Today we’d like to introduce you to Kissa Von Addams
Hi Kissa, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Oh boy. Well I’ll try and make it brief although the journey has been a long one.
Picture it. New York City. 2008. A young adult me takes her first voyage to the Big Apple. A musician friend of mine that I’d met in Orlando invited me to see him host a burlesque show at a dive bar in Brooklyn called Lucky 13. I was not even old enough to get in the bar to see the show.. but hey back then things were a little more lenient I guess.
And that’s where it all began. I was fascinated. Enraptured. As a drama kid in high school who couldn’t’ sing, wasn’t all that great at acting either.. here I stood enthralled by this art form, the art of striptease, burlesque.
When I returned home from that trip, I began researching on Myspace (yep..lol) if there was anything happening in Orlando like what I’d just experienced. I stumbled across the page of a bar called Stardust Lounge.
They had just started a burlesque show, as it were. I showed up there asking how I could join. I had no idea what I was even doing, or what I was going to do. Just the confidence and delusion of an 18 year old that didn’t have a single thing figured out. I think I showed up the next week or two, performed a number in the show, and was invited into the cast permanently from that point on.
I performed in that show one Wednesday a month for 11 years.
Now almost 16 years later.. I own a burlesque production company. I have a roster of around 20 performers I employ monthly.
I am the director of Florida’s only twice weekly burlesque show – Orlando Burlesque at Mathers Social Gathering in Downtown Orlando. Every single Tuesday (8-11pm) and Saturday (10pm-12am) all year long. I produce themed events for corporate and private clients. I have several other larger burlesque productions around the Central Florida area. I have performed all over the country and yet Orlando has always been where I choose to call home.
What I say about burlesque when people ask me how I got started can be summed up with this sentence…
I didn’t find burlesque, burlesque found me. And it changed the course of my life with one show.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The struggle is what builds character I think. It breeds resilience and ingenuity. I credit a lot of my success to my upbringing. It was a broken home, where we didn’t have a lot of money, things were tumultuous more often than they weren’t.
I think because of those things, I decided (maybe subconsciously..) that I wanted to make my livelihood from something that brought me happiness. The 9-5 job was not for me. In fact, to this day I’ve never even had a 9-5 job.
When I started doing burlesque, social media was in its infancy. We had Myspace, Youtube was kind of a thing but certainly not like it is now.
Burlesque was in the beginning of having its Neo-revival. If you wanted to learn, to study, to research, the information was not easily accessible.
I checked out books from the library. I sought out the old films. I bought DVDs of some of the burlesque legends. I taught myself how to do the old school hair and makeup styles. I taught myself through half a dozen years of failure, how to make costumes. The classic style of dance & movement.
Every aspect of burlesque for me has been entirely self-taught.
There were no Instagram reels. No TikTok. No Youtube tutorials on how to do literally anything. None of that existed back then.
So if you wanted to learn… you really had to put in the work. You had to learn what not to do by just doing it.. by fucking up.. and eventually after years and years of that, all of the pieces kinda fell into place.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a classic/traditional Burlesque performance artist.
There are many different styles of burlesque nowadays since its modern resurgence, but the one I have spent years studying and that I specialize in is the era of 1920’s-1960’s. I build my costumes and shows in that old-school style of glamour.
I am proud that I have been able to make a living from this art form. Proud to have curated such a unique and special brand that people love and appreciate.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.burlesqueorlando.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orlandoburlesque
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cocktailcabaret
Image Credits
Gregory Mohn
Blake Jones
