That's Cabaret!

My alter ego Lady Elle of Dr. Sketchy's Tokyo hung up her cabaret shoes for the month of August but Leilachan still needed to do more research into the burlesque scene in Tokyo in order to recruit more models for the up coming fall season. And what a scene it is! Last month's Dr. Sketchy model, Cherry Typhoon invited me to a litany of Cabaret performances all over the Tokyo Metropolitan area and it has been quite the eye opening experience into the underground scene of cabaret. This weekend's series of shows was held at The Amazon Club a real old fashioned Speakeasy in Downtown Yokohama. Fronted as an old Barber shop, the back rooms of this old pub where General MacArthur himself hung out, are sultry cabaret performers with more spice than you can find on Wolfgang Puck's rack! Saturday evening began at The Puk Puppet Theater in Shinjuku with a fairytale cabaret performance by Cherry Typhoon and an amazing singer/musician whose name eludes me but whose voice captured my imagination. She sang like a songbird very ethereal and enchanting and not at all typical for a Japanese performer! Her agile fingers tickled a wide range of instruments showcasing her spectacular musicianship and rhythmic wit. Together they created a world where traditional fairytales like Cinderella and Snow White collided with themes from Alice and Wonderland and the Wizard Oz to create a Tim Burton-esque wildly exotic and at times phantasmogoric spectacle of cheeky humor and daring erotica. Then it was off to Yokohama for some good old fashioned debauchery. 6 hours and 267 photos later the sun rose over MacArthur's old stomping ground and I stumbled home amongst the early morning commuters convinced that my night was better than their day would be!