Milwaukee Burlesque Performers Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month

Milwaukee burlesque performers are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with a myriad of events in the coming weeks.

by

Dance

Since 1988, National Hispanic Heritage Month is annually observed September 15 through October 15. During this time, Hispanic and Latine artists of different mediums embrace their heritage in all sorts of creative ways, and this year, Milwaukee burlesque performers are celebrating with a myriad of events in the coming weeks.

“I’ve kind of been an orphan in discovering my own culture, and using dance and film and music and literature has been my way of doing that,” Frankie Moonshine says. Having not learned of her Hispanic and Mexican heritage until her teenage years, and a self-described “late-blooming lesbian,” Moonshine started doing burlesque three years ago and previously performed with the troupe Vaudeville Vixens. “When I perform, I’m really trying to get in touch with that beautiful ancestor who didn’t get that chance to live their best queer life through dance.”

Like Moonshine, Luna Blue learned of her Hispanic roots later as a teenager. “The way I’ve gotten to connect with my heritage has been through my creative exploits, mainly on the burlesque stage,” she mentions. “Burlesque is all about choice and freedom and agency, and has deep roots in satire and social commentary, so now I have the choice to learn all this on my own since I wasn’t taught it growing up.” She has now been doing burlesque for 13 years and is a member of Brew City Bombshells, Wisconsin’s longest-running burlesque troupe. “Art has always been political, and burlesque is such a great way to still be loudly and proudly ourselves in the face of adversity. A lot of people are afraid right now and I hope seeing themselves represented in the arts helps to make them feel less alone.”

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September 15 this year was Bella Bon Bon’s two-year anniversary doing burlesque. As a first-generation Mexican-American, she celebrates her heritage at shows with a Chicana pride act throughout the month. “Even as someone who’s always known my roots, there've been times I felt completely disconnected, and if it wasn’t for burlesque, I don’t feel like I would’ve come full-circle as much as I have,” Bon Bon reckons. “It’s a way of showing inner strength, because traditionally, Hispanic women were supposed to be submissive and quiet and meek and mild, so this is completely going against what we were traditionally taught.”

As first-generation with Mexican, Guatemalan and Afro-Cuban roots, Reina Fire debuted a new act in the last year called La Quema Del Diablo (“the burning of the devil”), named after a Guatemalan holiday observed every December to signify the new year. “I’ve been trying to connect with my Afro-Cuban parts and perform to more Black and Black Latino artists.” She grew up dancing and got enamored with burlesque from watching videos of performances off black box cable as a teen. After first doing burlesque in 2013 with her friend Dora Diamond’s Gay Cabaret, Fire co-founded Cream City Cabaret before joining Brew City Bombshells about ten years ago.

Based in Oshkosh, Madame Calypso likes performing in Milwaukee and Madison since she has met more performers of color. “It’s more comfortable to be in those spaces.” Though she grew up assimilated into an English-speaking way of life, Calypso learned Spanish so she could converse with her grandmother and aunt who both lived with her. She performs a number called Mexican Style Love that involves a sombrero and colors of the Mexican flag, and also has a number themed around Dia De Los Muertos (“Day of the Dead”) that features a photograph of Calypso’s mother on stage.

Coming up this Wednesday, September 30, Bella Bon Bon performs at Anodyne Coffee (224 W. Bruce St.) for SESPRESSO, a monthly burlesque and drag show. Then on Saturday, October 10, Frankie Moonshine and Bella Bon Bon will be at Sexy Spooktacular 3 at Schotskis (6139 Beloit Rd.) in West Allis. That same night, Luna Blue performs at Bremen Cafe’s variety show BremSin (901 E. Clarke St.).

Sunday, October 11 will be the inaugural edition of Cabaret Corazon also at Anodyne. Produced by Bella Bon Bon, the event will feature all Hispanic and Latine performers (including Frankie Moonshine and Madame Calypso) and raise money for immigrant rights organization Voces De La Frontera (VDLF). “It came out of impulse,” Bon Bon recalls. “I wondered if anyone else was going to step up to the plate and do a show because in the two years I’ve been in burlesque, nobody has.”

VDLF has been at the forefront of keeping immigrant and refugee communities in Wisconsin safe and informed during President Trump’s ICE raids. Bon Bon continues, ”I went through the fear of losing my parents. I remember being questioned by a cop and walking past my house as if I didn’t live there. I remember being an anchor baby and being afraid of coming home from school and my parents weren’t going to be there. As I’ve gotten older and now it’s happening all over again, I have that same fear, and Frankie and I have kids. I feel like those of us who are Brown or Brown enough to get taken are just waiting our turn, and while I feel like I’m waiting mine, Cabaret Corazon is me doing what I can while I’m still here.”

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Madame Calypso shares that VDLF is near and dear to her heart as her mother was deported. “It’s scary, but I’m not going to stop living my life because ICE is out there. I’m still going to perform, still going to work and still going to be myself. I’ve had white friends who have told me to not speak Spanish in public because they didn’t want me to get taken by ICE, or play my Spanish music, and I know it was coming from a place of love but I’m not going to stop existing and being who I am. I’m a proud Mexican-American and that’s why I continue to do what I do.”

Though Hispanic Heritage Month ends on October 15, several more events take place later in the month. Madame Calypso will be wrestling for Midwest Mudfest’s Carnivore Carnival on Friday, October 23 at The Cooperage (822 S. Water St.), and Luna Blue and Reina Fire will be performing the same night for the Brew City Bombshells’ You’ll Float Too Halloween show at X-Ray Arcade (5036 S. Packard Ave.). The following night, Madame Calypso is participating in a lip sync battle at Bremen Cafe.

“It’s an act of rebellion, not just as a Latin person but also as a woman - and me, personally, as a plus-size woman,” Reina Fire contends about burlesque. “We’ve witnessed how much more diversity there’s been in this scene; when I first started burlesque, I could count on one hand how many Latin performers I knew of in the state of Wisconsin. Now there’s so many, and it’s the same with Black performers; we’re booming with Black and Brown representation and I couldn’t be happier for it.”