Dear Constant Reader,
For third year we were hired to perform at RuffleCon, an alternative fashion event in Stamford, CT. It’s always such a good time, but I think this year was the best. In the past the convention has been in October, so we were crazed with Wrathskellar preparations. They’ve moved the dates into November, which was saner for us, but it meant I missed BurlyCon for the first time in about 5 years. We were also moved to Saturday night rather than Friday, which gave us a bigger audience.
Everyone headed down pretty early to enjoy the convention offerings. In the late afternoon I taught my corsetry class. Sadly, I was opposite one of the many fashion shows, but most of the ladies I was traveling with came to class, eager to learn about corsets.
Before the show, we had a lovely, relaxed dinner at a near-by Mexican restaurant. Scratch has an excellent restaurant sense and once again picked out a terrific place. After a stop at a liquor store to gather post-show wine, we returned to the hotel to get ready.
The show was a lot of fun and the audience was amazing. They were yelling, screaming, and cheering so loudly. We had a few technical issues, to be honest. There were constant problems with the music (songs starting early or late or just wrong or once two songs playing simultaneously), but they were resolved quickly every time. And we had to reconfigure most of our acts to the runway stage, which was really set up for fashion shows (narrow stage with a long runway), but we made it work.
I’m not going to do a blow by blow of the show because I couldn’t see anything from backstage. Here are a few notes.
Nicole and I opened the show with “Mistress & Maid”. When I snuck onto stage, an audience member yelled “someone’s going to get a spanking!” How did they know?
No surprise, but they loved Artemisia, especially her singing voice. They went absolutely berserk when she hit those long high notes in “Creep”.
Our special guest Mister Twister from Chicago was extremely popular with the ladies.
Betty did a striking striptease with her new LED Wings of Isis to great acclaim.
My costume for “Moon Over Bourbon Street” was further decorated and I made a new pair of strappy undies just for this show (with lots of patient help from Scratch — I can’t pin elastic over my butt by myself.) At one point I was covering myself with the fans and someone yelled “Stop teasing me!”
We closed out with “Booty Swing” which had brand-new sparkly jackets and light-up staves with LEDs and fiber optics! We try to go all out on the costumes and props for these folks.
After the show, we all went back to our hotel room for wine and snacks and decompressing. I made a post-show video for my Patrons, as it was too dark and too noisy backstage. Scratch asked someone an important question, which will be the topic of another missive.
I admit that I was sinking lower and lower into bed as the merriment went on, but everyone else was still energetic and went to the dance party. I heard that Betty absolutely broke the dance floor with her all-out Old School Goth moves and she had a devoted ring of admirers dancing around her.
The next morning we had a fabulous brunch and then most of us went shopping and spent a lot of time thanking audience members who telling us how much they enjoyed the show. Several of the ladies hit the consignment shop and found all sorts of treasures including Devastasia’s first corset. Scratch taught a class on Victorian Parlor Magic which was remarkably well attended for so early in the morning. Perhaps because he plugged it at the show and promised to reveal the secrets of how he pulled so many items from thin air. And then we hit the road to be back in MA in time for rehearsal!
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