At the New York Burlesque Festival's Golden Pastie Awards, the performances were outrageous, the speeches unexpectedly moving, and the costumes feats of engineering.
Credit: @Tmronin
Where else can you watch someone accept an award for being the biggest tease, hear a heartfelt speech about finding yourself, and then witness a woman pull a hamburger out of her hooch?
The 24th Annual New York Burlesque Festival wrapped up October 4 at Le Poisson Rouge with its Golden Pastie Awards, an evening celebrating the best, boldest, and most gloriously ridiculous in burlesque. As our hosts reminded us, “The awards are pasties and the nominees are strippers!”
And what an awards show it was!
Sir Richard Castle and Veronica Viper kept things delightfully witty and filthy, with jokes about wedding-night disasters, aging performers, and just about every body part imaginable. Some jokes were terrible (spectacularly so), and others were just a riot.
The awards themselves were wonderfully absurd. Dandy Dillinger took home Biggest Tease, Cheeky Lane won for making sexy songs silly (or silly songs sexy), and Artina Darkly was recognized for her terrific tassel-twirling talents!
But between the theatrical twerking and terrible jokes were some genuinely beautiful moments.
Credit: @Tmronin
Hottest Freshman winner Dylan Mary Jane spoke movingly about discovering their nonbinary identity, surviving serious illness, and finding a home in burlesque. “Nothing matters, but we get to decide what matters,” they said, explaining why the award meant so much to them, especially at this time in their life.
Miss Frankie Eleanor, accepting the mentorship award, thanked the performers who helped her find her true calling in performing and teaching others to perform their best.
It was a lovely reminder that behind every tease and twist is a community cheering each other on.
And then there were the performances.
Ilyroyale danced to Céline Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”—to a hamburger and fries. With incredible costume, choreography, and comedic timing, I swear the air physically left my body when a giant box of French fries poured over her Flashdance-style and then turned into a giant French fry boa.
Chance Hazard delivered an absolutely inspired construction-worker strip. The glittering measuring tape! The rhinestone hammer! The TRAFFIC-CONE REVEAL!?!?!
I used to make costumes, and the engineering behind these props is phenomenal. Every detail was considered, every reveal perfectly timed. I wanted to stop the show and inspect the construction and the construction worker.
GENIUS.
This dedication, multilayered planning, and performance is why I get annoyed when people dismiss burlesque as simply stripping. No hate to strippers; they have the upper-body strength of a Greek warrior and the skin tensile strength of steel—but this is a different type of performance, and these burlesque dancers are theatrical masterminds.
Credit: @Tmronin
It’s such a beautiful and rich community.
One of my favorite speeches of the night came when Veronica Viper accepted the award for being most likely to go full frontal.
“The more burlesque I see these days, the less tits and ass I see,” they observed, warning that growing conservatism is creeping into the art form.
“It doesn't matter if you can't use the pictures for the gram.”
Nobody has to get naked. But when did Instagram get a say in who does?
Burlesque is about celebrating bodies, not making them algorithm-friendly. Show what you want, and let the censors clutch their pearls.
The Golden Pasties were funny, filthy, surprisingly touching, and packed with extraordinary talent. This is a community that takes its craft seriously without taking itself too seriously, and I absolutely love that.
Make sure you check out these incredible performers and more at the next burlesque festival or house near you!