Tush Burlesque goes in front of the camera to bring ‘essential’ Valentine entertainment

Tush Burlesque’s annual Valentine’s themed show — happening online this year, of course — is all about “Essential Love.”

The show, streaming live on Friday, Feb. 12, also includes dances themed around other essentials of life in a global pandemic.

Like, for example, nurses: Dancer Valerie Veils will be performing as a naughty nurse.

“In the past, I’d never wanted to do a nurse act,” said Veils, also known as Amber Poulliot of Tacoma. “It’s kind of a common theme. There’s definitely that sexy nurse stereotype.”

True enough, but Veils isn’t just playing a nurse on stage. She is one — a traveling operating-room nurse, currently on assignment in San Jose, California.

“As I’m rehearsing, I’ve been wondering why it’s taken me this long to combine my muggle life and my performance life,” she told The Olympian. “I’m pretty stoked about it.”

In the year since she and her Tush colleagues last danced on stage, Veils has witnessed the effects of the pandemic firsthand, particularly its impact on people waiting for surgeries that are important but technically not essential, including some procedures for people with cancer.

For much of the year, she had a contract with a Tacoma hospital.

“For the first six weeks in Washington, we were shut down from doing any kind of non-essential surgeries,” she said. “No one knew what the spread would be and how quickly hospitals were going to fill. It was hard to watch. When people did start coming in, they were a lot sicker than they had been before.”

Equally hard was spending a year without dancing.

“Being a burlesque performer has been a huge part of my identity,” she said. “I was scheduled to perform in 2020 at the Burlesque Hall of Fame and at the Viva Las Vegas Festival and other festivals throughout the country. Losing those rewards from something I’ve been doing for the past 12 years was really hard. That in combination with working on the front line and seeing how COVID has affected people and the community has been pretty rough.”

Her act, “Fever Dreams,” keeps things light.

“It’s a fun spoof on nursing and some of the things nurses deal with on a daily basis,” she said. “When people watch me perform, I want to take them away from reality and bring them happiness and excitement.”

“This is a dark time and a lonely time for a lot of people,” said Tush’s Betty Beelzebub, a.k.a. Lesli Baker of Olympia. “We want to keep going and bringing light into people’s lives.”

In that way, burlesque itself — and performing arts more broadly — are essential, Beelzebub told The Olympian.

Beyond that, other essentials to be highlighted in the show remain a mystery. “It could be whatever is essential to you during a pandemic,” she said.

Toilet paper, perhaps?

“I don’t want to give too much away,” she said. “It’s hard because without the show being in person, I want it to be a really big surprise.”

Also featured in “Essential Love” are Tush’s Beretta Bristol, a.k.a. Gillian Smee, and Sly Violet, a.k.a. Kymberly Zyl.

Vanessa the Witch, who performs with Rock Candy Burlesque and Papaya Magic Cabaret, will emcee and perform the show’s only two-person act with Dulce D’Jor, also of Papaya Magic. The other guest performers are Carmen Caliente and Jamie Von Stratton, both of Seattle.

Excited as the Tush dancers are to be performing again, doing burlesque without an audience is a big change, Beelzebub said.

“It’s going to feel very strange performing in front of a camera,” she said. “In burlesque, the relationship with the audience is what keeps you going on stage. The art is slowly changing to adapt to that lack of participation from the audience.

“We’ve really missed our audience,” she added. “Olympia audiences are always so supportive and so amazing.”

‘Essential Love’

• What: Tush Burlesque is going online with its eighth annual show celebrating Valentine’s Day.
• When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 12, and available for later viewing
• Where: Streaming live from Copious in Seattle
• Tickets: $15 to watch live, $20 to access the video on demand
• More information: https://www.copious.art/event-details/essential-love/pick-tickets
• Also: The troupe is raffling off a fascinator, made by hat designer Most Darling, to benefit Black Trans Femmes in the Arts. Tickets are $5 each and can be purchased through PayPal (tushburlesque@gmail.com), Cash App ($TushBurlesque) or Venmo (@TushBurlesque).

This story was originally published February 11, 2021 at 5:45 AM.