friday, I found myself wishing I could have just stayed home.
My act went on third, so I was done at the beginning of the show. However, you don’t get paid until the end of a burlesque show. You get paid based on how much they make at the door and how much ends up in the tip bucket by the end of the night. I was ready to go home and go to bed after my act was over which was probably somewhere around midnight. By the time the show was over and I was paid, it was 2 in the morning.
I splurged and took a cab back to James’ place because I just couldn’t bare to think that I was going to spend an hour on the train when I could be home in 25 minutes by car.
I feel like the lesson I learned was that I need to pay better attention to the dates of my shows. A late night on a Friday when I’ve been working all week is just too much. If I’d been paying attention to when the show was scheduled, I might have not agreed to do this show. I don’t regret doing it, but I also want to keep it so burlesque is a fun thing I do.
Stressing out because you’re not prepared or feeling like you’re staying out way past your bedtime are things that stop making things feel fun.
I need to be better about making choices that are going to be me happy.
I also need to be thinking about my shows for next month right about now.
