For over twenty years, Vicky Butterfly has enchanted audiences around the globe with her singular vision, iconic style and ethereal burlesque spectacles. A La Clique headliner, winner of ‘Most Dazzling’ at BHoF 2016, and music video muse for Fleetwood Mac, Paul Weller, Kings of Leon and The Verve, Vicky has featured in Italian Marie Claire and Vogue, and multiple BBC documentaries.
Here’s her 21, Neo Burlesque Pioneer edition – a new series capturing the musings and memories of the revival generation.
1. How would you define yourself in three words?
Creative, experience-seeker, dreamer.
2. How would you define Burlesque in three words?
Creativity, embodiment, connection.
3. What do you consider your greatest strength?
My drive to try to create beauty.
4. What do you think your biggest weakness is?
Overthinking!
5. When are you most happy and inspired?
When there is something new on the horizon, a deadline, and my daughter is sleeping in my arms. I know that sounds trite, but there’s nothing better for me than having to meticulously concentrate my time!
6. What’s your earliest core memory of the revival/when you began in burlesque?
I had been doing performance art and club fashion shows for a while, and I was introduced to Zoe of Roselina Studio (then creating as Miss Hussy) to take part in a performance in one of her costumes. We got on like a house on fire and I ended up assisting her (I was studying Theatre Design and Performance Art at Central Saint Martins at the time).
She did all the graphic design and many of the costumes for The Whoopee! Club (Europe’s first burlesque club) and so it was seeing Miss Lily White’s new Red Riding Hood costume in action at The Whoopee! Club (at The Compton Club – a music hall with a mirrored ballroom that’s since been demolished), or some more costumes in action in Marisa Carnesky’s Victorian Ghost Train.
This was about 2004, and I did my first burlesque striptease act for Whoopee! later that year in The Kiss of Her Flesh outside the Masonic Temple in The Great Eastern Hotel. You had to use tracks from purchased CDs at the time (systems wouldn’t play recorded CDs yet in a doomed attempt at copyright protection), so I picked the nine minute title theme from Lawrence of Arabia and regretted it about three minutes in!
7. What made you realise burlesque was the artform for you?
It was the fact that I could create whatever I wanted to perform and get paid to do it. I think I initially saw it as a shop window for costume commissions, but it quickly overtook that as a job. It’s a constant ongoing realisation though: I love all the different evolutions burlesque has gone through and everything it can become – people expressing themselves, feeling deeply and making connections, and the independence and freedom it can bring.
8. Which of your acts to date are you most proud of or satisfied with?
I’m never satisfied! It’s a bit like picking a favourite child; I’ve made so many that I’m sad I will likely never perform them again, or perhaps it will be my next one? But I think my most enduring are my ‘Swan Bride’ and ‘When The Hard Rain Falls, The Night Flowers Bloom’. They’ve taken me around the world many times and I still feel euphoric and transcendent performing them. ‘A Spiders Kiss’ is the one I am always going back to though: that single image by Maria Varela will probably be the one I will be most remembered for.
9. What do you most want to be remembered for in the future?
Hopefully something other than that singular image! Looking back, when I started performing there were only a couple of performers working in an expressionist 20s style and none in an Art Nouveau style. I would be overjoyed if I helped popularise that style, as it’s my favourite to watch.
I’ve also collected every single flyer and running order for every show that I have performed in: hopefully that collection will prove a solid record of the hard work of so many people that helped build the burlesque revival. A few years ago, I digitised it all and you can see it over at the British Burlesque Archive (a lot of international shows are in there as well).
10. Favourite or most interesting place you’ve ever performed?
I am very much an experience seeker; I feel a bit like a collector. I will choose one unusual event over a run that would be financially beneficial. An incredible historical place, or a world first? Something that ties into a legacy of performance?
