mary-masked

Trapped in the Zipper Dress

Published: November 12th 2018, 4:46:58 pm

I feel like I only post about performances that go wrong, but those are the ones you learn from so I guess that makes sense. And on the off chance that any of my patrons are aspiring performers, hopefully they can learn from my many fuck ups.

This week's lesson was just because something goes horribly wrong, doesn't mean you can't give the audience a good show.
It's very telling that the first time I watched Black Swan (spoiler ahead) I spent the last half hour thinking "it's ok, you're ok, just do the show tonight, you can go get sane tomorrow." And "it's fine, it's fine. It's just a small stab wound, you can make it to the end of the show."

I amended that attitude slightly when I saw Tempest Storm break a hip on stage. (She was ok but it was very frightening.) But I still think that there are very few disasters that you can't just push through. Not that the audience won't notice but the audience will still be entertained. And if you play it off well enough, they'll think you meant to do that.

All this is to say I got caught in my zipper dress on Saturday.

Normally, when a zipper gets stuck, you have a couple of options. If it's only a little stuck, you can probably get another performer from the audience or the backstage and get them to unstick you while you were it off as a sexy girl on girl moment. If it's REALLY stuck, you can give that seam a good yank and pray that the thread gives before the fabric does and the damage isn't *too* bad. Either way, you've got a nice vertical opening that'll let you get out of the dress. 

The Zipper dress is.... not like that. The zipper goes in a mostly horizontal direction so you'd have to destroy the whole thing to get out of it. And even that would take some doing and you'd probably have to cut through metal at some point. 

So this was kind of my worst nightmare. As I danced, I managed to get a look at where the zipper was caught and the ribbon from the halter top was jammed in and around the zipper head. It would take, at minimum, a solid minute of fiddling and/or scissors to get this fixed, neither of which really would have worked with the act. So I just kept dancing. The act was mostly about the movement and the emotion behind it anyway so I just kept that going. And I managed to show my boobs which is half the point for any burlesque act. 

The most important thing was to not let the audience see me give up. There are few things more depressing than watching something go wrong in an act and just see the performer think "welp, there's no saving this, I guess I'll go through the motions till they let me off stage." The most telling sign of a bad performer is that they don't fully commit to what they're doing. 

There is ALWAYS a chance to save it (unless you break a major bone or, like, get shot.) The audience WANTS you to succeed. They want you to stay in character and entertain them. If your character is bright and funny, that thing going wrong is your cute little in-joke with the audience. If your character is sexy, just writhe around on the stage like Madonna. If your character is angry then RAGE AT THAT THING THAT WENT WRONG! 

After the act I was sheepish about getting stuck, especially since the host had made such a big deal about finally seeing this dress in action. But people I talked to were like "I was just mesmerized by your movement. I wasn't sure if keeping your dress half on was a choice."

So I made it work. And maybe that's why I'm so addicted to performance, because it forces me to ignore my perfectionism and makes me just *do* something.