Liquor was flowing and glitter was abundant as The Maine Attraction stepped onto the stage at Bathtub Gin’s weekly burlesque show. Red sequins dripped from the nape of her neck down to her ankles. But by the time she tore her dress off for the dwindling crowd, it was already the beginning of the end.

“The host of the show came backstage, and she said: ‘All right, everybody. This is our last show for a while — New York just shut everything down,’” Maine said, describing the night of March 15, 2020. “I sobbed like a baby.”

“Standing behind a curtain or watching an aerialist above your head is the most amazing experience — it’s like being in a snow globe.”

— The Maine Attraction

Maine and her fellow burlesque performers were among the more than a million New Yorkers who lost their jobs last spring when the city shut down. As of last December, employment in the arts and entertainment in New York City had declined by 66 percent — the largest drop of any sector of its economy. A year later, their venues are dark and empty and some of their costumes no longer fit.

Many burlesque entertainers pull together a living in New York through a variety of performance gigs, while others use it as a release from more conventional day jobs. The city had been a hub for burlesque for more than a decade; before the pandemic, you could find a show on almost any given night in both Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Twelve local burlesque performers spoke to The Times this winter about the future of their scene. While many were eager to dress up and pose in their old haunts, only their stage names are being published because of the delicacy of the subject with some employers, co-workers, friends and family members.

“It’s a challenge to feel safe breathing the same air again. And I think that’s part of what’s so sexy about burlesque: breathing the same air with this person who’s being vulnerable with you and taking off their clothes.”

— Louise the Ill at Ease

Burlesque has a rich history in New York. Beyond the flashy diamonds, pearls and feathers, the format allows performers to combine elements that are usually seen on separate stages. There’s room for stripping to meet comedy; for raunchiness to play with tragedy; for the beautiful to face the grotesque; and for the performer to make the audience squirm.

The earliest form of burlesque in the city goes back at least to September 1868, when Lydia Thompson & the British Blondes melded aspects of “leg shows” and minstrel shows for a bustling audience. Sideshows — like the ones still running in Coney Island — are also considered burlesque-like performances.

Starting next Friday, New York’s arts and entertainment venues will be able to reopen at 33 percent capacity, yet burlesque performers are feeling hesitant about returning to their historically intimate and touchy audiences.

“Often the things that are celebrated, as far as Black artists are concerned, have so much to do with our trauma.”

— The Samson Night

Before the pandemic hit, Margo Mayhem and The Samson Night, a couple that performs together as Midnight Mayhem Burlesque, were working eight-show weeks on their respective Broadway shows while also doing about four burlesque shows a week. Some days this meant they would run straight from their Midtown theaters to perform an early show at Times Square’s Le Scandal Cabaret, then down to the Slipper Room on the Lower East Side for the midnight show, before heading back to their apartment in Woodside, Queens.

Samson, 42, and Margo, 36, have managed to make ends meet since their performance work dried up — after receiving unemployment for a brief period, Margo pivoted into teaching pole dancing, while Samson focused on narrating audiobooks — but they worried about their colleagues with less conventional performance backgrounds, especially as freelancers tried to navigate the unemployment system.

“Performers and artists are like the bastard children of society,” Samson said.

Burlesque often thrives on the fringes of society, cropping up with a vengeance during times of prohibition and oppression, but during the pandemic, even underground art forms have been at a loss. Many performers say they have no idea what burlesque will look like on the other side.

“I’ve done two online shows, but they just make you depressed because then you’re like, alone and naked — drunk in your living room.”

— Dandy Dillinger

Dandy Dillinger, a 33-year-old baker and burlesque performer living in the East Village, lost both her day job and her performance career when the pandemic hit. The restaurant she worked for closed last March, but nightlife shutting down was far more devastating. By her estimate, she had been making as much as $3,300 a month from burlesque and go-go dancing.

She started an online bakery to pay her rent but found that the emotional void left by burlesque couldn’t be filled by buttercream frosting.

“I lost my sex drive, I lost my sex appeal, I didn’t look in the mirror anymore,” she said. “I put on a good 15 pounds, and none of my clothes fit.”

“Silliness and sexualness and darkness and mystery just appeal to the very core of a human.”

