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| A sultry Asian woman emerges on the Empire Plush Room’s dimly lit
stage in a long, slinky white dress, hiding coquettishly behind two huge
red feather fans, and she begins a slow, coy and slightly demure striptease … but
the woman in question is Margaret Cho, known for being as in-your-face
as possible, so you’d be right if you guessed that this striptease
included a few surprises. Cho has been called many things, but shy is not one of them. No stranger to controversy, her blistering stand-up comedy tackles topics ranging from political and sexual to intensely personal. Not that she held anything back before, but now Cho really lets it all hang out in her burlesque/variety show, The Sensuous Woman. The 38-year-old San Francisco native has already conquered comedy, acting and writing; now The Sensuous Woman shows us sides (and parts) of Cho most of us have never seen before. “I really wanted to do a show like this, where I’d have a format to do different kinds of comedy but also dance and sing and do some things that I wouldn’t necessarily do as a stand-up comic,” Cho said during a visit to the city in October. The Sensuous Woman allows Cho to combine many of her loves – comedy, burlesque, belly dance, rap and women. In an April installment of her blog, Cho said her goal was to create a show that celebrated the beauty of the female form, in all its forms. “I wanted a place for women to feel safe, to feel seen, to be sexy, to feel good about themselves, doing their thing.” |
The show plays
monthly at El Cid restaurant in Los Angeles and travels periodically
to San Francisco and Miami. With
a rotating cast of supporting players, including burlesque and belly dancers,
stand-up comics and musicians, The Sensuous Woman gives Cho a forum
to do some sexy numbers of her own, with hilarious twists. Of course no
Cho
show would be complete without her wicked stand-up. True to form, she rants
about everything from politics and sex to reality TV, religion and, of
course, her mother. Most of the performances benefit nonprofits, such as the Center for Sex and Culture, the National Breast Cancer Fund and The Tweakers Project, but “also things that kind of fall under the radar for charity but are definitely people in need, too,” Cho says. Cho consistently incorporates other local talent into the cast. Matthew “Ted” Edwards, singer of San Francisco’s the Music Lovers, describes how the band became part of the show. “Margaret contacted me via the Sensuous Woman MySpace page about 12 months ago,” he said via e-mail. “Margaret said she was a huge fan of the Music Lovers [and] asked if we'd like to contribute to the show by performing and perhaps writing some songs.” |
The Music Lovers have since lent their lavish cocktail pop to Sensuous Woman shows in San Francisco and L.A. “Our songs seem to lend themselves very
well to dance performance,” Edwards goes on. “We are lushly
romantic, but not atypically bawdy like much burlesque music – this
contrast is what marks the show out as an original concept and shows
Margaret's vision for The Sensuous Woman.” “Everyone was very supportive of each other, and you don't always find
that among performers on a bill. [And there were] a lot more naked nipples than
I usually see onstage during one of my shows,” she added with a smile.
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All photos by Ben Kasman |
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