Hawaii Burlesque Performer Profile: Miss Fortune AKA Lilevilone

Aloha All!

I'm really excited and happy to present the first of many interviews/profiles of local Hawaii based burlesque/cabaret/drag/whateva performers! I'm really looking forward to digging a bit deeper into the minds and hearts of our kama'aina performers and sharing all of their interesting, inspiring and random thoughts with whoever cares to read this little blog.

For this first interview I have the honor of delving deeper into the psyche of one of my favorite local performers, Miss Fortune AKA Lilevilone! I feel it imperative that I also disclose that she is one of my best friends, and a burlesque compatriot in our troupe, Cherry Blossom Cabaret. That said, her talent is HIGHLY EVIDENT to everyone who has the pleasure of watching her. Miss Fortune is special in my opinion for a myriad of reasons. One that stands out to me personally is her use of drama and theatricality to engage her audience. Her face is expressive, and I've seen it transform from beautiful to fierce in the span of a 3 minute piece. She truly inhabits the characters she presents on the stage, making it that much more enjoyable, engaging and fun to watch. It's delightful to watch her, as a fellow performer it's always amazing to see a skilled performer enjoy the presentation of their art, and truly entertain at the same time.

And now, with pleasure.... MISS FORTUNE!

The Stunning Miss Fortune AKA Lilevilone

 Q: Aloha Miss Fortune! Thank you so much for doing this interview! Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Performer Name: Lilevilone aka MissFortune

Tagline: ?? Glitter happens!

Experience: I have been performing in one.way or another from the time I put a purse on my head and danced around the living room as a toddler. I followed that drive through a Bachelor of Arts in Theater from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and am currently considering plans for pursuing my MFA. My time with Cherry Blossom Cabaret, of which I am one.of the original members, and a member of the Board of Directors, is nearing it's 7th birthday. With the troupe I have worn many hats, from soloist, ensemble dancer, theatrical production director (Cabaret Carnivale, and Carnal Carnivale), designer, event manager, and director of Intern Development.

Affiliations: Cherry Blossom Cabaret, Bump and Grind, Vinyl Cherries, Porn and Chicken Honolulu

Skills: Acting, Creative Drama, Stage Combat (sword, rapier, dagger, whip), ribbons,  asian theatre movement, butoh, jazz, modern, improvisational dance, a smattering of hula, samba, latin, and, of course, burlesque ;)

Focus/Specialty? Theatrical burlesque, bull whips, and  puppets! Lol

Signature Pieces: My signature pieces are a vaudeville inspired clown piece- Mr Cellophane, Helpline Operator- a number regarding a phone-sex Operator involving the removal of 17 articles of clothing, a Mad Hatter piece, complete with sock puppets, and Whip It, a balloon number featuring a bull whip.

Q: Upcoming projects you care to share??
As a lifelong performer, I am eternally looking for opportunities for growth and to expand my skill level. I am looking forward to returning to ariel training, and adding fire to my repertoire.  I also feel myself being drawn back to directing, and writing. I would like to resume work on the screen adaptation of Carnal Carnivale, the original full length burlesque musical, featuring an original music, and upwards of 15 acts, co-created with my amazing scriptwriter and Assistant Director, Ry Herman, based on concepts from Cherry Blossom Cabaret. I also have some new ideas for theatrical productions, burning in my brain. So many ideas, so few time! Lol

Q: What inspired you to begin doing burlesque?
 A friend passed on a Craigslist ad, actually!
I was the first to audition for, and the third member to join, the brand new troupe, originally named Cherry Blossom Burlesque, behind Meghan Mayhem, and Lola Love. I was an avid underground club dancer, and a staff member at the long running Honolulu fetish event, The Dungeon, and the rawness, the theatrics, and the limitless personalized nature of burlesque is what attracted me to the art form.

