Burlesque is Dead: Long Live Burlesque

With a plethora of shows populated by new acts and many of the established shows disappearing, it sometimes feels as if the cabaret revival is sinking back into a self-supporting community rather than a vibrantly challenging art form.

Gypsy Charms is the Johnny Appleseed of Scottish burlesque: her classes fueled the revival. Her collaboration with Dance House, Blonde Ambition, Chris Wilson of the Kitsch Kats and the ubiquitous Desmond O'Connor is a resurrection ritual. Covering one hundred years of sensual miscommunication, it matches the cabaret format with an ambitious narrative that sees seduction evolve from Victoria's Prince Albert to the sexualised aerobics of the yuppie generation.

As is natural for a generative event, The Mating Ritual has plenty of sex, alongside O'Connor's cheeky George Formby tribute and Wilson's quick fire jazz choreography. The final celebration even explodes onto the dance-floor in a celebration of new found liberation via the Village People.

Charms and Wilson are stunning dancers: loose and agile, hot and elated, while O'Connor threads together the story with his elegantly ironic interludes: an illegitimate birth, the genesis of disco and the revelation of Man's true nature illustrate love's failure to run free. As a taster for Blonde Ambition's Fringe run, when this cabaret dream team will be exploring their permutations in the Ghillie Dhu, or a show that points to the future of a genuinely theatrical burlesque, The Mating Ritual puts cabaret back in the (Dance) House. [Margaret Kirk]