To Find Yourself on the Stage

Credit: Khalida Aderogba

There are plenty of inspiring places to interview a burlesque star, especially a rising talent like Ms Harlot DeVille. Under the white-hot bulbs of her dressing room mirror, perhaps? Or in the shadow of the stage where she stoops to tease and conquer?

If you’re really, really lucky, she might just speak to you from her very own bedroom.

Yet today, Deville dans le boudoir may not live up to the fevered dreams of her admirers, for two reasons. For one thing, she’s severely under the weather. In fact, a heady mix of flu-like symptoms has replaced the burlesque trademarks of feathers and hand fans.

Two, Deville is actually in the bedroom where she grew up in, rather than the one she currently inhabits in East London. I’ve caught up with the 30-year-old performer on a trip back to her family home in Dublin. Rather than the private chambers you’d expect from someone who succeeds at being sensual, we find ourselves in a typical suburban bedroom.

DeVille has flown back to unwind and “act like a bit of a tourist” in her own town, but has been struck down by a mystery illness halfway through her trip. Surrounded by the remnants of her formative years, our make-up free starlet is a million miles from the poised sexpot that has been courting the burlesque scene for over two years in London. This is less ‘On the Bed with Paula Yates’, more ‘Clarissa Explains It All’.

Yet despite being bedridden and gripped with a lurgy, DeVille remains bright and breezy.

“I’m dying,” she wheezes through a Kleenex, before admitting that if she actually is on the way out, she’s been well cared for in her final days.

“I’ve had a gorgeous homecoming,” she smiles, “but maybe that’s because I didn’t actually tell anyone that I was coming home. I like to just sneak back and surprise people.”

Even on her holiday back to Ireland, she’s ended up doing several shows in clubs and even two TV appearances, all of which came out of the blue when people heard she was back in town or spotted her on the street. Demand is high, she’s even the subject of a book that is currently being compiled by photographer Khalida Aderogba.

On her return to the UK, DeVille will perform in London Burlesque Week. The international event is the biggest in the art form’s calendar, and is by no means an easy gig to book. Participation as a featured performer is a benchmark of talent and respect, though in DeVille’s case, it seems deserved.

Like most burlesque dancers, DeVille’s style is key to her act, and thus carefully considered, deliberated down to the eyelash. Yet she gives off a thrill of the dramatic, like the strictest of schoolmarms, who finally cracks and lets the Year 10 goths give her a makeover. The results are a neatly anachronistic style and almost alien aesthetic, which whispers mischief.

In performance, she has an organic coquetry. Indeed, by times the starlet looks like she’s grown right from a crack in the stage floor, willowy and shedding cloth and feather like falling autumn leaves. There’s a sharpness to her features, almost an angular intelligence that holds as much intrigue as her silken movements. Watching her perform, you may find yourself as drawn to her eyes as the tassels on her chest.

Off stage, she’s entirely the minx you’d expect, not shy of a cheeky anecdote or good belly laugh. Even now, with no make-up and the costumery swapped for a figure-hugging duvet, the performer behind the paint is fighting fit.

“Let’s just say I’ve always liked the attention,” she says, when I ask what first attracted her to performance. “Even from when I was tiny, I’ve always tried to entertain everyone around me, whether that was on a stage somewhere or just in the supermarket queue.”

As a child, this meant speech and drama classes, dance practice and a hell of a lot of pleasure derived from making people laugh. But when did the specific idea of being a burlesque star start? In your teens?

“I was about six” she announces, then backtracks slightly as my eyebrows collide with the skylight. “Well, I was about six when my Dad showed me Cabaret. I may not have known what burlesque really was back then, but I knew I wanted to be Liza Minelli.”

Credit: Khalida Aderogba

DeVille started to learn what burlesque was during her last few years in Dublin, organising and hosting events on the city’s (im)modest burlesque circuit. Yet actually performing was always the exception rather than the rule back then, and always in the safety of a crowd rather than striking out alone.

“I always wanted to move into solo performing but I was too scared to do it in Dublin. It’s a small place, everyone knows each other, and if you fall out with one person, you fall out with half your audience.”

It took coming to London for DeVille to build up her confidence, using her newfound anonymity to build up her repertoire and on-stage persona. In two years, she’s earned herself a working niche as London’s only Irish burlesque performer; a fact that DeVille thinks gives her an edge.

