NATIONAL TREASURE: Steele Starling

Steele Starling: National Treasure of Red Hots Burlesque

This week our National Treasure talks gender and poledancing…

STEELE STARLING
MISSOURI

Out of Missouri, the Show-Me State – what better state for burlesque dancers to hail from – we have polesque dancer Steele Starling! This beefcake of burlesque has performed at the Windy City Burlesque Festival as well as last year’s Fierce! the first International Queer Burlesque Festival. He has studied under Michelle Mynx, one half of the award-winning Gravity Plays Favorites. “Being a guy in burlesque and also on a pole is still mind blowing for people,” Starling tells Red Hots Burlesque. “I think a lot people don’t realize how athletic it can be. I think it’s impossible for a guy to do burlesque without gender being examined. Men aren’t supposed to be the objects of sexual desire in a hetero-male dominated world.” Starling shares one of his favorite responses from a male audience member after a performance in Ohio: “That was one hell of a man dance.” When he visited Red Hots Burlesque last year, he brought the house down with a lumberjack aerial number. “In terms of burlesque, aerial and pole probably everything’s been done – although certainly there aren’t too many men doing burlesque on aerial chains. In every act, I like to tell a story. I like to use pole and aerial tricks and play with costume and make-up, but it all has to serve my story and character.”

WHAT TO SEE IN MISSOURI: “The City Museum is a reason to come to St. Louis in and of itself. It’s a playground created by local artists with a beatnik bar, a ball pit, mini train, skate park, a man-made cave, a mini circus, a ferris wheel, and a few art galleries. Food-wise, Pho Grand is one of the delicious restaurants on South Grand, which also boasts drop-in pole classes at Michelle Mynx Academy of Pole Dance. Also, St. Louis’s zoo, art museum, and a lot of other attractions are free.”