New performance salon series featuring burlesque and other live entertainment delights premieres.
April 27, 2024 at Laurie Beechman Theatre
Jo Weldon, headmistress of the New York School of Burlesque, and Jonny Porkpie, purveyor of scripted striptease entertainments, invite you to JO & JONNY'S PARLOUR PEIGNOIR. Step into their parlour for an evening of burlesque--in flavors ranging from glamorous to unhinged--and other live entertainments. This new performance series will premiere Saturday, April 27 at 7pm at the Laurie BeechmanTheater (inside West Bank Café at 407 West 42nd Street at Ninth Avenue). Tickets are $24 for general admission or $38 for VIP tickets that include reserved seating and a post-show photo op, available at www.SpinCycleNYC.com. Please note that there is also a $25 per person food/ drink minimum at all performances.
"Every performance of JO & JONNY'S PARLOUR PEIGNOIR will be concocted using a slightly different recipe," explains Weldon. "A generous serving of burlesque is always our base ingredient, of course, but the mix might also include live music, literary readings, performance art, variety, illustrated talks, prestidigitation, humor, short films, dance—". "—Basically, anything we're excited to share with an audience," added Porkpie. "And in addition to the performances, we’ll offer a extra titillation..."
After unveiling their prodigious talents, guests in the Parlour will don decadent dressing gowns for an intimate tête-à-tête with their hosts, in which they might reveal more than they bargained for... and for a burlesque performer, that's saying something!
Top it all off with experiments, sneak previews, and rarely-seen acts from Jo and Jonny themselves, and you have an evening of entertainment unlike any other in New York.
Join JO & JONNY'S PARLOUR PEIGNOIR, a titillating new burlesque talk show series where the conversation is as tantalizing as the performances. The April 27 premiere of this new performance series will feature burlesque by Cashlee Banks and Miss AuroraBoobRealis, Peekaboo Pointe with short films, stop motion burlesque, a Marx Brothers tribute duet with Jonny, Jo’s School of Burlesque Striptease Show&Tell, beatboxer AirLoom Beats, magician Patrick Davis and more.
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ABOUT THE PERFORMERS:
Arabelle Luke, aka Airloom Beats, is a New York based beatboxer and educator who aims to connect and inspire people through music regardless of their background. With roots as the beatboxer for Rutgers University's award winning all-female acapella group ShockWave, Arabelle strives to showcase the dynamics within her art form while emphasizing a sense of community. Working through non-profit organizations like BEAT Global, Get Empowered and Kids Creative, she facilitates professional developments, workshops, and classes in beatboxing, loop station song production, and hip hop culture with special needs populations and participants of all ages across the Tristate area. She is a BEAT Global T3 certified instructor.
Miss AuroraBoobRealis lights up the night stage with her unique mixture of raw and earthy, wild and fearless burlesque! She is an interdisciplinary performing artist creating in the intersections of burlesque, dance, theater and poetry. She has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College with a focus on 20th Century Black Radical Artists and the intersections of dance, poetry, and theater. She is the co-founder of brASS: Brown RadicalAss Burlesque, and back in 2007, Brown Girls Burlesque. In 2018 brASS Burlesque’s reoccuring show in Brooklyn, Compost Bin: A RadicalASS Cabaret to Deal with the World, was featured in the New York Times. In 2019 Compost Bin was featured in Teen Vogue. Aurora has graced burlesque stages across the country from NYC to Seattle, Portland, Austin, Boston, Minneapolis, Philly, D.C. and more. She is the recipient of Silver Tusk Awards for Best Political Figure (2020) and Achievement in Political Social Conscious Arts and Activism (2021).
Cashlee Banks is a bad-and-bougie, campy queen who made her debut in the New York School of Burlesque student showcase in December 2022. She is an all the way uptown girl from the Bronx and draws her inspiration from the creative, collaborative and competitive hip-hop culture that was born there. As an artist her goal is to celebrate blackness outside of the lens of respectability politics to highlight that “black excellence” is simply black. She is a lady who is street and a freak in the balance sheets.
A burlesque performer, emcee, writer, and producer, Jonny Porkpie recently retired from a decade-long stint as a producer and emcee at The Burlesque Hall of Fame to focus on his first love: scripted theatrical burlesque shows. These shows—which include Off-Broadway productions of “Pretençión: un burlesque de cirque” and "Dead Sexy" (returning from the grave this October)—have been lauded as the “Best Burlesque” in NYC by New York Magazine and the Village Voice. His burlesque game show "The Naked Truth" toured to over 30 cities in 5 countries on 3 continents. After a celebrated run last December, his “Filthy Lucre: A Burlesque Christmas Carol” returns to the Laurie Beechman theater for the holiday season, and his (2nd!) Marx Brothers homage “A Day on the Boardwalk, A Night at the Stripshow” can be seen this May as part of Marxfest 2024. He has, ludicrously, an MFA in Creative Writing for Children. jonnyporkpie.com.
Jo Weldon is an internationally recognized performing arts instructor, essayist, and author of two books, The Burlesque Handbook and Fierce: The History of Leopard Print. Jo has worked as a strip joint stripper, call girl, centerfold, dominatrix, burlesque performer, and more since 1979. She has been an adult entertainment workers’ rights activist and advocate since 1994, lobbying at city hall meetings, legislative events, and conferences, including at the United Nations. In 2023 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from GANYC (Guides Association of New York City) in recognition of her activism and contributions to the culture of the city. She is currently a scholar-in-residence at the New York Public Library Center for Research in the Humanities, where she is exploring the intersections of adult entertainment work, fashion, and culture. She lives in New York City and the Hudson Valley.
Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Patrick Davis has been amazing New York audiences for well over a decade. During that time he has become one of New York's most in demand performers with a corporate client list that includes Google, Chase Bank, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Amazon and many more. Additionally, Patrick has acted as a magic consultant for both stage and television and was also the creator and producer of The Society of Conjurers And Magicians, a unique puzzle based magical experience. Patrick appears nightly in Speakeasy Magick, an exclusive and intimate show featuring New York's most elite magicians.
Peekaboo Pointe is a performance artist, burlesque performer, and choreographer. As a headliner she toured Australia, Canada, and across the US. Peekaboo self produced 5 international 6 week tours across Europe and South Africa. She was a guest artist in Vive le Cabaret at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And joined the long running French Cabaret show Cabaret New Burlesque for 3 months. She was a cast member in the long running New York City shows: This is Burlesque with Murray Hill (2007-9) and Guilty Pleasures (2006-7) Currently, she is a resident performer at The Slipper Room and Duane Park. Outside of burlesque she has had the honor of choreographing and performing for Taylor Mac’s 24 decades of popular music. (2013-2018: NYLA, UCLA, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Montclair Theater, Celebrate Brooklyn). She was a dancer and collaborator for the dance company, Gesel Mason Performance Project’s piece Antithesis (2014-16). In addition to performing burlesque in nightclubs around the world, she is currently creating interdisciplinary multimedia dance theater in NYC, and has presented work at HERE Arts, Dixon Place and Wild Project.