“London’s a city full of performers, you need a gimmick or something to make you memorable. Being Irish has been a definite selling point; you stand out a bit, it’s a great ice-breaker and I even think it makes me more approachable.”

Is that a double-edged sword though, I ask? Have any over-zealous admirers ever tested the limits of your Irish hospitality?

DeVille pauses: “There are some stories that I can’t go in to, but I will say this: always be careful of people who are being too nice for no apparent reason. And never invite your stalker to a dinner party!”

Her lips remain sealed on this one, even when I suggest she talk about it in terms of a hypothetical episode of Come Dine with Me. What she will say is about urging caution for any aspiring young burlesque performers, and to trust their gut instincts.

The only other pitfall she has had to get used to were the assumptions that a lot of people make about burlesque, often derogatory, but sometimes even from people extolling its virtues.

“A guy last week made a very disparaging remark about pole dancers, and tried to back it up by saying what I do is ‘clever’ and ‘classy’ by comparison.

“I think that’s an incredibly ignorant statement to make. Pole dancing is such a physically demanding performance; it takes incredible skill and there are hugely talented people in that field of performance. What he said annoyed me a bit, but he shut up for about ten minutes after I was through, so it was worth it.”

The topic animates DeVille, as does anything performance related. Her friends have commented that she lives, eats and breathes burlesque, but somehow doesn’t piss people off with it.

Indeed there’s plenty to talk about. The burlesque scene is moving more and more into mainstream consciousness, and rapidly expanding to meet the increased appetite. The inevitable cash-in is well under way, with clubs and performance nights claiming burlesque status for content and entertainment that may be anything but.

I ask DeVille whether she thinks it’s damaging for the art form, a proposition she seems conflicted over.

“It’s always a difficult question,” she admits after a pause. “There have been times where I’ve been disappointed by what gets passed off as burlesque, and I ended up talking to Immodesty Blaize about it. I was bemoaning the fact that burlesque worldwide is open to all sorts of connotations. But her take on the whole situation was actually spot on.

“Simply put, she said it’s open to interpretation. There’s a market and an audience for everything. As long as you’re comfortable with what you are doing as a performer, and where you are performing, that’s what matters.”

DeVille explains that this principle of personal empowerment is a key part of burlesque, but when people attach an intellectual privilege to the performance they sometimes impose a snobbery that is completely out of place. DeVille is wary of it, as well as self-defeating efforts at preserving some kind of pure burlesque, intent on insulating itself from other forms of performance.

“I think that one can get completely sidetracked by that whole argument, and lose sight of why we do what we do. The travel, the cramped changing conditions, the hundreds of hours applying rhinestones and crystals on to costumes; it’s not all glamour. I don’t take a single day of this for granted, but if I didn’t thrive on it and adore what I do, I wouldn’t do it.”

The only thing as apparent as DeVille’s vocation for performing is her drive and ambition to keep doing so. She has started making her own costumes, to ensure they’re totally unique to her act, just one example of the fierce control she maintains over her own image and direction. “I think you need that ambition, passion is what drives an artistic soul.”

Getting accepted to London Burlesque Week has been one of DeVille’s aims for a few years now and is a key step in her long-term plans.

So if the burlesque craze goes tits-up (or tits-down, perhaps), there’s no plan to retrain as an accountant? “No chance!” she laughs, then pauses… “Although I do have an act involving an abacus.”

Back in Dublin for now, DeVille has been indulging in all the things she misses while away: from dog racing in Shelbourne to reacquainting herself with the local chip shop. The economic decline has been seized upon as an opportunity for people like DeVille, arts workers used to making minor miracles out of little more than a good idea and blind hope.

“It’s quite inspiring to see how people are reacting to the economic situation, there are so many exciting things happening. There’s an artistic revolution that’s palpable.”

The burlesque scene has exploded since she left, from “what started out as almost a cult following.” Shows now draw larger audiences in better-appointed venues, one of which was the setting for DeVille’s recent homecoming show, to coincide with her 30th birthday.

Overcoming her hometown terror, she performed in Dublin; solo, and for the first time since she left two and a half years ago.

“It was just wonderful. The audience reaction was electric; I’ve never felt so alive after performing. Because I’ve been away, a lot of people had followed my career on facebook and twitter, but had never actually seen me perform live. It was nerve-wracking, but the feedback has been fantastic and just so sweet, I’m still getting emails about it.

“Plus, I met my now boyfriend for the first time that night, so I must have done something right!”

Liza would be proud.