Award-winning burlesque performer, historian and teacher Alyssa Kitt Hanley began her career in Brisbane, Australia in 2007. She is currently undertaking her PhD in theatre and performance at City University New York, with a focus on erotic performance art, burlesque history, striptease culture, disability and dance. Alyssa was a featured presenter at BurlyCon 2022, and co-led the committee for disability at Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend the same year. The Associate Producer of Mx Burlesque Australia since 2017, Alyssa has headlined the Australian Burlesque Festival and Perth Burlesque Festival, and will headline the Disibilitease Festival in Minneapolis from tomorrow through Saturday – which you can also watch online.
“I am deeply honored to be coming to Minneapolis to headline the DisabiliTeaseFestival 2025 this Friday and Saturday, 18-19 July,” Alyssa says.
“When Minda Mae asked me to headline the festival, I was overcome with emotion. I’ve only recently returned to the stage after my facial reconstruction due to cancer, and it has taken me a long time to settle into my own Disabled identity, and as many with acquired disabilities, an even more complicated journey to feeling empowered by my difference. I am very excited to be in community with other performers, attendees and Disibilibabes, to dance, share space and solidarity, and learn valuable skills from our own unique experiences to become better advocates and activists for Disability Justice and expressions of ‘Crip Beauty’ worldwide.”
Here’s her 21.
1. How would you define yourself in three words?
Fierce. Formidable. Feminist fatale.
2. Who would play you in a movie about your life?
Before my facial cancer, I would’ve said some kind of Hollywood actress like Emma Stone, Isla Fisher, or Lindsay Lohan. Now, I’m not sure who could possibly represent me as someone with a facial disability, and I doubt whether anyone actually could!
3. What is your biggest strength?
My critical laser brain, my archiving skills, and my long-term memory.
4. What is your biggest weakness?
Overthinking, and paralysing perfectionism.
Alyssa Kitt by Radiant Inc
5. When are you most happy and inspired?
Being backstage, sharing pastie tape and sneaking out between sets to sit in the audience and watch my friends shake it. Going out for pancakes and discussing how to transform the world through burlesque social justice. Getting into the studio with curious movers and being weird gremlins.
6. What is your favourite on-screen burlesque moment from film or TV?
I’m somewhat obsessed with the 1923 American silent drama film Salome, an adaptation of the 1891 Oscar Wilde play. It’s remarkable for its expressionistic, highly stylized erotic performances, aesthetic excess, and truly jaw-dropping costume inspiration!
7. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
Strive to make art which innovates beyond what you’ve seen on the burlesque stage. Form bold artistic statements through deep research, honor the Legends, and never copy someone’s schtick. Performing isn’t just about you – it’s about what it sparks for others.
Alyssa Kitt by Leslie Liu
8. If you could switch lives with one person for a day, who would it be?
I would love to live inside the mind of Julie Atlas Muz while she was making her rope escape act ‘You Don’t Own Me’ or her ‘Girl from Chernobyl.’ Julie’s innovation and provocation is Neo-burlesque in its most potent form and I am endlessly inspired by her.
9. What’s the biggest myth or misconception about burlesque?
That burlesque is not political. Burlesque is a power exchange rooted in liberation – a direct challenge to oppressive norms. We shapeshift between the grotesque and the gorgeous, the unruly and the respectable. Saying burlesque isn’t political is wilful ignorance and you need to sharpen your lens. The tease is the site of power: What do you strip for? What’s your embodied intention? What makes ‘them’ squirm? Without our political core, we lose our perversion; we flatten into decoration and end up reproducing aesthetic pleasantry and passivity.
10. If you could only perform to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?
The track to my ‘Icarus Fallen’ routine that I competed with at BHoF in 2022: the Lacrymosa from Mozart’s Requiem and Mojo Juju’s I Put A Spell on You.
Alyssa Kitt by Alexis Desaulniers-Lea
11. What surprisingly useful things do you have in your show case?
Gaffer tape, clear and black zip ties, and a Leatherman multitool.