Q: What do you love most about it? I am enamored of fusing multiple performance styles, mixing up everything I have learned, and deeply inspired by the concept of transformation, which is imbued into.all of my numbers. That, and the glitter! ;)

Q: What are your biggest inspirations/influences?
On a national level, I am deep in admiration for Dirty Martini and Chicaboom, while on a local level, the creativity, and dedication to the craft of my dear friend Violetta Beretta never fails to inspire me.
As a performer from multiple disciplines, I often find inspiration from performers from other milieu, such as the drag performer extraordinaire, CoCo Chandelier, and the uber talented bellydancer Zoe Jakes. I admire performers who use their skills to tell a story, or evoke a feeling or thought, not just empty spectacle.

Q: Where can we see you perform? 
In pretty much every performance space in Chinatown! Lol. I have also performed on Maui at the historical Iao Theatre,  and in San Francisco at El Rio and Kinky Salon.

Q: Upcoming highlights?
 I will be performing (and teaching a workshop) at the upcoming Second Annual Hawaii Burlesque Festival on June 14 at Doris Duke, followed by our quarterly event Speakeasy on August 10th: Sizzling Summer Strip, and the end of summer Porn and Chicken Honolulu, August . In between, I can be seen swinging a rapier, dispatching zombies, and spouting Austen-ian verse as the lead role in Jane Austen Zombie Apacolypse, running the.second half of June at The Arts at Marks Garage. Rounding out the season with Naked Girls Reading Poetry event in September.

Q: What is different about burlesque in Hawaii? Anything?
I have noticed a more prevalent inclination for fusion. They do refer to Hawaii as The Melting Pot, after all.

Q: Do you think being a burlesque performer in Hawaii is challenging or easy? Why?
Hmm....Easier because people in Hawaii generally have a more relaxed body image than the mainland. Plus, we don't have to deal with freezing in a costume! Lol

Q: Has Hawaii inspired you in your work? If so, how? 
How can one NOT be inspired by the beauty and the power of Hawaii, and the myriad cultures that are part of our community. In Hawaii you are surrounded by a multitude of cultures on an everyday level, from what we eat, what we wear, to an acceptance and seamless integration of facets of Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc values. My Chinese Serpent piece is directly inspired by a Chinese legend. As a student of theater and dance in Hawaii, you cannot help but incorporate the rich traditions that surround you.

Q: Any funny or cool Hawaii-centric burlesque memories you care to share? 
 Performing on the grounds of Iolani Palace with the iconic Don Tiki was pretty darn cool. ;)
Traveling inter-island has had it's adventurous moments. Lol.  Like the time Violetta Beretta and I were flying out to perform at a fundraiser at Iao Theater, as well as perform as an opening act for English Beat. As it happened, a nasty storm rolled in, and our plane got hit by lightning, and we got delayed for so long that we completely missed load-in and  tech, were trying to apply make-up and lashes in mid-air while being tossed by turbulence (small glitter fiasco), had to get changed in a speeding car (fishnets are pretty difficult to pull on in the back seat- Try it with two people trying to do the same thing! ) and pulling up 10 minutes to curtain. Lol. I am.still amazed we made it! Gave the producer a minor- heart attack, I am sure.
And whenever CBC travels as a group, it is quite a sight, with the large personalities and costume pieces and props. On one particular trip, an early flight, we were all in various states of sleep deprivation, hair in curlers, with an assortment of items ranging from feather fans and headresses, to a pirate sword and crutches(don't ask!), when we were timidly approached and asked if we were a band. We laughed and replied to the affirmative. A band of merry misfits! Lol.

I'd like to thank the lovely Miss Fortune for taking the time to talk with me and share her inspration and mana'o. Stay tuned for more profiles of fascinating, scintilatting and captivating HAWAII performers! CHEE HEE!

If you'd like to find out more about Miss Fortune, please do so here:

https://www.facebook.com/lisa.lilevilone?ref=ts&fref=ts

Hawaii Burlesque History: Past Performer Profile, MISS WIGGLES!

Aloha & Good Morning!

I woke up this morning with the lovely "Miss Wiggles" on my mind. Miss Wiggles was a vaudeville performer working the circuit during the 50's-70's (with a few performances afterward for friends!) Though she never danced nude, she was well known for her amazing control over her anatomy and her barely-there costumes (which she made herself!)

