How One Performer Manages Motherhood & Strip-Tease
BY: Ashley Gallagher
Published 31 December 2013
As I walked into the house, I was welcomed by four Burlesque
performers designing shot glasses for their VIPs who would be attending their
upcoming show. The women sat around a card table and the lead was a smiling
red-head who calls herself Lady Borgia.
She offered me an exercise ball, a glass of boxed wine and
invited me to sit while they finished decorating and brainstormed for their
show. Her home is a small apartment, decorated with pin-up models on signs, a
recycled Pampers box holding shot glasses waiting to be decorated and a
mannequin in the corner near her sewing table. It was draped by a sequined
green dress in progress and blocked off by a baby gate.
Her home was split almost in half: toys and burlesque, her
passions, her creations.
Borgia's son was asleep in the other room while the other
girls were giddy with ideas, demonstrating dance steps, debating colors and
what they would use for "pasties," a small prop they would decorate
the nipples on their breasts with. They laughed and joked and talked about
their introduction to Burlesque. Borgia smiled slyly when I asked her about her
first show. She was bartender, she said. She took interest in a group called
Hell On Heels, and frankly, she joked, "Every girl dreams of being a
stripper at some point."
But Burlesque isn't just stripping, even though it plays an
important role in the show. Rather it encompasses artistic planning, very
often, retro music choices dating back to the 1950s and women more interested
in the design of their shoes and how they'll dance rather than when their
clothes come off. They make their costumes, shop at Party City and make plans
to rehearse for a big show, which isn't just a weekend gig or a nightly job.
Borgia's story, however, starts in 2005.
LADY BORGIA’S BEGINNINGS
After watching Hell On Heels at the bar she worked, the
girls were eager to meet her, talk with her, show off and as Borgia puts it,
she “pretty much got molested by one of them” from behind the bar. They invited
her to a troupe a meeting, to hang out and learn more about what they do. Her
first meeting, much like mine, included boxed wine and sparkles everywhere in a
studio apartment of one the performers.
The meeting eventually lead to Borgia’s first performance.
Initially the show was planned in a casino on the Barona
Speedway in California, but as it turned out, the stage was far from the glitz
of a casino stage. Instead, the stage was a flatbed truck with slatted wood
pieces. Being in heels that night, the girls realized it just wouldn’t work,
and Borgia says, “my debut performance was in the dirt on the side of the
racetrack.” She laughs remembering the sunset show.
Nearly four years later, Lady Borgia felt her time with Hell
on Heels was complete and she went on to perform solo, dancing and developing
her own Burlesque style. She would eventually form the Keyhole Cabaret - which
in 3 years has grown to be one of the most well known troupes in San Diego.
Borgia says she is proud of the girls who have come through
her troupe and encourages their creativity. She wants them to reach for new
experiences. She “sets the bar high” working and educating the women who join
Keyhole Cabaret and as a result has “had a lot of the performers that are
now out there, producing their own shows, getting their own solo gigs.”
The process to produce a show takes great dedication and
patience. While managing to work with 4 or 5 dancing girls at a time, Lady
Borgia also sews her own stage outfits, prepares a number for the show and gets
flyers out the public. She says the defining element of a burlesque is the
“strip teasing.”
“Burlesque is still fantastic costumes, it’s still fantastic
performance dance, but to me if you don’t take anything off you’re not doing
burlesque.” For Borgia, the show is about women who are empowered, and being
able to confidently show off without feeling like they’re “selling their body.”
There’s a feminist quality to Burlesque, Borgia says, “there is absolutely
nothing wrong with the naked female figure and form. You’re going to evoke
emotion.” But she also realizes, some women who get up there “just want to be a
stripper.”
Lady Borgia’s performances are often entwined with a comedic
presentation and characters, but she maintains an elegant and sexy allure which
keeps her audience attentive to her every move on stage.
Burlesque gives Borgia a place to feel like a princess. She
tells me, “I don’t mean a princess as in tiara and pretty proper thing of tea
princess, I get to be a friggin' princess on stage, I own that stage it’s
mine.”