— Veronica Viper

Veronica Viper, a 42-year-old performer and fourth-generation resident of the Lower East Side, used to put on raunchy displays for rowdy crowds. But for the past year, she said, she has been struggling with her body confidence and her mental health.

“I put on weight, I watched a lot of TV, I drowned my feelings out any way that I could,” Veronica said.

She said having an audience witness her body onstage helped her feel visible and heard in a way that she is often deprived of as a trans woman.

The feeling of safety, she said, is fleeting: “It’s something that has to be worked on constantly, and it’s hard to do without external validation. I would love to be able to drive my entire life on my own sheer will, but I missed that day in yoga class or whatever.”

In the meantime, performers are “waiting for that stage and waiting for that audience,” she said. “Waiting to be alive again.”

Some of New York’s resident burlesque performers have tried to supplement their lost audiences by participating in virtual performances, but many said it was a far cry from the exhilarating experience of stripping in person.

“I just miss hearing the audience’s live reactions,” Maine said. “You know, the gasps, the laughter, the whistles, the ‘Yeah, baby!s,’ and the applause.”

“Not having the audience there — the interaction and the energy of it — there’s definitely something to be lost,” said Nyx Nocturne, a 32-year-old nonbinary performer based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Nyx still has an administrative job, but during the pandemic, income vanished from working as a tattoo artist and from performing with Switch n’ Play, a queer drag and burlesque collective.

“I’m not saying we save lives, but we help people get through a bad day, and we put smiles on faces, or we make them cry or whatever it is.”

— Fem Appeal

Fem Appeal, 53, spent eight years producing Kitty Nights, one of New York’s longest-running weekly burlesque shows. When the show ended in 2014, she pivoted back into performing in other producers’ lineups, and she thought she was done scouting locations and scrapping together makeshift curtains.

“I’m like, ‘What does that mean?’” she said when New York City went into lockdown. “I go back to doing everything myself?”

Fem still has a full-time job, but as someone who spends her days working with adults with developmental disabilities, burlesque was her release at the end of a long day, a catharsis she said she doesn’t get from virtual performances.

On this point, all of the performers see eye to eye. “Burlesque and performance art is very much a cultural barometer, and what you can see — what you can get away with — is the vanguard,” Veronica said. “It’s the edge. That’s where that line goes forward from.”

Zoe Ziegfeld, a 35-year-old resident of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, is still working as a nanny but lost all of her performance work, including her occasional gig as a snake charmer with The Metropolitan Opera.

“On the one hand, it hurts a lot to think about the nightlife and what I’ve lost,” Zoe said. “On the other hand — or maybe it’s the same hand — there are other things that are more important right now.”

“I would see these half-naked women of every shape, smiling at themselves in the mirror as it happened. And I was like, whatever this is, I want there to be more of it.”

— Jo Weldon

Jo Weldon, 58, who also performed as Jo Boobs, started the New York School of Burlesque in 2004 after nearly three decades of stripping, modeling and immersion in queer-punk movements.

Through the school, Jo became an authority of neo-burlesque and has taught many of the current crop of burlesque performers, including Veronica, Fem, Rose, Nyx and Louise.

When the school shut down last spring, Jo began teaching online classes, but it hasn’t been easy to turn a profit.

“It’s definitely maybe a quarter of the money,” Jo said. “And it was barely sustainable to begin with.”

Despite these challenges, Jo recently moved to the East Village with Jonny Porkpie, who has been pursuing a master of fine arts degree in children’s literature. Jonny, Jo’s partner, said he believes this time has also pushed burlesque performers in some positive ways.

“It’s been wonderful to see people adapt and be inspired by the limitations,” Jonny said. “Isn’t that always the way? Like the more limitations you have, the more your brain explodes out to do creative things.”

“I know there are people that are doing online performances, but I haven’t really been motivated to do that. You feel depressed and there’s, like, a mess in the corner.”

— Rose Quartz

When it’s safe to take the stage again, the performers said, burlesque will undoubtedly feel different.

“I think we’ll be apprehensive to be that close to other people for a while,” Nyx said. “I think about the fact that we would put money in our mouths all the time and eat this money out of people’s hands or out of their mouth.”

Despite their nerves, however, they are eager for nightlife’s return.

“People are going to go ham,” Zoe said. “I think that’s the New York way. Like I know that people want to say New York is dead and I think those people just aren’t looking hard enough.”

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