London Burlesque Festival: Friday April 4th

We are Proud and Privileged to bring you the Best UK Newcomer of LBF 2008 - Annette Betty Kellow!

Dear Darling Diary,

Feathers, sequins, jazz, jazz, swing baby - oh, and sparkling twirling pasties? This is what clouded a girls mind at the knowing naughtiness of participating at the London Burlesque Festival’s ‘Newcomer Competition on 4th April. But who could resist? Fabulous music, great company - and you get to play dress up - or perhaps rather less of the latter!

I didn’t understand when arriving at the beautiful Bush Hall how it was tucked away among smokey kebab houses and dusty pound shops. On first glance from the outside, it resembled a worn dodgy 1980’s registry office, but who would have known secretive, seductive treasures were soon to be revealed in the act of pure tantalisation inside?!

Pangs of nerves and excitement swept through me as I entered the gorgeous gold vaudeville setting (a-ha looks can be deceiving) and setting up backstage it was comforting to hear the excited girlies running, shouting and screeching, and the already oiled audience doing the same but on a more delirious neurotic scale!

The show flowed without too many hitches or scrapes as everyone’s blood, sweat, work and tears were portrayed with baited breath in a three minute bonanza by the darling whirling, shimmying carni queens.

But an all important question that one may ask - how does one get their inspiration and preparation to get on stage and tease, tease, tease?

Well mine started with a tea towel that I went to hang on the communal clothes line on my balcony; a gust of wind kindly slammed the door shut, leaving a cold Betty with no footwear, phone or keys (Shock!) Living in a block in the Brick Lane area, a kindly housewife next door invited me in to spend the day with her - well, not meaning to get on the political or the religious band wagon I’ll go for a lighter subject - she had fabulous saris! And the Asian inspired music she was playing really got my foot tapping and shoulders shimmying nine to the dozen. So I decided to show a more flamboyant and altogether foxier version. Enter Asian Burlesque!

I think we all have our secret and memorable ways we invent our pieces; you just have to give it your all and on the time of performance I remembered my recently passed away dear old dance teacher ‘Aunty Betty’. She was formerly a vintage Tiller Gal herself with her favourite famous words being, ‘Just smile, darling, smile’.

I like to think her go-get-em attitude inspired my performance, as I felt very honoured to win - Best UK Newcomer!

But on the other side, people have often asked me what burlesque means to me and what attracts me to the essence of glamour from the golden era and the decadent days gone by?

An array of answers come to mind but for me personally it leads to one thing; Nostalgia.

We all revel in something to make us tick, and mine is escapism of the past - the glamour, the essence of the music,  the dress, lifestyle and personas. Todays world just seems scarier and crazier and I think because the past is out of reach, for me it makes it even more beautifully enticing-

I can imagine grannies salivating with sticky buns at Salvation Army meetings over the ‘good old days’ and past times in my life that were probably not that fabulous are often remembered more fondly in a shiny rose tinged gleam, but at Friday nights London Burlesque Festival Newcomers Competition it will go down in history as FACT: LE ARTISTS TRES EQUISITE A LA FANTISTIQUE!

And as Frank Sinatra once said; ‘That’s what life is all about’.

Until next time,
Annette Betty

www.myspace.com/annettekellow