(Photo courtesy Les Vixens)
When Ivy started dancing she never envisioned that she would be leading one of the biggest and most respected burlesque troupes around.
“When I first came out and started to perform, I thought I might go-go dance once a month somewhere at a gay bar and it within six months of me starting it turned into me on the road doing shows in five different cities every month,” she says. “My career just took off, and it was all very surprising. It took me a very long time to wrap my head around it and to see it was what it was.”
Ivy started her own burlesque troupe, the Les Vixens. It is now the largest all-queer burlesque troupe in the country performing at dozens of events and shows per month. Ivy also heads Girl The Party, the largest, longest running queer women’s weekly event in the U.S., at Southern Nights Orlando every Saturday for the last seven years.
The 16-member troupe has been featured in Forbes magazine, has been voted Best Burlesque Troupe several times and are the resident entertainment for the annual Girls in Wonderland event.
We spoke with Ivy ahead of big Girls in Wonderland event about burlesque, parties and representation.
WATERMARK: What is burlesque?
IVY: Burlesque is the art of the tease. It’s found in a lot of different modalities. It started off as satirical theater type thing so I would describe it as sexy theater. A lot of our shows are that. They are very themed, each person on stage it is there moment, it’s a vignette of theater but it’s sexy, and it is empowered, and it is artistry.
I was raised by a wild pack of drag queens so a lot of my influences are drag, so drag and burlesque go hand in hand in a lot of regard. There is a strip element, a tease element. But it’s mainly performance art.
When I started out, there wasn’t actual burlesque. It was mainly theater, drag, club kid. When burlesque had its revival, I was kind of on the ground floor of that. I was performing as it was having its revival.
What led to the revival?
Burlesque has a lot of parallels with drag. Just as drag started underground and got bigger and bigger, burlesque has done the same thing.
You are up to 16 Vixens. How do you recruit new Vixens?
We hold auditions unless I see a particular performer in the community who I would love to join the Vixens, then I would invite them, but typically we hold auditions and it’s prestigious to be a part of the Vixens; we’ve got a solid brand name, we’ve been around for a long time and people know us, so our auditions are usually well attended. We narrow it down with a go-go round because we also do go-go dancing. Some people are great performers but aren’t good freestylers so we narrow it down pretty quickly. Then those who make it through get to perform a solo burlesque performance and the ones who make it all the way are welcomed into the family.
Are all the Vixens local to Central Florida?
We are Central Florida based but performers that want to be Vixens come from all over. We’ve had Vixens in Georgia up to New York, all over.
How has Vixen’s burlesque changed since you started it?
The style of costumes has elevated. There are better standards now with costume making, we don’t use hot glue anymore [laughs]. Our stuff becomes more elaborate and polished. We walk the line between a pop star look with the bigger costumes, feathered headpieces, lots of rhinestones and crystals, if we can afford it.
It’s also changed in that more people know about us which has given us more opportunities, more people want us. We perform at special events, we just opened the fashion hope charity show for Make A Wish, I performed at Pride Prom, the more mainstream it gets the better it gets for us. Also, being a queer performer wherever you find drag we can also be because gay women exist everywhere and so given that element, a lot of the shows I do now are a mix of drag queens and burlesque performers and audiences love that because it’s something for everyone. The evolution has been fantastic to see.
Why was it important for the Vixens to be all queer?
When I was growing up what I didn’t have was representation. And the little bit of representation that we did have was niche and specific: gay men act like this, lesbians look like this, bisexuals are greedy; there were these heteronormative narratives that our representation fell into and I think if I had seen someone like me, a fem performer, my life would have been entirely different in a lot of positive ways.
So for me, to have the representation — and don’t get me wrong, we love our allies — but culturally we haven’t had stuff just for us. Gay women, we haven’t had stuff for us. Our crushes had to be on straight actresses, we weren’t being given queer women celebrities and when we did it was Ellen and she’s not everyone’s type. So for me I wanted to show queer women we can be empowered, we can be sexy, we don’t have to wear cargo shorts to be gay. There are so many ways to be gay, and we can be sparkly, beautiful, sexy, we can be a gay woman and be the fantasy. We can be these fantasies that could also possibly be realities.
How long have you been working with Girls in Wonderland?
I’ve been working with them eight or nine years now and they have been great. It’s interesting because you have Gay Days and Red Shirt and all of that, and that is all very gay men-centric so the women wanted something for them, and it had to start very organically because there wasn’t anything focused on women for a long time. So Pandora Events started Girls in Wonderland for the women and Les Vixens are the resident entertainment for the weekend; we perform and go-go dance at all the events, at all the pool parties and we are the eye candy, we are the atmosphere, the energy for the whole four-day event.
Does the whole troupe do Girls in Wonderland?
Yeah, for the most part because we aren’t doing burlesque shows, we are out go-go dancing, and each event is themed and because there are so many every Vixen, if they are available, get to have a set or two throughout the weekend. I will be at almost all the events except for the Saturday night party, I’ll be at Southern Nights for Girl the Party. But it is an amazing experience, thousands of gay women in one hotel. It’s a lot [laughs] but it’s a blast. We sold out the hotel and this is going to be a great event.
When are the Les Vixens’ next big events?
May 18 and 19, we are doing a burlesque show themed Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame. Each performance will be honoring a legend who has been inducted into the hall of fame, I will be doing Elvis. I have an epic Elvis costume that I have only ever got to wear once so I am excited to bust that back out. It took me 30 hours to make. The show will be at Southern Nights Orlando in the theater and then Southern Nights in Tampa the next night. We will have performances from Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Def Leppard; it’s really gonna be a cool show.
To learn more about the Les Vixens, or to see where they are performing next and how you can get them to perform at your event, visit LesVixens.com.
