culled from http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/how-to-brooklyn/Content?oid=2212296&storyPage=21
1. Purchase (or make, if you’re crafty) the right pasties. Flat pasties and pasties with lightweight or stiff or improperly attached tassels won’t twirl. You need conical pasties and nice silky swinging tassels. At first you may feel like a cross between a Fembot and the blow-up doll in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, but when you see what these sparkly puppies do for your profile, you’ll be one of us.
2. Use the right adhesive. Pasties have been known to fly off and away, and you can put an eye out with those things. The fastest and easiest adhesive is double-sided garment tape (or toupee tape, same thing), which you put on the pastie on the edge of the inside; then peel off the tape’s backing and press the pastie onto the desired location. Shake all over to see if it’s firmly attached, and then you’re ready for the main event.
3. Get into the right stance. Put your feet rather close together, raise your arms in the air like you just don’t care, bend your knees slightly, thrust your chest forward, and bounce on the balls of your feet. It will take a good ten to twenty bounces to find your rhythm; since it’s based on repetition, two or three bounces won’t make it happen. Keep it going and check it out—you’re doing it!
4. Put your right arm down. This will make the tassels twirl in the same direction. Put both arms down. This will make the tassels twirl opposite of the direction that they do when your arms are over your head. Physics made easy!
5. Look them right in the face. You have to keep your eyes up; when you look down you can stop the twirl by changing your shoulder positions, and you’ll look terrible in photographs if you’re double-chinning to stare at your own nipples in disbelief. Practice in front of a mirror and look ahead at yourself, and you’ll be twirling in style.
Jo “Boobs” Weldon is the Headmistress and Founder of the New York School of Burlesque, as well as the author of The Burlesque Handbook, the first-ever step-by-step guide to creating burlesque routines.
Illustration Mike Force
