NATIONAL TREASURE: Rev. Spooky Le Strange

Rev. Spooky Le Strange: National Treasure of Red Hots Burlesque

REV. SPOOKY LE STRANGE

LOUISIANA

Ordained reverend and burlesque artist Spooky Le Strange leads the Billion Dollar Baby Dolls in New Orleans, and she is notorious as “the most dangerous woman in burlesque.” But Le Strange believes that she’s doing precisely what she’s meant to do. “I don’t think that I am behaving badly,” Le Strange tells Red Hots Burlesque. “I think I’m behaving exactly as I should as a woman.” Her brand of burlesque is more political and more feminist than the average burlesque, infusing nerdiness and science with the traditional bump and grind. What sets her and her girls apart? “I’m not as concerned with being pretty or thin… we’re much less pretty matched pony, and more about being strong, educated women,” says Le Strange. Her mother believes that Spooky’s something out of the movie Gypsy, focusing on the theatrical end of burlesque, and as long as Mom doesn’t ever come to one of Le Strange’s performances, she’ll maintain that idea. Le Strange does burlesque for her, and not really for anybody else. “I do it because I love it. I tried not to do it and I almost died emotionally.”