Rose City
Sirens
Portland's Premiere All Queer
Burlesque Troupe
The art form burlesque has always been relatively loosely defined. It’s pioneers charged themselves with uprooting and challenging cultural ideals utilizing the same unique methods involved in drawing in their audience. Today’s form, more commonly referred to as neo-burlesque, has modern audiences worldwide as captivated as ever. Portland, Oregon in particular is able to boast one of the region’s top rated burlesque troupes: the Rose City Sirens.
The Rose City Sirens have been dazzling audiences since October of 2006. Five queer women, all hailing from varying performance backgrounds, met in the off hours in the front bar of the city’s only full-time lesbian nightclub. The task at hand: speculation as to what it might take to put on a successful burlesque show. These five friends welcomed this challenging course of action and, with the help of the club’s owner and head deejay, filled their very first show to capacity. The dream was suddenly a reality, and the ladies dove head first into making their next show as successful as the initial one. The troupe has since lost and gained performers, and yet never failed to delight their audiences. 2008 finds the troupe with three core members: Delilah Sinn, Savvy Danger, and Squsme. They are now also the foundational act of SinnSavvy Productions, a queer-centric talent management company based in Portland, appropriately named for the two remaining original Rose City Sirens.
The obvious effort gone into the plethora of troupe choreography, always with the intent to entertain on a thought provoking level, has shone on a large number of stages across our fair city. The ladies have graced such venues as the Someday Lounge, the Fez Ballroom, the Holocene, Rotture, the Crystal Ballroom, Berbati's Pan, the Jupiter Hotel, Pride Northwest’s Waterfront Stage, Red Cap Garage and, most regularly, their home venue The E-Room. A hint of vaudeville graces the stage during a Sirens’ set: these ladies don’t always take themselves so seriously! Skits, humor, and downright silliness are no strangers to the Rose City Sirens. The eclectic nature of their musical selection has caught many a sound engineer’s ear, and audiences are left wondering how the musical ambience moved from Tom Waits to the Sesame Street soundtrack, from Peggy Lee to Janet Jackson. Show-goers have been moved to tears by some of the societal commentary that has been known to make it’s way into Sirens choreography. These ladies epitomize brains equaling beauty. To never have witnessed a Rose City Sirens performance is a crime against any artistic heart.
The ladies, having climbed their way to the top here in the city of Portland, have now set their sights beyond the Northwest. The troupe aims for a west coast tour in 2009. An opportunity to treat oneself to a Rose City Sirens show is not far off, no matter where you reside.
The Rose City Sirens can be found exclusively through