Miss Wiggles performed in Hawaii in the 1960's, and was brought in by Jack Cione to headline at the Forbidden City billed as "The Most Unusual Exotic in Showbiz."

Unfortunately Miss Wiggles AKA Velma Adkerson, left this world on October 22, 2012, leaving behind a host of friends and family who had nothing but the best to say about this talented and beautiful woman.

I wish I could have seen her perform, I'm willing to bet it was probably awesome.

Here's a bit more on her life:
  
ANCHORAGE — Velma Adkerson, who performed risque and acrobatic nightclub routines as "Miss Wiggles," was laid to rest on Monday. Her show business career began in the waning days of vaudeville and burlesque and continued into the 21st century. She packed in the crowds at prominent Lower 48 show houses that also featured stars like Nat King Cole -- and in long-gone, pre-pipeline Alaska bars that would be considered dives nowadays.
But at her service at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, no one mentioned her nightclub years. Instead, person after person went to the microphone to talk about how she had changed their lives for the better.
"Someone who was like a mother to me."
"The most generous woman I ever met."
"If we all had a little piece of her personality, we'd have a lovely world."
It's not what one might have anticipated from the Anchorage newspaper ads that ran in the 1960s and '70s. Week after week, an evergreen picture of her announced appearances at hot spots like the Idle Hour, Le Pussycat and the Brief Encounter. It showed her in a racy two-piece costume with fringes and tassels, shapely legs thrusting in the air as she stood on her head on a chair, with a glowing smile.
Miss Wiggles died at Providence Hospital two days after her 90th birthday. In the grand tradition of entertainers, she could be evasive about her age and place of birth. She sometimes embellished her biography. For example, she told one reporter that she was born in South Africa and that her father had been killed by an elephant.

The obituary prepared by her family says she was born in Atlanta on Oct. 12, 1922. Her father, Arthur Thomas, was a preacher, the Rev. Alonso Patterson told the congregation on Monday -- a surprise to some.
She showed a passion for dance and movement from an early age and began performing professionally in New Orleans while a teenager. Originally billed as "Snakehips," Miss Wiggles traveled the nightclub circuit as a contortionist, bending her body into pretzel-like shapes that astonished viewers.
She liked to design her own getups, eye-catching in their own right, revealing much but concealing just enough to escape the attention of the authorities.
"I never danced nude," she said in a 1986 interview with the Daily News. Dancing and striptease were considered two separate disciplines.
Owners of all-white clubs during the era of segregation used her as a so-called "break-in" act, a comic yet appreciable exotic diversion that their audiences would accept in the otherwise all-white lineup -- subtly opening the door to other black performers.
She had a long run at the popular Eastwood Club in San Antonio, Texas, and recounted that she was dancing at Jack Ruby's club in Dallas, a gangster den, when President John Kennedy was shot.
Events that followed may have had something to do with her decision to check out Alaska.
Her husband, bail bondsman Fred Adkerson, told the assembly of more than 100 people that the first time he saw her at the Club Oasis on the Old Seward Highway, shortly before the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake, "was the luckiest day of my life."
The two seemed to live in a perpetual honeymoon, traveling and taking cruises. In February they received an award from Princess Cruises as "The Most Travelled Passengers," with more than 1,200 days at sea.
It was on a cruise, at age 80, that she gave one of her last public performances to entertain fellow passengers.
Her strength and flexibility endured for years, even as multiple operations stemming from a battle with polio took their toll. In 1992, a reporter described her dancing to an Eric Clapton song, "balancing upside-down on a chair seat and twisting a torso limber as well-cooked spaghetti." In 2002, another reporter watched her "sit on her living room carpet, spread her legs in a near split and touch her muscled stomach to the floor in front of her."
But the mourners who spoke on Monday remembered her exclusively as a beloved friend with an enormous heart.
She was always taking in "strays," her husband told the Daily News in 1986 -- unwed mothers, battered women, abused children.
She once recalled how charities had helped her when she was hospitalized with polio and couldn't work. "(Now) I help whenever I can," she said.
For years, helping meant long hours at her sewing machine, making clothes for friends or their children, creating fashions for a series of runway shows, the proceeds of which went to local charities. The shows genuinely celebrated diversity, with models ranging in age from 15 to 70 and wearing sizes up to 20.
"People aren't the same size, honey," she told a reporter.
Her respect for people in all shapes, sizes and stations of life was perhaps a natural outgrowth of her respect for herself.
Patterson remembered a conversation in which he gingerly touched on whether she thought her former career might set tongues wagging.
"People don't know me for who I am," was her calm response.
"Miss Wiggles never considered herself second class," said one mourner.
"Miss Wiggles was dedicated to making the world a better place; at that she was very successful," said another.
Patterson observed that every speaker had used her stage name, the name by which she was universally known.
"You're all saying, 'Miss Wiggles,' but you're talking about Velma," he said.
"Miss Wiggles was a performer. Velma was a real person who showed her real humanity by making a difference in people's lives."