12. Do you have a backstage ritual?
It depends on the act. Before some of my classic tribute routines I spend time communing with the Legends’ spirits and rustling up their historic dust through intentional acts of remembering. If it’s a very physical act I’m usually getting into my character’s headspace and doing squats in my 9” boots to Prodigy’s Firestarter.
13. What advice would you give to new performers starting out today?
Build your performance skills before dropping your life savings on rhinestones. Respect the vocabulary and know your history. You don’t need a crown, title, or someone else’s blueprint for ‘success’. Don’t be snakey, snide, or self-absorbed, and if you mess up, own it and make it right. Keep a physical and digital archive: label every photo, press clipping and gig with venue, date and credit – future historians will thank you. This is your craft. Treat it – and the community – with care.
Alyssa Kitt at the 2023 New York Burlesque Festival Golden Pastie Awards, by Allen Lee
14. What is your proudest achievement?
Winning the ‘Elvis Award for Best Snarl’ at New York Burlesque Festival 2023 was deeply meaningful – not just the title, but the timing. Just months earlier, I had undergone a fifteen hour surgery to remove a stage 4 adenoid cystic carcinoma that had spread through my face, head, and neck. I was using a cane while relearning to walk after having my muscle, nerves and tissue harvested and transplanted into my face, and was fresh out of chemotherapy and radiation. I’d thought I might not survive let alone ever dance again.
That night marked my first time ‘performing’ since my diagnosis, wearing a Christina Manuge costume I’d kept in a box for years, waiting for a moment I feared would never come. To be recognized for my smile, when I had physically lost it, was profoundly moving. More than anything, I felt seen, held, and celebrated by a community that had supported me through the darkest time of my life. That alone was the real award.
15. What is your biggest regret?
I began in burlesque at 18 (I’m now 36), growing up alongside this evolving industry and learning in public every step of the way. Over those eighteen years, I’ve made mistakes while battling alcoholism and substance use, and spent years grappling with undiagnosed C-PTSD, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and abusive relationships. There were times I didn’t know how – or when – to step back during compounding crises.
Looking back, I now recognize how power imbalances shaped some of my early decisions and how some of my past actions, advice, or approaches may have unintentionally echoed gatekeeping, ableism, or elitism. I believe that anyone in a leadership, producing or public-facing role must examine their own privileges and biases to build a more inclusive and equitable industry. This is lifelong work and I’m dedicated to doing it with care, compassion, joy, and ongoing accountability, while helping burlesque continue to grow as an industry where everyone can thrive.
16. What is the biggest challenge facing today’s burlesque scene?
This is a flash-point in global politics: rising fascism, assaults on LGBTQI+ lives, creeping techno-authoritarianism, and borders redrawn by neo-imperial powers. Arts funding is shrinking, censorship tightening, economic precarity biting – but paralysis is not an option.
Underground stages must remain havens for queers, queens, radicals, Black, Brown, Indigenous, Latina, fat, Disabled, Non-binary, Trans, gender non-conforming baddies and anyone who believes in social justice, equity and imagination.
Not all activism can be public facing, and being very visible can be dangerous, but our task is to meet the moment with wit, satire, beauty, rage and righteous subversion. That also means revisiting and rejecting tropes that glorify guns, bombs, and battlefield chic – the western gunslinger, the pin-up perched on a missile, the fetishized uniform. As Aussie Neo-burlesque icon Vesper White warns: “The glamourisation of weapons in burlesque is a bubble about to burst.” Freedom of expression matters, yet so does empathy, and we must examine privilege, feel the wounds of these vulnerable communities, and craft work that resists oppression rather than replicating it.
17. If you could go back and tell yourself one thing when you started out in burlesque, what would it be?
Take your time. Your career will span your whole life – allow things to unfold without forcing them. Don’t define yourself by the box you think you’ve been placed in. Redefine yourself how you dare and society will catch up to your bold, rebellious and opulent self.
