What do you get when you mix burlesque — those titillating theatrical revues filled with comedy skits, risque dance numbers and striptease — with a fine art exhibit? And why would those two worlds come together in the first place?
The answer is to be found Friday and Saturday at the Honolulu Museum of Art, when the Cherry Blossom Cabaret, after a long hiatus due to the pandemic, returns to public view with “Bloom: A Floral Fete,” a big two-night celebration at the museum’s Doris Duke Theatre.
The show takes its theme from the museum’s current exhibition “Rebecca Louise Law: Awakening,” an immersive installation in two of the museum’s galleries that celebrates Hawaii’s deep connection to flowers, endemic and imported. The Cherry Blossom Cabaret will be joined by the world-fusion belly dancers of Shakti Dance Movement and the aerial performers of Volary Aerial Burlesque to celebrate floral and feminine beauty.
“It’s probably going to be our most beautiful and most luxurious show to date,” said the show’s producer, Violetta Beretta. Beretta is also president of the Cherry Blossom Cabaret and the producer of the Hawaii Burlesque Festival.
She said that going aerial this year is literally adding a big pre-show to the program.
“Volary will actually be performing in the main courtyard of the museum because there is no real ability for us to have aerial (performance) inside the theater,” Beretta said, adding that the aerial troupe is creating an apparatus specifically for the pre-show performance. It’s “this huge pyramidlike structure that sits in the middle of the lawn. So it’s going to be kind of gorgeous in the sense that we’ll have this nice pre-show with all this stuff happening outside,” she said.
“The galleries will be open as well as the courtyard, so attendees to the show can stroll around and enjoy the courtyards, take in the aerial burlesque show, have some cocktails, and then we’ll move everything into the show proper within the theater.”
She added that flowers are the theme throughout.
“We’re focusing as much as we can on the flowers of Hawaii, especially the indigenous and native flowers of Hawaii, as much as possible, and then trying to personify those different flowers.”
Beretta will be dancing, of course. Fans and followers of the group can also look forward to performances by Madame X, MissFortune, Queen Mabsy, Luna Velour and Bunny Pistol.
Local entertainer Hunter Down and “moustache queen” Tita Titsling will share emcee duties.
Kalae Kaina, founder and artistic director of Shakti Dance Movement, is embracing the opportunity to add a deep cultural component to the visual celebration of floral beauty and the female body.
“(Our group is) representing four different types of native flowers. We are representing pua hau, which is the kino lau or body form of Haumea, who is Mother Earth,” said Kaina, who is currently working on a double major in Hawaiian studies and painting at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “In Hawaiian medicinal lapaau, her flowers are used for childbirthing practices, and anything feminine. … So in one of our pieces we will be representing Haumea as her flowers. Another is wiliwili, which is like kind of a wild, crazy native tree. It still has thorns … and they say, ‘When the wiliwili bloom, the sharks are biting,’ and that ‘Ghosts roam when the wiliwili grows,’ so that piece is kind of like witchy and haunting, and it’s a little wild.”
Kaina said she draws inspiration from the native flowers and her cultural background.
“I like to use that knowledge to infuse my work, so even in this showcase I’m really digging deep into the native plants, and the moolelo (stories) that are connected to those plants, as we bring them to life on stage.”
—
“Bloom: A Floral Fete”
>> Where: Honolulu Museum of Art, 900 S. Beretania St.
>> When: 7 p.m. May 5 and 6
>> Cost: $75 general and $95 VIP; includes interactive 6 p.m. pre-show cocktail reception with aerial entertainment.
>> Info: honolulu museum.org or cherryblossom cabaret.org