Off the top of my head, really fun ones have included bringing burlesque performers over to Bollywood for the first time, roller-skating at the Cirque Jules Verne in Marisa Carnesky’s Tarotdrome, Kensington Palace, suspended on my moon over an alter in Mayfair, a Studio 54 themed party in Ethiopia on Womens’ Day, or Nile Rogers’ own recreation of Studio 54 on the Southbank. Sublime Boudoir in New York. The first sold out year of The Black Cat Cabaret at Cafe de Paris, La Nouvelle Eve, Marisa Carnesky’s Showomxn, our dear Scarfes Bar Cabaret and touring as a family with West End Magic. The Cobden Club will always have a special place in my heart: I had absolute freedom to do anything I wanted once a month for three years in an historic, beautiful variety theatre.
I also particularly love working on music videos and stadium tour projections, so an absolute highlight of my career was watching myself performaning behind Fleetwood Mac at Wembley Stadium on their final tour!
Ultimately though, I think it might be Kabarett Der Namenlosen which has the most special place in my heart…
11. Can you name three definitive acts you think every burlesque performer should watch or know about?
That’s a really tough one! Medianoche’s ‘Toxic’, Laurie Hagen’s ‘Reverse’ and anything Lalla Morte creates.
12. Do you have a favourite photo of you from your career so far – on or offstage?
Currently it’s these by Adam Moriarty/Ghostd0t at The Double R Club [below]: as I think they capture all the feelings I had as I was taking what I thought might be my final bow at three months pregnant (it wasn’t). Joy, gratitude, elation and trepidation.
13. What is a key challenge or obstacle you’ve experienced during your career so far, and how did you handle it?
I think my biggest obstacle has been myself really, everything from initially worrying about what people might think of me. Feelings about the passage of time: you aren’t the same person 22 years into your career, and that’s a real challenge when people are still booking an act you created in a different stage of life. Balancing freshness and fruitfulness, motherhood and burnout. The pressure of being a luxury entertainment product and the freedom of being an artist. To be honest, I usually just go for it; I want to do things that stretch me and do what it takes to get through. There will always be another obstacle and I think that’s why I keep on doing it; without that challenge I think I would have moved on long ago.
14. Do you have a favourite dressing room/backstage memory?
Most definitely! Backstage at a show called Baby It’s Cold Outside in Carlisle and asking to hold Oliver Tabor’s dove… It’s now been ten years, one double act, one touring show, one daughter and many adventures!
15. What most encourages or interests you about the evolution of Neo Burlesque to date?
I think that there’s extra space to create, although it feels like places are closing down (and they are). Twenty years ago it was a struggle getting performances in to venues at all, so a lot of energy was spent on building the stages before you could get to the work. There’s an actual starting line now, so I can’t wait to see where performers will go!
16. Does anything surprise or concern you about its evolution?
Well, I do love to be surprised! Perhaps that young people are more conservative these days than I thought they would be? Maybe I just see it that way because, although The Whoopee! Club was the first burlesque club as such, the burlesque revival was already well underway in both the strip clubs of the East End (through performers such as Marisa Carnesky and Jo King) and at Torture Garden, which doesn’t get nearly enough credit for its role in the burlesque revival – lots of Neo Burlesque pioneers performed there, and they were also the first to bring Dita Von Teese to the UK for public shows.
17. Three nuggets of advice you’d like to pass on to other burlesque performers?
Build your own stages, you don’t need to follow fashion, and you don’t need to spend thousands on rhinestones.
18. What are your biggest sources of inspiration outside of burlesque?
Art, nature, history and life.
19. Is there a treasured moment, awesome anecdote or priceless pearl of wisdom you have from a Burlesque Legend you can share?
I think those would mostly be with Satan’s Angel! Her energy was ageless, her stories always the most fun, and she had many, many pearls of wisdom: her strong opinions about throwing expensive costumes on the floor (why would you do that? You worked so hard to earn them!) was just one of the ways she taught you that you could still be free without thoughtlessness. I treasure her laugh on the voice notes I have saved.
20. What question are you rarely or never asked that you’d like to answer here?
I feel like people rarely ask performers if they are happy! Performing and touring can be quite a lonely place. Personally the answer is yes for me now, but please check in on your busy friends.
21. What are you listening to, reading and watching at the moment?
I am currently listening to McAlmont and Butler’s Yes and Suede’s Still Life, reading Jan Morris’ Venice, and watching The Man in the High Castle.
Visit vickybutterfly.net and follow Vicky on Instagram.