“Burlesque show is an unusual beast in that it’s neither a ballet—100% dance—or a play,” says Alex “Scratch” Newman, manager of the established burlesque troupe Boston Babydolls. “There’s dance elements to it and less of a plot. It’s a balancing act and it’s a skill to pull together a good burlesque show.”

Members of Harvard’s theatrical and dance communities are also aware of this, and have begun to take steps to bring burlesque into the mainstream and into the campus dance community. For example, classically trained ballerina Marin J. Orlosky ’07-’08, a dance associate at the Office for the Arts’ Dance Program—which supports student dance groups and offers classes—developed an interest in circus arts as a teenager, which inspired time off to perform in this non-traditional arena. Most recently, she performed as the aerialist in the Loeb Mainstage production, “Momentum.”

Working within both the classical and non-traditional dance communities, Orlosky supports the validity of burlesque’s performative artistic value, despite its display of bare chests and shoulders.

“[W]hat I’ve seen as more transgressive elements have been not so much the sexy part but more the character content,” Orlosky says, referring to one of the more hilarious acts that she’s seen, “I think a whole lot of people have more problems with dressing up as schoolgirls and then one of them being crucified with glitter.”

And though not all burlesque performances try to be as controversial in terms of subject material, the freedom that the art provides and the controversies inherent in its form are enough to have Weiner very enthusiastic.

“I think it’s so exciting that the A.R.T. is so supportive of this,” he says regarding upcoming burlesque performances and the current talks with area burlesque troupes to bring more to the theater. “I think it’s so exciting that Harvard is so supportive of this.”

RAISING A BROW

Amongst the oddities surrounding Shakespearen disco “The Donkey Show,” Club Oberon’s first production of the new season, was the breasts. There was nothing out of the ordinary about them in and of themselves, but what they represented, as they danced above and through the unusual nightclub-style audience protected by the gently flapping wings of their butterfly pasties, was a shift. The A.R.T. would be doing things a little bit differently this year.

Those pasties—stickers carefully placed over a topless woman’s nipples during some types of performances, typically burlesque—would not be the last to come through that theater space this year. On December 4, the Boston Babydolls will fill the space with “V for Vixen,” a U.S.O.-style burlesque tribute to the nation’s armed forces, and talks are in the works of bringing more of the art form to the space on Arrow Street.

“[W]hen you say burlesque, you think girls taking off their clothes, and it means so much more than that,” says Ari Barbanell, director of special projects for Club Oberon. “It’s about variety shows. It’s about comedy. It’s about music.”

And, to some extent, it’s about finding a venue willing to let a troupe perform. With a decades and decades long reputation as being simply a sort of smutty striptease, Boston burlesque troops sometimes lack the funds or the street credentials to secure venues or even their own space to rehearse. When the Boston Babydolls moved into a dance studio in Quincy over a year ago, they were greeted by suspicion and accusation; the City Councilor for their particular area of the town, Brian F. McNamee, compared their appearance to the beginnings of Boston’s erstwhile “Combat Zone.” “The Combat Zone started out with innocent burlesque,” the Boston Globe quoted McNamee in April, “and then the next thing you know, there’s striptease, prostitutes, drugs, and pimps.”

If “The Donkey Show” was any indication, this is not necessarily a crowd the Oberon staff is adverse to, even if they did believe that it’s the type a burlesque troupe would attract—which they don’t. By encouraging and inviting troupes to perform there, they hope that the high quality theater space and audio and lighting equipment will lend burlesque troupes not only the proper materials to create their spectacles but also some artistic legitimacy. And while “The Slutcracker” has had success at the Somerville Theatre, the performers in the show do not derive from one troupe, but many various ones, which on their own, do not have their own performance spaces.

“[‘The Slutcracker’] was fantastic and what they did that was so brilliant was put together all these troops... [but] the problem with Somerville Theater is that that’s not a home,” says Oberon producer Randy Weiner. “And what we’re try to give them a home.”

IT TAKES ALL KINDS

A motley crowd, contemporary burlesque troops vary locally and nationally in terms of content and approach.