Burlesque Quotes

• I was performing in this burlesque group, and we would go to dance rehearsals every day. You'd use every part of your body. Even though some of it is slow, it takes a lot of muscle to be able to dip down and come back up.

  Carmen Electra

  Dip, Groups, Use

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• The difference between burlesque and the newspapers is that the former never pretended to be performing a public service by exposure.

  I. F. Stone

  Differences, Public Service, Newspapers

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• The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same - dupe, fox, straight, like burlesque skits - the repetition through the ages is comedy.

  Dawn Powell

  Age, Ingredients, Dupes

  Dawn Powell (1998). “The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965”, Zoland Books

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• The silent film has a lot of meanings. The first part of the film is comic. It represents the burlesque feel of those silent films. But I think that the second part of the film is full of tenderness and emotion.

  Pedro Almodovar

  Thinking, Silent Films, Firsts

  Interview with Jose Arroyo, www.theguardian.com. July 31, 2002.

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• I don't think there is such a thing as being too raunchy when it comes to the art form of burlesque.

  Christina Aguilera

  Art, Thinking, Form

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• A burlesque word is often a powerful sermon.

  Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

  Powerful, Sermons

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• It is a sin to be a mocker.

  William Shakespeare

  Sin

  William Shakespeare (1750). “The Merchant of Venice”, p.11

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• What caricature is in painting, burlesque is in writing; and in the same manner the comic writer and painter correlate to each other; as in the former, the painter seems to have the advantage, so it is in the latter infinitely on the side of the writer. For the monstrous is much easier to paint than describe, and the ridiculous to describe than paint.

  Henry Fielding

  Writing, Sides, Ridiculous

  Henry Fielding (1902). “The history of the adventures of Joseph Andrews and his friend Mr. Abraham Adams”

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• It's not what you do. It's the way you do it-stripping, or writing, or talking . . . or just breathing. Do it with an air, and never admit you're scared.

  Gypsy Rose Lee

  Fear, Writing, Air

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• There is nudity, of course striptease is an essential component of burlesque but it's much more complex and intelligent than a display of nudity for nudity itself. And its often laugh-out-loud funny.

  Karen Abbott

  Intelligent, Laughing, Essentials

  Source: tech.blorge.com

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• There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Fun, Clothes, People

  P.J. O'Rourke (2015). “Thrown Under the Omnibus”, p.465, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Heroics that don't come off are the very essence of burlesque.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Essence

  Dorothy L Sayers (2009). “Gaudy Night: Lord Peter Wimsey”, p.333, Hachette UK

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• I know my comfort zone and I know what my strong points are and my first love was always music. I'm a huge cinema fan. I was taking my time; I got offered a lot of scripts and things along the way but until Burlesque showed up at my doorstep, it really spoke to me. I have a collection of burlesque books at home that I've had for years. I've always been intrigued and fascinated with the topic, the beauty and the art of it and the comedic value of it. I think it's just a beautiful, empowering thing for women.

  Christina Aguilera

  Beautiful, Art, Strong

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• Classic burlesque in the style of Gypsy which many modern burlesque troupes practice is, at its core, so playful and teasing and innocent. It's not hardcore stripping so much as letting your body tell a story; the women are playing characters and unfolding a complete narrative onstage, with beginning, middle, and end.

  Karen Abbott

  Character, Practice, Style

  Source: tech.blorge.com

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• The desire to express in an art form and to compose a tableau and vignette whether it's humorous, burlesque, or poetic comes simply from a desire to compose an image for cinema. It is not my fault that when I go to Ramallah there is a checkpoint and therefore it enters my film. Tell me a way to avoid that politicized image. The fact is that the police are everywhere, the army everywhere and occupation is total. Whether it's a love story or a thriller, you place the camera and these realities will cross the frame.

  Elia Suleiman

  Art, Humorous, Army

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• There is ever a slight suspicion of the burlesque about earnest good men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Honesty, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “The Journals”

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• If you ever saw All That Jazz [1979], Bob Fosse was kind of raised dancing in strip joints and the whole era of burlesque, and that form ran his visual aesthetic, the pacing and rhythm of what he did.

  David Copperfield

  Dancing, Bob, Eras

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Look, I come from vaudeville, I come from burlesque, I come from heartaches, I come from sadness, I come from gladness, I come from work and sweat and respect for the craft.

  Mickey Rooney

  Sadness, Sweat, Heartache

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• Like the burlesque comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.

  e. e. cummings

  Comedian, Movement, Precision

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• Just the whole concept of burlesque, I've always been fascinated with it. I've always collected so many books about burlesque.

  Christina Aguilera

  Book, Whole, Fascinated

  MoviesOnline Interview, www.moviesonline.ca. September 12, 2017.

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• Pie throwing is kind of a lost art, and although it may be a rather rudimentary, burlesque humor, there's something inherently funny about taking a pie in the face, under the right conditions.

  Johnny Carson

  Art, Pie, May

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• It just seemed fitting to have our own lounge with our own dance review that paid homage to where The Pussycat Dolls originated, ... So it wasn't just another nightclub. It was somewhere where people can go and see an old school show with real dancing and real performing and real singing. It's perfect for Vegas. It's got that whole cabaret, burlesque-inspired review of dancing, and the whole fishnets, and boas.

  Nicole Scherzinger

  Real, School, Vegas

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• I don't think there's such a thing as an evil animal.

  Alex Colville

  Animal, Thinking, Evil

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• Burlesque thrived during the Great Depression, and by extension, so, too, did Gypsy [Rose Lee]. Men could no longer afford to pay $5.50 to see a show on Broadway, but they could scrape together $1.00 for a matinee at a burlesque house.

  Karen Abbott

  Men, Rose, House

  Source: tech.blorge.com

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• I have this fantasy that the second movie would begin with a brief statement by all of the young actors who had played the children in the first movie, explaining how it had ruined their lives, so we would catch up with Emily Browning drinking heavily in the back of a burlesque bar, and maybe Liam Aiken would be living underneath a bridge, and then instead of the twins who played Sunny, we would just try to find the oldest woman in the world, and get an interview with her sitting in a trailer park.

  Daniel Handler

  Children, Drinking, Bridges

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2005.

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