Meet Alabaster | Sexuality Educator and Burlesque Performer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Alabaster and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alabaster, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I am a military brat, so I have lived in lots of places, but I spent most of my formative years in Colorado Springs. I grew up in a very conservative community and purity was one of the biggest virtues I was taught. This left me with more questions than answers, so I went searching on my own. Today, I’m a sexuality educator, activist, and burlesque performer. Most of my work centers around giving people access to information so they can make educated and informed decisions about their own bodies and lives. If i had gotten answers earlier, I may not have felt so compelled to yell them from the rooftops now.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
For those who aren’t familiar with burlesque, it is the art of the tease, combining elements of satire, theatre, strip tease, and caricatures of gender expectations to bring together a show. There are MANY forms of burlesque but I tend to lean toward contemporary or “neo” burlesque with immersive, grungy, and metal styles. I love how much the audience gets into it! In some ways, it’s been easy and so hard in other ways. I seemed to have a natural knack for figuring out my brand and style, but it took a long time to figure out the balance between myself as a performer and as a civilian. Striptease gives an audience a sense of intimacy with performers that can be hard to juggle. I think it’s important to keep in mind with performer brands (especially performers who work in sexualized fields) that it’s our job and the sense of intimacy that is curated on stage or online is just that, curated. How much of yourself do you put on stage? How much of your life do you keep private? Is your stage persona a different person than you are off stage? I landed on my stage personal just being me turned up to 11. So far, it’s working out well.

I feel I’ve gotten lucky with my brand. I have an audience that loves watching what slightly unhinged idea I will come up with next. I love burlesque to metal music, I love putting sacrilege on stage. I love making absolutely ridiculous numbers that involve me basting myself in glitter or challenging an audience member to a pillow fight. My brand is chaos on purpose so I have the flexibility to adapt.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I only recently moved back to Colorado after a few years away, so I am still in the process of finding all the new, fun places that popped up while I was gone! A few of my old haunts are still around so I always take friends to King Chef in Colorado Springs for some breakfast, stop by the penny arcade in Manitou, and try to take them hiking in Chautauqua or down in Red Rock Canyon once they adjust to the altitude. I love showing them weird spots like the Learned Lemur Oddity shop on Colfax. Trying new food places is currently my go to with visitors.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’d like to dedicate my shoutout to Moving to End Sexual Assault (MESA) in Boulder. Working on their hotline gave me the introspection I needed to find Sex Ed as a career path. I’d also like to thank my brother for always being an example of going against the grain, my fiancé, Reid Wilson, for supporting all my bonkers ideas, my best friends for being my fierce protectors, and a fellow sex educator and burlesque hotshot, HoneyTree EvilEye for getting me back into performing when I was ready to quit.

Website: alabaster.vip

Instagram: @alabasterbutt and @blassphemyshow

Facebook: facebook.com/blassphemy

Other: linktr.ee/alabasterbutt for all my latest ticket info

Image Credits
Anthony Earl, Redlite Photos, Dan Roberts, and Holiday McAllister