Sunday night I performed at Hot Muffins! which was great fun and a definite learning curve as a newbie burlesque performer.

Before I saw any video footage I felt both acts went reasonably well. I had a few costume issues in the first one but thought they didn't detract from the overall act, and I thought my second act (debut performance of which) was well received, despite prop issues (the cards fell off the chair)

So, my overall perception was a bit generally vague. Nothing went majorly wrong, I didn't fall on my face, the audience cheered, other performers were supportive, and pretty much what I took from it was I have to learn how to better cope with costume and prop malfunctions when on stage, and put into practice some of the very useful criticism passed on by the promoter.

Since then I've seen footage of my first act - and boy, that list of "things to improve" has grown. In my opinion, you will never get a better idea of how a performance went than by watching video footage of it. Other performers, your mates and promoters will want to be nice, especially if you are a newbie in my opinion, and even if you push for strong criticism they may not want to tell you where exactly it looked rubbish -  fair enough, lots of people don't take criticism well! And of course, the views of promoters/other performers/audience members are extremely useful and I make a point of asking for criticism from them for that reason.

But video never lies. You can see where you dropped character, where you were too fast, what didn't work, what was boring for the audience - and what obviously worked, what the audience liked, what made you look good, what could look great if you worked on it.

I think you can learn from every burlesque experience, as an audience member, performer, participant in online forums, etc., and I certainly learnt a lot from watching the very entertaining, professional and lovely Anna Fur Laxis and Diva Hollywood perform on Sunday night. Watching myself perform I can now see how and where best to apply what I've learnt from them to my performance.

Final note - how an act looks on stage will be different to how it looks when you've been rehearsing, so it is always worthwhile videoing a performance even if you've already videoed your rehearsals loads. Unless you live in a club/pub with several handy friends to act as audience members, you won't be able to recreate the experience of performing to an audience and the effect of nerves/excitement on your act.

Just my experience as a newbie on a continuing burlesque adventure..more on my travels through the tassel jungle coming soon...