A night of burlesque

In the darkness, as whisky sour and other concoctions of the finest cocktails flowed through the night, I sat by the bar watching in full view muses of the underworld in their glittering butt tassels, colorful feathers, and provocative lingerie. As the night went on, so did their teasing – audacious, bodacious, and grotesque – leaving very little to the imagination.

Welcome to Manila’s burlesque night scene, once again full of life in one of its favorite haunts, The Spirits Library in Poblacion, Makati.

After two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, performers from Burlesque PH, dusted off their costumes of different sizes and colors, their flashy pearls, their giant wigs adorned with red sequins, their dagger stilettos and most of all, their body and souls, for a much-awaited comeback show last Dec. 18.

It was a night when comedy blended with stripping as performers made the audience squirm and laugh at the same time.

The crowd was huge, and the bar was filled to capacity as allowed by health protocols. The men and women of the audience roared and cheered, and many times rolled over with laughter behind their masks and with the relative safety of their vaccination cards.

Perhaps, for a few hours or even for a moment, everyone forgot about the pandemic or all the pains and challenges of the past 20 months or so.

Reviving the night scene

That night was a perfect metaphor to where we are now after almost two years into the pandemic – struggling to get back on our feet to find that semblance of normalcy in our lives.

But the spotlight really was on the performers. Unlike some of us fortunate enough that our jobs were able to adjust to the limitations imposed by the pandemic, the performers practically lost their means of living. I am not sure if the tickets of P1,500 per person that night could make up for all the earnings they lost since they stopped performing live when the pandemic struck.

Burlesque PH is a group of burlesque performers “dedicated to building awareness and development of the art of tease,” it said.

They’ve been performing in the country for years, dazzling Manila’s night scene before COVID-19 struck, in speakeasies, old haunts, art festivals and what-have-you. The pandemic changed all of that as Manila went on lockdown in March last year and the group had to stop their live shows.

‘’Beginning of the end”

Halfway around the world in New York, around the same time last year, it’s burlesque performers also announced the inevitable.

“All right, everybody. This is our last show for a while – New York just shut everything down,” they said, as quoted in an article in the New York Times, What is Life Without Burlesque?

“I sobbed like a baby,” said The Maine Attraction, one of the performers.

The struggles of bars, restos

Manila’s night performers are part of an industry that depends on Manila’s nightlife.

Many bar and restaurant owners struggled to stay afloat; some could not close shop because it would leave hundreds of employees jobless.

Others did not have much choice, though. I know of a bar owner who had to sell his business at a rock bottom price. “I had to sell it for a pandemic price. I had no choice.”

A bar in Escolta got months of rent-free concessions, but others in more established places, owned by bigger businessmen, did not.

The government’s flip-flopping announcements on lockdowns made matters worse for bar and restaurant owners.

“Imagine you prepare for re-opening, you go to the market and buy supplies so you can serve returning customers, and then you’re suddenly told the reopening will not push through,” said a restaurant owner.

A businessman with wine restaurants also had to close his three venues in different parts of Metro Manila because of the difficult environment.

Bodabil

During the Japanese occupation in the Philippines in 1941 to 1945, Filipinos turned to vaudeville, more commonly referred to as bodabil, a form of escape and entertainment amidst the difficult times.

The shows featured a hodgepodge of musical numbers, short-form comedy, and and even magic acts, often staged inside the theaters of Manila, according to the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art.

Just like bodabil, burlesque shows and other performances – or Manila’s night scene in general, helped weary souls get by their day-to-day travails, before COVID-19 struck.

As Fem Appeal, a burlesque dancer, said in the NYT article:

“I’m not saying we save lives, but we help people get through a bad day, and we put smiles on faces or we make them cry, or whatever it is.”

After almost two years, the curtains are up again in Manila’s night scene, but it’s still a challenge to feel safe again, especially with threats of Omicron looming large. But we need to take baby steps to co-exist with the virus, to find that semblance of normalcy and to support local artists and small restaurants or bars.

So maybe, just maybe, on nights when we feel less afraid, we can go watch a performance or two, because the stage puts a mirror on ourselves – our heartaches, sadness, and gladness and life itself. Because sometimes, to see just that, is all we need to make it through another day.

Iris Gonzales’ email address is [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at eyesgonzales.com