Photo by Alexis O'Connor / North by Northwestern
Michael Fleischer stood on the stage of the Jones Great Room, wearing nothing but his underwear and a green bow tie around his neck. He bowed and exited stage left. As the crowd erupted in applause, Fleischer stripped off his skivvies, revealing a matching bow tied intricately around his junk and ran back on stage, to the shock, awe and amazement of the audience.
Fleischer, a Communication sophomore, performed in both this year’s and last year’s NU Burlesque, co-sponsored by Lipstick Theater and College Feminists for Northwestern’s Sex Week.
“I was always the kind of person who preferred to not wear clothes,” Fleischer recalls of his impetus to audition for last year’s inaugural show.
Founded in 2013 by Anna Miles (Comm. '13), NU Burlesque aims to offer participants not only an opportunity to bare as much as they're comfortable with on stage, but also a medium through which performers and their audiences can explore their sexualities.
Though not considered normal practice to become completely nude in a burlesque performance, Fleischer eventually convinced his directors to allow him to go fully frontal by reminding them repeatedly that it was his body and his decision, the mantra of burlesque.
“The defining factor of burlesque is that the performer is in complete control,” says Fleischer.
This factor distinguishes burlesque from stripping, allowing NU Burlesque to serve as a tool to create a safe space for sex-positivity and to combat rape culture on Northwestern’s campus.
“I learned that most students don't get the opportunity to explore their own sexuality, or rather, the aesthetics of their own sexuality, in the same way that performance-based majors do on a regular basis,” Burlesque’s founder, Miles, says in an email. “Our show brought people from all different parts of campus together in one of the most intimate ways possible.”
Medill and Weinberg sophomore Taylor Cumings performed in NU Burlesque for the first time this year, also appearing fully nude on stage, though covered in full-body paint. Cumings employed body paint to portray a naked body in a way that wasn’t overtly sexualized, exploring a different side to burlesque.
“The whole point of the show is to educate students and let them explore their sexualities without feeling shame for it,” Cumings says. “Burlesque removes that taboo.”
Along with giving students an opportunity to reflect on their own sexual identities, burlesque also opened the door for a dialogue about rape culture and the negative impact it has on students. In giving performers complete agency over how, when and what they want to show to the audience, they help students create their own way of sexual expression in a space safe from judgment or coercion.
For Communication senior and two-time director Brendan Yukins, burlesque was a saving grace in his sophomore year while receiving counseling to cope with a sexual assault. He became involved with Vaudezilla, a theatrical burlesque company in Chicago, at the suggestion of his counselor at the Northwestern Women’s Center.
“One of the symptoms of being a survivor of sexual assault is your self-confidence hits rocks bottom,” Yukins says. “My counselor suggested I maybe go and see a burlesque show and see if I saw a sex-positive way to look at my own sexuality.”
Yukins had been performing with Vaudezilla for over a year when he was asked by Miles to help get NU Burlesque off the ground, something he saw as an opportunity to bring the support and acceptance he had found in the Chicago burlesque scene to Northwestern’s campus.
Yukins was the director of “boylesque” and "neo-burlesque," as well pieces that inspiration by classical burlesque performances in this year’s show. He worked alongside Medill and Weinberg sophomore Alaura Hernandez and Weinberg sophomore Lauren Hamilton, the directors for classic and dance-centric pieces, respectively.
“It’s a wonderful feeling to have yourself reaffirmed by an entire crowd of supportive people,” Yukins says. “I came to terms over the two years that I’ve been doing this with my body and my sexuality, and I wanted to spread the love to campus so others could have the opportunity to feel that.”
Through NU Burlesque, Yukins hopes to not only create a sex-positive culture on campus, but also provide an outlet to students constantly inundated with the reminder that Northwestern is at the “height of academia” and that they all must consistently perform at their best, inside and outside the classroom.
“What I think burlesque does is that it reminds us that we’re in college. This is the time that you can really have the freedom to do something that you may never have the opportunity to do again,” Yukins says. “We are allowed to be free not only in our sexuality, ourselves and our expression, but we are free people with an opportunity to do something and not be bound by what others think.“