It’s noon on a weekday, and Chrys Columbine is posing for a photo in the middle of the road in Hamra. Dressed in a glittering green bra, matching pants, a bustling satin skirt and a waist-pinching corset, she is literally stopping traffic. Even the men on motorcycles, normally the first to zip past any obstacle in the street, are stopping to take pictures of her. Columbine is loving it.
“I know some people must think it’s mad,” she told The Daily Star after the midroad photo shoot was finished, “but I really do love the attention.”
To be fair, for an international burlesque superstar, being gawked at comes with the job. But although many in the Middle East will likely see Columbine, 31, as little more than sexually provocative eye-candy, she is on a mission to present herself as something else: an artist.
After having its heyday in the 19th and early 20th century, burlesque – which was originally all about bawdy parodies and jokes – fell out of fashion. All that changed again with a resurgence of interest in the American “swinging ’20s” and films such as “Moulin Rouge” (2001) and “Burlesque” (2010), and for several years now, the trend has been sweeping through European capitals and American cities, intriguing people with its mix of vintage glamour, showgirl acts and erotic costumes.
“I like mixing all of these influences and then bringing it into the 21st century, so I like to use modern music and make it more contemporary with a vintage twist,” she says.
“There is also the parody element, of course. My very first piece was a spoof on Eminem called Feminem, in which I stripped to [the song] ‘My Name Is.’ ... Then I did a show based on Botticelli’s [painting] ‘The Birth of Venus’ with a shell and stuff. I liked things to be themed, with a character.”
In Britain, where Columbine comes from, burlesque is increasingly mainstream. So what does she do to make herself stand out?
“I’m the only woman in the world who combines classical piano with burlesque,” she says with a proud smile. “I’m a trained concert pianist, so one of the acts I do is called Naked Nocturne, which involves playing Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor and stripping while I do it.”
It’s an act that she plans to bring to Metro al-Madina this December as part of a variety burlesque show incorporating local talent – providing she can find a sponsor. And if Metro’s regularly sold-out Egyptian cabaret show “Hishik Bishik” is anything to go by, she is bound to have enormous success with it.
Still, the fact that she can play in one of the most alternative and open-minded venues in Lebanon, which in itself is a bastion of liberal attitudes in an increasingly conservative region, does not mean that her brand of performance art will be accepted in the rest of the Middle East.
Much of the problem likely lies in the word “stripping.” The act of a woman taking her clothes off on stage has many connotations attached to it – mostly bad – which are not confined to the Arab world.
“When you go to small towns in England, Germany, Italy or whatever, they wouldn’t know what burlesque was,” she says. “They would think it was seedy.
“So what we did was speak to the press a lot to explain what we were doing. The piano also helps a lot to show that it is a higher art form with costumes and characters; it’s essentially a piece of theater. Once people see the show their misconceptions go out the window.”
She is also keen to emphasize that burlesque performers don’t ever get completely naked.
“It’s about the illusion of nudity, it’s not in your face,” she says. “It’s about the tease, the characters being cheeky but demure, and the intimacy you create. The American burlesque, which is still very popular there, is much bolder. It’s a lot of bump and grind, tassel twirling and so on, it’s much more sexual.”
“That’s not the kind of thing I do, although I so love watching it. What I do is a bit more subtle,” she pauses to tuck into a bowl of fattoush. “Plus I always wear knickers or a G-string and pasties [nipple covers]. I’m never completely naked.”
The clothes also go a long way to defining what she does as an artistic performance, rather than just titillation: “If you keep them in the retro sense of a traditional style, rather than a porn star aesthetic, then I think it speaks for itself.”
But while retro G-strings and pasties might be completely fine in London, the Middle East is not always so forgiving.
“My first time performing in the Middle East was earlier this year at The Act, a club at the top of Shangri-La hotel in Dubai ... but I had to wear a petticoat and flesh-colored body stocking. I couldn’t do anything that would be arousing, or just sexy for the sake of being sexy. Only if it was in certain contexts of a story was it fine.”
Although she is unlikely to face such restrictions in Beirut, the other countries that Columbine would like to tour to – Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Jordan and Oman – may well have similar feelings on the nudity aspect of her show. Given that the striptease is a huge part of burlesque, does she find this restricting?
“I loved it,” she says with relish. “It was a challenge for me. How can I make this work without literally getting arrested? They asked me to come up with ideas and then when I arrived we did a workshop and made it fit. It was a great learning experience for me.
“I’m fascinated by this part of the world and want to find out what I can and can’t do.”
By Venetia Rainey