BRINGING IN THE BABY
But just one year ago, the balance and process of putting on
a show changed and the love of Lady Borgia’s life, Reilly Thomas was born.
Red-headed, curious and happy, Borgia’s son greets her friends with enormous
grin and Borgia switches gears from Burlesque producer to being a mom, trying
to keep her son fed and occupied while she multi-tasks.
“I wasn’t going to stop performing,” Borgia says, “but
prioritizing was kind of hard for me. Trying to figure out which direction do I
run first, it’s my challenge.” From being forgetful, to answering phone calls
to managing a theatre performance and being an “eclectic artist,” she admits it
can be difficult to know how to divide time between Reilly and sewing
rhinestones on a dress.
“I have definitely had many moments of giving up, how in the
world can I do this? I’m a single mom and sometimes you just realize, just feel
like I’m way too tired after he goes to bed to pick up that needle.”
But Borgia says, it’s important to keep both passions as a
primary part of her life. It became evident while she attended the Burlesque
Hall of Fame’s performance competition just a few months ago in Las Vegas. Lady
Borgia says the song number she submitted to get into the contest, Song for
a Winter’s Night by Sarah McLachlan, was a song she choreographed not long
after her son was born.
“I created a number that, for me, was really passionate as
far as feeling the completeness of my womanhood, becoming a mother and getting
back up on that stage, owning my body with all the new changes, it was a very
ethereal,” Borgia smiles sheepishly - the fierce determination in her face
softens. Her son now inspires her performances.
Lady Borgia is balancing her son into the Burlesque part of
her life and it’s reflected everywhere in her home, “the entire bottom 3 feet
of my house no longer belongs to me.” Her eyes light up and she laughs pointing
out the toy box next to the fireplace and the toys cluttering a mannequin head
covered with flowers on the mantle. The bottom part of her book shelf is all
baby books while hers sit above. She explains her working area, closed off by
the baby gate, she says, “mommy gets caged into her sewing area and my son gets
free reign of the rest of the house.”
She loves having Reilly exposed to her artistic life,
she says she doesn’t see the need to “protect” him from the world of
Burlesque, “He’s going to grow up surrounded by gorgeous women wearing fishnet
stockings and sparkly heels!” In fact, she regularly catches him teething on
her sparkly heels and he loves rummaging through her closet and trying to pull
down feathers and dresses. Her world is his.
PUTTING ON THE SHOW
As the show gets closer, Lady Borgia ended up in a car
accident while heading the fabric store. Realizing it would limit her
performance, she opted not to dance in Keyhole Cabaret’s show. She admits it
was a “very hard decision,” because she knows her fans expect her to perform,
but with bruises and back-aches, she says, “the show can go on without me being
in the spotlight.” The women of Keyhole Cabaret worked out a plan to fill
Borgia’s performance spot and gave Lady Borgia the ability to step back and
really produce the show, get feedback from their fans and evaluate their
performances. The women of Keyhole Cabaret revere her. They take her advice
seriously and give her support to put on a great show.
For Borgia, it’s a community, a family, even.
When the big night arrives, everyone rushes to the venue in
costume to help set up tables, candle holders, truffles and decorations. The
dressing room sits behind the bar in an overhead outdoor storage area. Brightly
colored feathers, red lipstick and roses are spread out while the Burlesque
performers prepare their numbers. Borgia gives them last minutes notes, lets
them know when they’re going on and creates the seating chart for VIP guests.
She prepares to introduce the show and slips on an elegant blue gown, complete
with blue stones around her neck and a smile hiding the complications of her
car accident.
She left Reilly at home, in the hands of a babysitter and
with two other Burlesque children who know their mothers won’t return until
well after midnight.
The show is a success, the crowds whistle and cheer the
women on as they strip from their costumes, to their lingerie and
eventually...their pasties and g-strings. Lady Borgia is proud of their
performances and relieved when the night is over, ready for bed and ready to
see her boy.
Eventually, Borgia says she hopes to open her own Burlesque
and cabaret club, have a green room for children whose mothers are performing
and even travel overseas. But for now, with her son in tow, Lady Borgia will
keep bringing strip tease to San Diego, sequence in place and rhinestones
shining from her eyes.
