Learn to create anticipation, tension, and irresistible suspense through intentional pacing, stillness, movement, and reveals. Explore how to slow down without losing your audience, use pauses and musicality to build tension, and make every moment onstage feel deliberate.

Anastasia Arsenic will guide you through the psychology of the tease and the power of withholding, helping you discover how to make every reveal feel earned, and why sometimes the most captivating thing you can do is make them wait.

Students Should Bring: Come comfortable and ready to move shoes optional but not required 

Your act is good... let’s take it from rehearsed to ravishing! This movement-based workshop explores the details that transform choreography into a polished, intentional, and captivating performance. Through playful exercises, you’ll sharpen your stage presence, musicality, character, transitions, reveals, and audience connection.

Jolie Goodnight will share techniques and movement exercises designed to help you refine the details that make an act truly shine. Leave with a fresh toolkit for making your performance cleaner, cheekier, more confident, and impossible to ignore.

Students Should Bring: Dance heels if desired

Your face is just as important to your performance as every step, pose, and reveal in your choreography. Explore how intentional facial expressions can add personality, deepen storytelling, and strengthen your connection with the audience. Learn to think beyond the movement of your body and use your face to break the fourth wall and elevate every moment onstage.

Sherry Bomb will guide students through exercises designed to explore expression, intention, and audience connection. Leave with practical tools to make your face an intentional part of your choreography and bring even more personality and impact to your performance.

Students Should Bring: Lipstick or makeup if desired to emphasize facial expressions

Fine-tune and amplify your stage presence with the tools to look confident, graceful, and captivating in any performance. Explore powerful entrances and exits, fearless eye contact, crowd interaction, power poses, and the balance of stillness and motion to create a polished and memorable stage presence.

Ruby Joule will share tricks of the trade and dancer techniques designed to elevate your presentation and strengthen your connection with the audience. Leave with practical tools to make bold choices, command attention, and bring greater confidence and elegance to every moment onstage.

Students Should Bring: Notebook and pen.

Learn how to give, request, receive, and use meaningful creative feedback in this discussion-based workshop. Explore practical tools for moving beyond simply whether you “liked” a performance to examining artistic intention, audience impact, storytelling, and what you actually observe. You’ll practice giving feedback that supports an artist’s vision while learning how to ask for—and thoughtfully use—the feedback you need.

Kitty McSparkles will guide students through performance analysis, discussion, and repeatable feedback frameworks that can be brought into rehearsals and future act workshops. Leave with the skills to ask better questions, offer more useful observations, and make confident decisions about the feedback you receive. 

Students Should Bring: Note-taking supplies

Curiosity and a willingness to engage in thoughtful discussion

Every memorable burlesque act tells a story. In this class, students will explore the art of storytelling through character development, story structure, and reveal-driven moments that keep audiences captivated from beginning to end. Through discussion and creative exercises, participants will learn how to build acts that are not only entertaining, but intentional, cohesive, and impossible to look away from.

Drawing on her experience as a performer and producer, Anastasia Arsenic guides students through techniques for crafting compelling characters, creating meaningful stage moments, and developing a clear storytelling arc. Whether you're building a new act or refining an existing one, you'll leave with practical tools to strengthen your storytelling and make every peel, reveal, and plot twist count.

Students Should Bring: Note-taking supplies

Costumes are more than just what we wear on stage, they are powerful storytelling tools that help define character, create memorable reveals, and shape the audience’s experience. This class explores how costume choices can influence movement and choreography, while adding surprise, personality, and visual impact to an act.

Drawing on over 16 years of experience as both a burlesque performer and professional costumer, Sherry Bomb shares practical tips for how to transform off-the-rack pieces into unique stagewear. Students will learn how to incorporate costuming into the act development process and create costumes that support both their artistic vision and performance goals.

Students Should Bring: Note-taking supplies