AMBER LOVE 06-JULY-2014 Without a doubt, the highlight of this year’s Dexcon for me was finally seeing the D20 Burlesque troupe. Themes ranged from video games to comics. There were a few surprises. I never expected to see a sexualized Morpheus from Sandman genderbent complete with mask but it’s the sort of thing that Gaiman would be down with. My limited exposure to burlesque had never allowed me to see a male dancer before (outside of drag) so that was also a big treat. The troupe was created in 2011 and has some changing cast members but there are regulars you can look up and follow on Twitter or Facebook.
It was July 4th. None of the usual professional photographers I see in the area were able to attend. I shot all these very blurry pics on my phone. I even tested out the built in “best shot” feature which worked on a couple of the performances.
Clearly the D20 troupe has a lot of humor in their ranks. They had some rather dramatic dances too but you could tell each one was putting their own spin on things. Ruby Solitaire was the one that dared to bring Morpheus aka Dream onto the stage and later she blew everyone’s minds with an Asian themed Dragon dance. The monstrous headpiece had a smoke feature that unfortunately wasn’t captured on the photos. Vonka Romanov portrayed the action hero Black Widow and then a Grimm’s black fairie. Suffragent showed off some exaggerated sensuality when he portrayed X-Men’s leading man Cyclops and then a humorously emo vampire. Each of this dances had something funny mixed in like swapping Cyclops’ usual visor for an eyepiece of tassels and then drenching his vampy self in sunscreen. He had some perfect song choices as well including Here Comes the Sun during his vampire dance. Minnie d’Moocha walked through down the center aisle shooting her arrows as Kate Bishop and proceeded to torment poor Hawkguy bound to a chair. Later she cracked everyone up with an energetic bouncing number themed around Mario and Donkey Kong. The perky Taylor Sweet smiled every time she walked through as stage kitten to clean up and then danced some gogo for at least six songs in order to give the audience an opportunity to put their tips where she allowed. The hostess of the evening, Anja Keister, wrapped up the night just before 2 a.m. in a comical and creepy “sexy” Cthulhu number where tentacles were… let’s say… everywhere.
If  you like what you see, D20 Burlesque will be performing a Tribute to Joss Whedon on July 19th in NYC. They’ll also be at GenCon.
ANJA KEISTER
Other coverage:
Vodka O’Clock episode with Avonelle Wing
Vodka O’Clock D&N episode – coming soon!
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.