A local dance troupe seeks to add more diversity to burlesque – both in the performers and the audience.

Friday night, April 25 may as well have been a Saturday because the Carmel Delights burlesque troupe recreated sexy versions of iconic Saturday Night Live sketches such as “NPR’s Delicious Dish: Schweddy Balls” and an impromptu “Weekend Update” with Amy Poehler and Tina Fey impersonators at the troupe’s monthly show at Pearl Hour in Monterey. The audience’s belly laughs were quickly accompanied by enthusiastic whooping and hollering when a performer named Antoinette walked up on stage with a cane in hand to perform a burlesque striptease.

Antoinette, whose true name is Arabella Sarver, became disabled due to an injury that now impairs her ambulatory ability, requiring her to walk with a cane. But that doesn’t stop her from getting in touch with her sensuality. The Carmel Delights welcomed the young performer up to their stage as part of one member’s mission to implement more diversity in the art of burlesque.

That performer behind the initiative is Monterey County’s Poet Laureate Rachelle Escamilla, aka Coco Quetzel, who wants to ensure that everyone – regardless of gender, sexuality, color or ability – has an opportunity to create an expressive form of their own sexuality and empowerment through stage performance. As someone who was raised in a conservative Catholic household where body positivity was the last thing she felt she’d ever understand, Escamilla’s love of burlesque started when she became an audience member.

“I was like, ‘Oh my god they’re so sparkly,’” Escamilla says. “The performers [are] goofy and sexy and I was like, ‘Damn! I want to do that.’”

As a board member of the nonprofit Carmel Delights, she recently approached the City of Seaside with the idea of adding an introductory burlesque class to the recreation department’s catalog. City officials approved the plan.

The class, which starts May 5, will be taught by Escamilla and troupe leader Callie McKenzie, aka Honey Delight, at the Oldemeyer Center. The curriculum does not include actual stripping, but is based on what McKenzie calls the pillars of burlesque: classic moves, persona and stage presence, movement and clothing reveals, props and crowd work, and specialty dance styles, storytelling and cultural connection.

For both performers, the Oldemeyer Center presented an accessible stage for anyone to come and learn how to get in touch with their body.

“My daughter takes tap dance classes at Oldemeyer; I fell in love with it because it’s in Seaside which is historically diverse,” Escamilla says. “One of my biggest goals is to diversify the burlesque scene in Monterey – to just see different bodies [on stage].”

According to Escamilla and McKenzie, burlesque is not about the striptease, and both women feel that everyone deserves to see themself as a sexual and powerful being.

For both dancers, adding such a class to take place at the Oldemeyer Center represents a pathway for those who might not otherwise know about burlesque to discover it.

“If we’re going to diversify [burlesque], we have to go where people don’t know,” Escamilla says.

Adding to that accessibility effort, an anonymous donor is offering a scholarship to people who identify as queer or BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color).

Sarver was already a burlesque and drag performer before her cane, but the dance form became her access to the world.

“If this is what gets me out of being bed-ridden, then why not use it to become engaged in every aspect of my life? Why be ashamed?” she says.

She acknowledges that much of society tends to push those with disabilities into a box – but she’d like people to know that she’s an average person.

“I’m equally as sexy and messy as every other person on the street,” she says. “Having a diverse audience normalizes that.”

INTRO TO BURLESQUE takes place from 6-6:50pm May 5-26. Oldemeyer Center, 986 Hilby Ave., Seaside. $48 for Seaside residents; $60 for non-residents. 899-6800, ci.seaside.ca.us/336/Adult-Programs