The Peek-A-Boo Revue at the Trocadero

On Friday the 6th, we were introduced.

She was living at the Trocadero Theatre in Chinatown, a venue that first opened in 1870, staging musical comedies and traveling minstrel shows. In the 1950s, vaudeville and burlesque with professional showgirls took over the stage.

If you got it …

Billed as a pastiche of music, dancing, and comedy wrapped up in a burlesque show, the Peek-A-Boo Revue flaunted its dancers, who served as the foreground to a live band. On the night we met, guest performer Foxy Tann served as hostess.

Comical and charismatic, Tann engaged the audience with her sultry display of self-love. She touched, invited, touched again. Draped in liquid gold, Tann was the hanger for a glistening ball gown. She was in control. Lip-synching to “I Feel for You” by Chaka Khan, she represented women who are not mainstream depictions of female sexuality and beauty, therefore providing a counter-narrative to conversations concerning sexual politics.

A curvy reminder that there is no singular portrayal of societal norms, Tann slowly removed pieces of clothing commanding us to watch, daring us to stare, encouraging objectification. She spanked herself, one cheek at a time. Tann maneuvered into our metaphoric space, disrobing. The audience voiced their excitement. Both male and female viewers joined the crusade, hoping to transcend a simple reading of sexuality.

Beyond pasties

The Peek-A Boo Revue went beyond pasties and g-strings. Sherril Dodds, in her book Dancing on the Canon: Embodiments of Value in Popular Dance, speaks of how the celebration of body sizes outside the dominant cultural aesthetic extends to the audience. Feminine ideals were being restructured by the women of the Peek-A-Boo Revue as they owned their bodies and flaunted their sexuality. These women nodded to the feminist movement, using the charged discourse of the public naked body by redirecting the conversation to support self-proprietorship and identity. They recalibrated the conversation around body type, aesthetics, and pleasure by challenging the normative notions of acceptable feminine behavior. Understanding the realm of this art form, in which there are performers displaying nude bodies on a proscenium stage and fully clothed viewers in an auditorium, the female performers subvert the male gaze and dominate the conversation.

Women of all races and sizes took to the stage of the Trocadero Theatre to shift the lasting glance of their audience, using their moving bodies to politicize gender perceptions and representation. Using the female body to overthrow misogynistic norms, the performers set new conversations in motion. No more will they be preyed upon by artistic dictatorship or a voyeuristic audience.

So thank you, Peek-A-Boo, for continuing to expand the discourse that envelops self-representation, consumerism, and acceptance.

Above right: the Peek-A-Boo Revue (Chris K Photography)