We were lucky to catch up with Knotty Orchid recently and have shared our conversation below.

Knotty , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

The first step to learning burlesque is to go to shows, familiarize yourself with your city’s scene and meet the people you could be working with. Once I fell in love with the community I started looking for opportunities to take classes with as many different burlesque performers as I could.

I highly encourage learning from a diverse array of people in the communities you want to be involved in. A more well rounded perspective is key to opening the creative mindset and thinking outside of the box.

Knowing what I do now I honestly would have slowed down, which seems ironic. In my first year as a performer I created over 20 acts alone. Many of which were one offs that I haven’t performed since or they have gone through so many costume or song edits they’re not really the same act as when I made them. Nowadays I spend a lot more time focusing on the details of my acts. It took awhile to get out of the mind set that my audience won’t want to see something I’ve done before and change that to they will want to see the same act so long as its a well-performed, well-choreographed, and well-costumed act.

For me the most essential skills I have are my acting abilities and sewing. I usually make the majority of my costumes or add embellishment of some kind, though there is absolutely nothing wrong with outsourcing to other creatives. My acting abilities though are definitely something I rely on heavily. When I am on stage, I am portraying a character or embodying a mood that I want my audience to partake in. And inevitably something will go wrong on stage (zipper sticks, ties get knotted, you fall off the stage, etc.) and having acting and improv skills to fall back on allows you to work around those obstacles and keep the show moving and your audience engaged.

Obstacles that stood in the way of learning more for me personally was time mostly. I work a normal day job from 8-5, M-F plus produce and perform. Intermittently finding time to sew and rhinestone costumes. To circumvent that I watch a lot of youtube videos on sewing or choreo classes while I work on other things. I have a whole playlist there of cool videos to come back to when I need a refresher.

I will however, try to make time when I can to get to in person classes to learn. And even when I teach my own Intro to Burlesque classes at Redux Society I often find myself learning from my students when they ask me a question I hadn’t thought of. Or even just going through moves I find myself wandering into new ways to strike a pose or new series of moves to string together for a different vibe.

Knotty , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Knotty Orchid and I am a burlesque dancer and producer here in Kansas City, MO. For those unfamiliar with burlesque it has a long history and fun evolution from its beginnings as parody theatre in the late 1500s in Italy, to its modern interpretation as the art of the strip tease.

I am a performer for hire (have tassels, will travel) and produce my own monthly burlesque and variety show called Risqué Revelry. We are the only Kanaka Maōli (Indigenous Hawaiian) owned burlesque production in Kansas City, possibly the only one in the state of Missouri. My monthly show is a hybrid of a set troupe and a revolving cast every month with open submissions for shows every other month.

I got into burlesque by going to watch local shows in 2017, with my first show being a Rude Revue and Burly Q show run by Annie-Mae Allure. Her show was also my first debut as a performer in the Rude Revue and Creepy Q of 2018. Since then I have performed in various shows across Kansas City, Columbia, and Ellinwood, KS. I even did a couple virtual shows through the pandemic. It gives me great pleasure to perform on stage and especially when I can incorporate my Hawaiian and Puerto Rican heritage to hopefully show off my cultures’ beauty to more people

In 2021 the producer of a troupe I was apart of offered me her position as we came out of the pandemic and I took up the mantle. I did however, give the production a change of pace and renamed the production to Risqué Revelry and managed to take it through its first year with raging success! We are now in our second year and so excited to see how we continue to grow.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My particular mission driving this creative journey of mine is to give back to my community. My production Risqué Revelry is an invitation to my community’s creatives from all walks of life to get involved and have a safe place to explore their craft and make a little money while their at it.

I want to make sure that POC and the Queer community (especially trans and drag artists at this time) have a place that they can come and feel welcomed. Not only by my production and cast but by our wonderful audience. I am so proud to have such a wide array of people who come out and support us monthly and how wonderfully they support every human that walks across our humble stage.

I most fervently want to be a space to help performers grow and hone their skills. I want to be part of a support network for performers the way they were for me when I was in hard times in my life.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Obviously for our particular brand of performance art, the best way we can be supported is by coming out to shows. Tickets and tipping are how we pay for our costumes and gas to get to venues.

However, times are hard and cash is tight. If that is your particular case the next best thing is sharing the events. Share the posts your favorite performers make and say something in your post (just sharing with no comment tends to bury the post). Interact with the performer pages or production pages. Leave a comment or even just an emoji when you see the post pop-up.

If you don’t see the posts in your feed often then go to those pages and make comments on a few posts, train the algorithm that you want to see these posts and those awesome creative people! Social media is a powerful tool that you can wield to help your favorite creatives even if you don’t have the time or money to go to the actual show!

And definitely tell your friends! Despite our technological world, word of mouth has been a huge contributor of ticket sales and the more people talking about a performer or a production the better the chances get that one of those people will have the money to spend on tickets.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.risquerevelry.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/risque.revelry
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRisqueRevelry
• Other: https://linktr.ee/risquerevelry

Image Credits
Chris Rodriguez Photography Knotty Orchid, Lola Loquacious, Shuchi Singh, Naja Venim, Ülla La, Adora Sparks, Ezra Prince, Annie-Mae Allure, Candy Cognac, Luxx Frankenstein, Wednesday Patrón, Sylvestia Stiletto, Ember Ashburn,