01/09/2026
🎉 The Velvet Burlesque - 35 YEARS OLD TODAY. 🎉
On 1st September 1991, something began that is still growing, evolving, challenging me, inspiring me, and filling my life 35 years later.
Today marks 35 YEARS IN BUSINESS for The Velvet Burlesque™.
Three and a half decades of teaching.
Three and a half decades of choreography.
Three and a half decades of performing, producing, creating, mentoring, experimenting, learning, adapting, and refusing to stand still.
Thousands upon thousands of people have walked through my doors, stepped into my classes, performed my choreography, appeared on my stages, booked me, booked my shows, trusted me with their events, their confidence, their first dances, their ideas, and sometimes their fears.
There have been extraordinary highs, some spectacularly difficult lows, countless reinventions, a fair few battle scars, a ridiculous number of costumes, and more memories than I could ever count.
And somehow ... here we are.
35 years later.
Still independent.
Still creating.
Still teaching.
Still producing.
Still pushing boundaries.
Still very much here.
I wrote about where it all began, and the spark that eventually became The Velvet Burlesque™ here:
🔗 https://www.velvetburlesque.co.uk/where-it-all-began-the-spark-behind-velvet-burlesque
To every student, performer, audience member, client, collaborator, venue, photographer, filmmaker, technician, friend, and supporter who has been part of those 35 years in any way at all:
THANK YOU.
You are part of this story too.
Here’s to everything that has been, and whatever the hell I decide to do next.
🖤 Lara Gothique
Enjoy this archive photo of a younger me.
Fishnets and big boots still rule.
_
