Next weekend brings to RVA the return of the Virginia Burlesque & Sideshow Festival! Lasting from Friday May 30 until Sunday June 1, this four-show, three-day festival will feature all sorts of burlesque, musical, and circus-style performers from all over the world, coming together in Richmond to bring “empowering entertainment and mature themes to smart, progressive audiences valuing both levity and gravity in the performing arts.”
Next weekend brings to RVA the return of the Virginia Burlesque & Sideshow Festival! Lasting from Friday May 30 until Sunday June 1, this four-show, three-day festival will feature all sorts of burlesque, musical, and circus-style performers from all over the world, coming together in Richmond to bring “empowering entertainment and mature themes to smart, progressive audiences valuing both levity and gravity in the performing arts.”RVA Magazine has a pair of tickets to give away to the Festival’s opening night, and you could be the lucky winner!
Friday night’s show, the opening Meet & Greet, takes place at The Lair, a new coffeehouse located at 17 W. Main St and offering Lamplighter coffee and Sweet Fang juices, plus pizza, burgers, and other delectable cuisine. If you haven’t checked it out yet, this event will be the perfect opportunity! And it won’t just offer you the chance to meet various performers involved in the weekend’s events–this Meet & Greet is a party in and of itself, featuring live music, comedy, juggling, and more!
Music for the evening will be provided by the Soggy Po’ Boys, a Dover, New Hampshire-based jazz band with the sound of New Orleans deep within their souls. Born on Mardi Gras 2012, they released their debut album, Seedy Business, late last year. The group features all kinds of classic brass instrumentation, including a tuba (always essential), but they incorporate vocals, guitar, and piano into their sound as well, for a true trad-jazz sound with a modern twist. Check out their single “Dick Cheney,” from Seedy Business, right here:
Several other celebrated performers from RVA and beyond will be on the bill for this evening as well, from Muncaster Castle official jester Paolo Garbanzo to local drag celebrity Miss Magnolia Jackson Pickett Burnside, as well as sideshow strongman Rusty Boltz. The evening should be a blast, and it’s just the beginning of a wild weekend sure to be the highlight of the RVA burlesque calendar for 2014! Tickets for opening night are just $10 in advance, so pick yours up right HERE!
Or, if you want to save some cash, you can just enter to win a pair of tickets free from your pals here at RVA Mag! We’re giving away two tickets to the Virginia Burlesque & Sideshow Festival’s opening Meet & Greet, and you can enter by plugging your deetz into the lovely Punchtab widget below. Keep an eye out for extra chances to win, and enter by 5 PM on Friday, because that’s when we’ll close the contest down and pick our lucky winner!
We’ll have a more detailed look at the entire Virginia Burlesque & Sideshow Festival coming soon here on RVAmag.com, so keep an eye out for that as well! And for more details on the full weekend’s events–including two shows on Saturday, one show on Sunday, and workshops all day Saturday on such topics as knife-throwing, bellydance, contortion, burlesque, taxes (oh no….) and more–head to virginiaburlesque.com!
