There were a multitude of exposed breasts at the Majestic Thursday night. There were bouncing breasts, jiggling breasts, fondled breasts and stationary breasts.
They captivated the attention of what looked to be the quirky young professionals of Madison who emerged from their Epic bubbles to celebrate a night of breasts.
It was the revival tour of SuicideGirl‘s Blackheart Burlesque show making its inaugural stop in Madison. Even without seeing the array of jostling breasts, one could easily deduce the central theme of the show. If one were to codify the host’s monologues into a word cloud, it would look something like this:
The words “titties” and “butt” were said with such frequency and bravado, that every time the host uttered them, the crowd whistled and clapped in approval. After all, that’s what the show was about.
It was not the display of female empowerment and the expression of different types of beauty it lauded itself to be. Missy Suicide, the founder of SuicideGirls, said her main goal was to promote a variety of ideas of beauty in a female positive way.
And though the women were all beautiful and fit, they all looked fairly homogenous. They were talented dancers and seductive strippers, but by no means agents of social change.
The host kicked off the night by imploring the crowd to post as many pictures as possible as long as they were flattering. Then she segued into the first dance with her most common refrain throughout the night.
“Do you want to see our titties?” she said. “OK, you can see our titties!”
Mixed between this common inquiry, the Suicide Girls burlesque dancers shook and swayed to classic millennial favorites, like the Arctic Monkeys, Black Keys, SBTRKT, Grimes and Disclosure.
They donned costumes ranging from sailors and Link to The Legend of Zelda and Hermione. They wore Planet of the Apes monkey masks and Frank from Donnie Darko’s full-on rabbit costume. But the punchline to every dance number was the same. Slowly but surely their eclectic attire came off and all that remained was Miley-style nipple tape and a thong, which of course, is the essence of burlesque.
In between a few numbers, the crowd looked on with amusement as a man gave his wife a steamy lap dance and another man attempted to do a fifth-grade reading comprehension test while a Suicide Girl gave him a lap dance.
Though it didn’t come with the side of political influence they had promised, the main course was a healthy serving of burlesque that was both entertaining and exciting. It was a needed respite from the hours of midterm studying and uptight strains of academia.
