Fou Fou Kaboom is an award-winning London-based burlesque performer, specialising in “high-concept silliness”. Winner of Burlesque Idol 2022, Fou Fou has appeared everywhere from prestigious burlesque festivals and glittering cabarets to bowling alleys and garden centres. An Oxford scholar, she loves to honour classic tropes and give them a Neo spin, notably her giant egg shell inspired by Kitty West’s oyster shell. Whether it’s a pack of Love Hearts, a vinyl record or famous art works from across history, nothing is safe from the Kaboom-camp treatment.
Here’s her 21.
1. How would you define yourself in three words?
Excitable, silly, try-hard.
2. Who would play you in a movie about your life?
I would love Kate Nash to play me, really just on the off-chance that I’d get to meet her during her research and preparation work. She just comes across as such a lovely human, and it could help fund her tours.
3. What is your biggest strength?
Tenacity – I’ve been blessed with a certain amount of bloody mindedness which means I don’t stop trying, even when I probably should.
4. What is your biggest weakness?
Anxiety – I have OCD and the anxious spirals hold me back a lot. I’m working on it.
Fou Fou Kaboom by Atomic Tangerine Photography
5. When are you most happy and inspired?
Consuming art that makes me feel happy and energised, whether that’s music, performances or physical art. I especially love any art which makes me laugh, because the world is a scary place right now. I studied Ancient Rome as part of my degree and there was a belief that laughter warded off the evil eye (to oversimplify a very nuanced concept), and I guess the idea that a good belly laugh can protect you has always stuck with me.
6. What is your favourite on-screen burlesque moment from film or TV?
That’s very hard because the ways in which burlesque has been adapted for screen are generally problematic. I think my answer would have to be Poison Ivy stripping out of the pink gorilla costume in Batman and Robin; that movie was really a sexual awakening for me. There’s just something so delicious about the combination of the ridiculous pink fluffy gorilla suit and the utterly seductive Uma Thurman. A perfect union of silly and sexy. Come to think of it that might be why pink is one of my favourite colours… something to chat over with the therapist, I guess.
7. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
Everything goes in cycles. It may be tough now, but the cycle will move on and it will get better again, so it’s okay if sometimes you feel like you are just surviving. During those times, just focus on taking baby steps towards goals that are within your control.
Fou Fou Kaboom by Atomic Tangerine Photography
8. If you could switch lives with one person for a day, who would it be?
If it can be anyone in history, I’d love to swap places with someone who was there the first time someone played a musical instrument (I think it was a flute?). I’d want to see the impact on everyone around the first musical instrument player and whether they were in complete awe or if they didn’t understand the significance of what had happened. Or if it simply felt like an evolution of singing… I would just love to know.
If it has to be someone now, I’d be one of the bigoted 1 percent and would just irreversibly donate all their money to a portfolio of charities.
9. What’s the biggest myth or misconception about burlesque?
That you have to be the best to succeed. Obviously you need to be good, and I am privileged to work with so many incredible performers, but in my opinion the most important thing is persistence. Burlesque is hard work and it’s expensive and it’s emotionally difficult at times. You need to love this art form enough to just keep going. I’ve met a lot of artists who were so much more talented than me, but they stopped performing because they did not love it enough to keep pushing.
10. If you could only perform to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?
I’ve Got the Music in Me by Kiki Dee. It’s a song about how music can inspire us to feel optimistic and even invincible – it captures how music and dancing make me feel.
Fou Fou Kaboom at the Hebden Bridge Burlesque Festival, by Tony Heath
11. What surprisingly useful things do you have in your show case?
Immodium (anti-diarrhoea medicine). From backstage chats, I think a lot of UK performers have Immodium in their show bags to avoid a nervous oopsie poopsie. Also a little tube of super glue and some fishing wire – though best to use those on the non bowel-related problems.
12. Do you have a backstage ritual?
I always pull a series of faces before I go on stage. In the same way you stretch to feel connected to your body and ready to move, I pull silly faces so I feel fully present in my face and at top gurning capacity. My face is my most important instrument, and it needs to be tuned up. If I’m really struggling to feel present and ready, I’ll lipsync to some musical theatre songs in a mirror. The range of emotions in the songs help me to ‘kickstart’ my face, and also get me out of my own head. Beetlejuice the Musical and anything from Hazbin Hotel are my top faves. Bonus points if I can make myself laugh by pulling a ridiculous face – it relieves my stress a little.
13. What advice would you give to new performers starting out today?
Keep going. Consume and support all sorts of art. Be kind.
Fou Fou Kaboom by Aimee Rose
14. What is your proudest achievement?
Whenever anyone tells me they’ve come to a show specifically to see me, that feels like a massive achievement. Especially in a city like London, where there’s so many other events they could attend instead. At the very least you’re competing with their comfy sofa, Netflix and their fave takeout, yet they have chosen to come spend their hard earned cash on sharing in your art. That’s massive to me. Every single time.
Winning Burlesque Idol back in 2022 was also a huge moment for me. It felt very unreal!
15. What is your biggest regret?
I regret not doing certain things sooner out of fear or insecurity because I felt so conscious of my lack of dance or theatre training. But I also think I wasn’t ready for those things then, so this is the strand of the multiverse that just had to be for me. I guess I do regret not knowing how to warm up properly in my early days as I have some annoying injuries that I’ll just always have now, but even that feels minor.
16. What is the biggest challenge facing today’s burlesque scene?
Lack of shows. Money is tight, so venues are shutting down, reducing the number of shows they do or increasing their minimum bar spend. Putting on cabarets is such a financial risk right now, and I really do not envy producers.
17. If you could go back and tell yourself one thing when you started out in burlesque, what would it be?
Focus on your connection with the audience. It doesn’t matter if you’re the most attractive, the funniest or the best – your only job is to connect with people and to try to make them feel something, whether that’s happy, aroused, empowered or whatever you choose. Burlesque artists have the power to gift people emotions through performance, especially as there is no fourth wall and we are interacting directly with the viewers. So worry about what you’re giving the audience, not how they’re receiving you. Concentrate on that and you won’t get in your own bloody way as much.
Fou Fou Kaboom by Neil Kendall
18. What is a cause or issue that’s very important to you?
The profits from most of my merch items go to Cabaret vs Cancer. I love how cabaret offers both escapism and emotional release for those in distress, but this charity uses cabaret to also provide more material support. They raise funds to help a variety of organizations, from child bereavement services to the creation of modern breast forms for women post-mastectomy.
19. What are you currently reading, watching, and listening to?
Reading The Clown Manifesto by P. Nalle Laanela and Stacey Sacks – I’m trying to learn more about performance theory as I find it fascinating. Watching The Last of Us – I’m obsessed with zombies. They’re my biggest irrational phobia, so I get a massive adrenalin kick out of anything zombie based, and it’s some of the best TV I’ve ever seen. Listening to the Hazbin Hotel soundtrack – every. song. slaps.
20. If you could share a dressing room with one performer for the rest of your career, who would it be?
There are so many people I absolutely adore and it feels cruel to pick one. If I absolutely had to choose just one, I’d go with Lilly SnatchDragon – the kindest soul who has been there for me in good times and bad, and is absolutely hilarious to boot.
21. What would you like your life and career to look like in 10 years time?
I don’t really know what it can look like. The future of the scene feels very uncertain right now. I would love to be cast on a burlesque tour as I love to travel and experience burlesque in different places (both as a punter and performer), so if anyone’s putting together a tour that wants a silly lil egg then please give me a shout… otherwise I hope to organise my own tour one day.
Visit Fou Fou Kaboom at www.foufoukaboom.com and follow her on Instagram.