We are hard at work securing our 2010 Guests of Honor! For a sample of our past Guests, please check out our amazing 2009 GUESTS OF HONOR:
Marinka
Personally mentored by Rose La Rose, Marinka is known for her sensuous and wild classic burlesque routines with lavish costumes and a penchant for working the stage curtain. At 6"1', she is known as "The Queen of The Amazons" and appeared in Bob Fosse's film "All That Jazz." She moved her students to tears at EW 08 in her "Working the Stage" workshop, and will be bringing that same workshop with her this fall. Additionally she will share stories from her life and present a Keynote Address. Living Legend Marinka is a most honored guest of BurlyCon 2009.
Robert Allen
Robert Allen's Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (1992) stands as one of the first and most influential histories of burlesque as a cultural form and performance tradition. Widely acclaimed as a breakthrough analysis of the complexities and paradoxes of American popular culture, this book won the George Freedley Memorial Award as the most outstanding book on American theater published that year. As Yale's Alan Trachtenberg put it, Horrible Prettiness "recovers a lost but revealing component of American cultural life and teaches a way of listening to and watching the popular voices, images, and moving bodies of contemporary life. Allen has extended his analysis of popular entertainment to include vaudeville (Vaudeville and Film, 1980) film history (Film History Theory and Practice, 1985), soap operas (Speaking of Soap Operas, 1985, and To Be Continued: Soap Operas Around the World, 1995), and television criticism (Channels of Discourse, 1987 and 1992, The Television Studies Reader, 2004). He has lectured on American popular entertainment at universities around the world. He lists one of the highlights of his career as serving as a judge at the 2009 Burlesque Hall of Fame Reigning Queen of Burlesque Pageant.
Baby Doe
Baby Doe is the founder and director of Tease-O-Rama and since 1998 she is also the Artistic Director and Choreographer of San Francisco's only synchronized Go Go dance troupe The Devil-Ettes. With her husband Otto she produces the only west coast international tiki event called Tiki Oasis in sunny San Diego. Her love of the historical dances of the 60’s led Baby Doe to create a dance party for children called Pip Squeak A Go Go where she teaches the lost art of go go to the next generation.
