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HEY! WE'RE IN THE NEWS!Cherry's DeLuxe: "The Game Show Edition!" at the Kansas City Fringe Festival - July 23-26, 2008Ink, 07-16-2008  
Lucky DeLuxe presses her red lips to the cigarette she’s just rolled. A black dress hugs her voluptuous curves, set off by tassels attached to red, glittery pasties worn over her nipples for the burlesque dancer’s rehearsal at a loft in the West Bottoms. Tattoos covering her arms and chest signify rebellion against today’s societal norms, just as burlesque was once a symbol of rebellion in America.Burlesque, which features singing, dancing, comedic skits and the famous striptease, has come a long way since the ’30s when social crackdowns gradually stifled the art form. Women have reinvented it all over the country, and Kansas City is no exception. 
This year’s Fringe Festival, which runs July 21-27, features several performances by DeLuxe — aka Susanna Lee — and other members of the Kansas City Society of Burlesque, an association of burlesque performers and enthusiasts in the Kansas City area. They star in “Cherry’s Deluxe: The Game Show Edition.”Story by Cherryh Butler. Photography by Aaron Lindberg. Read more online! The Kansas City Star, 07-20-2008  ...KC-based burlesque performers Annie Cherry and Lucky DeLuxe have teamed up for a festival show this year called “Cherry’s DeLuxe Burlesque and Variety Show.” The piece will be presented as a game show, complete with “commercials” for fictitious products.“It’s going to be a send-up of all the game shows we know and love,” said Cherry, also known as Annie Montgomery. “There’s going to be a little ‘Dating Game,’ a little ‘Price Is Right’ and a few that are wholly new inventions.” Cherry said she simply calls what she does burlesque without invoking the cerebral-sounding “neo.” “Neo-burlesque is an attempt to elevate burlesque to the level of art, but I think some burlesque is art, and it takes a certain level of talent to go there,” she said. “One thing people need to remember is that burlesque was not high-brow art. I think some people take it a little too seriously, especially the attempt to completely disassociate it from, like, stripping. But there’s more to it than your typical strip-o-rama.”  DeLuxe (Susanna Lee) said burlesque was vaudeville’s “bluer cousin,” meaning it could be rawer and more sexual than typical entertainment. She said it represented a rebellion against the restrictive prevailing morality of the time.“I think what we have to rebel against now is a bit more complicated than the original morals they were rebelling against,” she said. “I think burlesque now allows us to make comments about sexuality. … It gets to a point where so many images of what a female is supposed to be and what a male is supposed to be get so overwhelming. It’s like a pressure cooker. I’m tired of looking at Paris Hilton. I think burlesque is what happens when you can’t take it anymore.”... Story by Robert Trussell. Photography by Chris Oberholtz. Read more online! Annie Cherry's Hurly Burly -- March 11, 2007 
Present Magazine, 03-21-2007Invoking the tradition of Kansas City burlesque in contemporary style, Annie Cherry and friends strut their moves in the West Bottoms at the Student Union. Photography by Phil Peterson. Poster by Jen Fridy. Present Magazine, 04-03-2007 Jen Mellard captures the graceful movements and the va-va-voom of these dancers through stylized imagery that emphasizes bold color and striking figures. These dancers represent women of various body shapes, sizes, and ages, exhibiting an intrinsic power that emanates from, but is not restricted to, the feminine form. What meets the eye is not a limitation for dull-thinking audiences, but a starting point to consider color, motion, and attitude that audiences of both genders savor for altogether different reasons.  Burlesque is the embodiment of women as creators of art and a manifestation of art itself. Burlesque entertains and titillates, but the choreographed acts suggest more than alluring moves on the stage. The burlesque entertainer is strong in mind, body, and spirit. She controls the expression and portrayal of her physical form through artistic performance and delivers not-so-subtle personal statements as well.Mellard's images not only heighten the immediate explosion of motion and agility within the frame, but also charge the scene with vivid colors that evoke emotion, intangible and visceral as a distant wink, smile, and strut from the stage. There are still moments too, pauses filled with poise demonstrated by these proud women. Mellard contrasts color with the conscious use of darkness as negative space that enhances what the eye can see and what the imagination begins to conjure. Even now, the audience sits at a computer screen and observes much like the audience removed from the stage and shrouded in darkness. Watch the lights, the movements, and the art of burlesque as the ladies take the stage literally and figuratively. ––Pete Dulin |