Watching Dita’s show last night made me miss my burlesque days performing with my soul mate Kim Murphy. This is the only footage I have of Big Spender. We laughed so hard rolling around on our living room floor, making up this choreography to the London Cast Recording, an album we couldn’t find and we had to search every record store in LA to find the right version. We performed every Thursday night at The Viper Room on Sunset Boulevard for two years.
We also performed at Luna Park with the BurlyQ Girls, until one fateful night when our fire-eater yelled at our producer and pointed one long-nailed finger in his face and he drove off with our truck full of our props–our giant oyster shell, our volcano that spouted orange feathers, our massive tank for Aqua Girl, etc. We were left without our big props and as a result, the future shows were cancelled. Our fire-eater was a hothead with a temper and two chihuahuas that wore mink coats sewn by her.
Kim and I called ourselves Honey and Vermilion, and created our own costumes based on the dancing duo of delight of 1930’s New Orleans, Nita and Zita. The filming isn’t great (you can’t film dance swinging the camera around in close-up) but I’m so happy for the memory. Otherwise it would all feel like a dream…
