Danielle Colby Striptease Historian | The Queen of Rust

Rincón Roadshow Presents: Tropical Sinferno / PHOTO SET!

Added 2024-02-29 17:30:50 +0000 UTC

This has a very special place in my heart. In the past couple of years, the universe has taken from, and added to my life in innumerable ways. I guess you could say that’s true of everybody lol… But the meaning for me behind this routine is transformation. So much of it. I no longer see myself as a woman. I know I look like a woman, I still embrace my feminine parts and pieces, but the one thing that identified me a woman, my uterus, I no longer have. I identified as queer many years ago and I’m still realizing the dimensions of that. Within the last two years I’ve had my uterus removed, a diagnosis of trigeminal neuralgia, a tumor removed from my face (non-cancerous), serious mobility issues, got married… to a man… a couple days later my new husband lost his father, in death and we went immediately from wedding euphoria into deep mourning.

While all of this is happening, the world is on fire. Political upheaval everywhere. Genocide is the accepted norm. There’s nothing I can do about it, but watch. Stupefied at how the world can still be turning, folks still working, eating, socializing, falling in love, bringing forth new life. Life goes on.. and that’s so cruel.

But there it is. It’s like life is saying “I told you I was mean”.

Yet, so much beauty and celebration are still present amongst chaos. There is still rhythm in the crackle of that intense fire. There is still entertainment value in the meanness of it all. And so we package it up and sell it and we celebrate the meanness by poking fun at it. Transforming cruelty and meanness into beauty and celebration is truly an art form.

About the costume, most of the costume is made by Christina Manuge at Manuge et Toi Design an insanely, talented, burlesque designer out of Canada. The silk fire cape was hand painted by DOR. The fire face mask was embellished by me, it is a leather base that was made by another artist, I cannot remember their name. The red boots came with the red crystals already, I added the fire crystal embellishments. My fishnets are so fun, I love the fringe, hanging off the back. Those originally were on my gauntlets, but had started to fall off Because of overuse so I attached them to the back seam of my fishnets. I’m really happy with this decision, I love it when I can recycle end of cycle pieces instead of throwing them out. I look forward to showing you the rest of the show with everybody else’s video footage. But for now this is my routine to symbolize where I am in my life right now, and I feel very fortunate that I was able to present this piece at La Estacion in Rincón, surrounded by friends, Burlesque and Drag family, and some really drunk locals that had the time of their lives!

While life may be chaotic and scary at times, it’s important to find that rhythm through these transitions. These transitions can set us back and really knock us out of the game if we don’t have the ability to adapt to the transitions. I have no answers for anybody, my only answer is keep moving, keep finding reasons to wake up, creativity is working beautifully, so I’m gonna just keep doing that. Thank you for watching, thank you for being part of the reason I wake up.

SEE THE FULL VIDEO PERFORMANCE HERE: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99317296