Source: http://www.adn.com/2012/10/22/2668480/mourners-recall-the-humanitarian.html

Another short Bio, this one with some different info...


Velma P. Adkerson better known as "Miss Wiggles" throughout her adult life, passed away at Providence Alaska Medical Center on October 14, 2012 at the age of 90.

Miss Wiggles was born to Arthur Thomas and Lillie V. Williams on October 12, 1922 in Atlanta, Georgia. Velma grew up in the outskirts of Atlanta and attended school in Georgia.

As a little girl she became interested in dancing and enjoyed learning new dancing steps. She requested her mother to send her to dancing school.

When Velma was about 15 years of age, she knew she wanted to become a professional dancer, she gave performances at various functions. By the age of 19, she went to New Orleans as a dancer and to further her career.

Miss Wiggles left New Orleans and went to Los Angeles where she met with a booking agent "Johnny Robinson". He commenced booking her as Miss Wiggles, contortionist and placed her in night clubs and theaters all over the United States.

Miss Wiggles also performed in Canada, Mexico, France and Hawaii, and other countries around the world. She appeared on "Jenny Jones" national TV when she was 76 years old. She continued performing on cruise ships, while she and her husband, Fred were taking tours until she was 80 years old. She took 3 or 4 cruises yearly for the past 35 years.

Source: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=99268524&PIpi=70206232




Remember Miss Wiggles!

Aloha!

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/10/22/2668480/mourners-recall-the-humanitarian.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/10/22/2668480/mourners-recall-the-humanitarian.html#storylink=c

The 2nd Annual Hawaii Burlesque Festival Revue Performers!

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The Hawaii Burlesque Festival & Revue is COMING SOON! 

 (Here's a link to the larger version of the above image via fbook: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.281102455359095.1073741834.253253384810669&type=1&l=795be598d8)

 Aloha Hepcats & Kittens! 

I'm Pleased as Punch to be able to announce the following performers as part of 2013's Hawaii Burlesque Festival Revue Cast!

HOSTED BY: Ella Flaunt (HONOLULU)

FEATURED PERFORMER: Miss Coco Lectric (AUSTIN)! 

TRAVELING PERFORMERS: 

Baby Le Strange (PORTLAND)

Lilith Moon (KANSAS CITY)

Thundering Jezebel (PUNA, HI) 

HAWAII PERFORMERS: 

Violetta Beretta (HONOLULU)

Miss Fortune (HONOLULU)

 Vy Vicious (HONOLULU)

Mabsy (HONOLULU)

 Miss Catwings (HONOLULU)

Madame X (HONOLULU)

Lola Love (HONOLULU)

Dick Sunday (HONOLULU)

Hunter Down (HONOLULU)

Take a look at our amazing performers here via the official Hawaii Burlesque Festival Facebook Page!

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.281084942027513.1073741833.253253384810669&type=1&l=6689f7f5e2

We also have some beautiful Stage Kats (as opposed to Kittens!) and a few surprises up our non-existent sleeves! Stay tuned!

For more info on the Hawaii Burlesque Festival visit: www.hawaiiburlesquefestival.com

Aloha & Hope to see you at The Doris!