Alyssa Kitt at the Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend 2022, by Ed Barnas
18. What is a cause or issue that’s very important to you?
Disability representation. Accessibility in performance isn’t optional – it’s an urgent political concern. I’ve actively advocated through roles with the Burlesque Hall of Fame (alongside committee members Jacqueline Boxx, Lakota Shekhar, and Apple Angel), BurlyCon, Mx Burlesque Australia, and the Disibilibabes collective.
While burlesque celebrates body diversity, access to the stage remains unequal. Dominant aesthetics still privilege white, able-bodied, Western ideals of symmetry, and athletic excellence. Drawing on Mimi Sheller’s Mobility Justice, I argue that we must radically reimagine who can move, appear, and be heard onstage. The very act of appearing on stage is political, and shapes how audiences think about equality, beauty standards, and access to public space.
Informed by crip theory and Disability Justice, my work insists that Sick, D/disabled, and D/deaf artists disrupt the status quo, reminding us that different bodies don’t diminish art. They redefine it.
19. What are you currently reading, watching, and listening to?
Currently reading Sex on Stage: Performing the Body Politic, a new collection of essays edited by Lynn Sally (aka Dr. Lucky) and Alison J. Carr. Julia Matia’s (aka Dr Force Ah!) chapter, ‘Consuming’ Asiatic Femininity Through Foodlesque: Exploring East Asian Exoticism through Calamity Chang’s Model Mi-Nori-Ty Roll is my favorite essay. The monologues by Dr Zahra Stardust, Rev. Legs Malone, and DawN Crandell (aka Aurora Boobrealis, founder of Brown Girls Burlesque) are thoroughly entertaining and provocative.
My musical tastes are very broad (I grew up as a classical musician playing cello, flute and singing in choirs) but I’m currently jumping between Shostakovich’ Cello Concerto No 2, Slipknot, Korn, The Presets, Basement Jaxx, Max Richter and James Blake.
Alyssa Kitt by Slow Hand Photography
20. If you could share a dressing room with one performer for the rest of your career, who would it be?
My burlesque wife and lifelong best friend, collaborator, and endless source of inspiration – Bella de Jac. We’ve lived in different cities for a long time but have maintained such a beautiful relationship based on reciprocity, respect, magic, poetry, our love of crabs and eels, and endless laughter. Equal parts Strawberry Siren, Vesper White, Sugar Du Jour, Zelia Rose and Dirty Martini.
21. What would you like your life and career to look like in 10 years time?
Either still living in NYC or back in Australia, depending on the political trajectory – it’s hard to predict what the next few years will bring. I hope to be living in climate and economic stability, with access to universal healthcare, rights to freedom of expression, reproductive rights and no robot overlords (robot underlings I’m cool with). Finished my dissertation and published my first books – on the politics of Neo-Burlesque, and a mixed photographic memoir on burlesque and cancer.
Manifesting my dream job – Professor of Striptease and Burlesque: continuing to teach undergraduate theatre history but hopefully working with graduate students and independent burlesque scholars, too. I’ll continue my work as a festival adviser, doing access consultancy and dramaturgy, and performing and laughing backstage with my show-fam. I’d like three more ragdoll cats and a thousand more books.
Visit www.alyssakitt.com and follow Alyssa Kitt on Instagram.
The DisabiliTease Festival is a multi-day event in Minneapolis, Minnesota that showcases performers with disabilities in the areas of burlesque, cirque, cabaret, and drag. Founded by Minda Mae and launched in 2019, the festival offers validation and recognition to performers who are often overlooked, underestimated, or deemed too difficult to book due to necessary accommodations. In addition to virtual shows, in-person events will be live-streamed to continue to connect with performers and audiences worldwide. This provides an inclusive experience for performers and audience members who may otherwise encounter barriers to such events. Find out more and how to watch virtually at disabiliteasefestival.com.