PRIVATE DANCE
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BRITISH BURLESQUE SENSATION
KATRINA
here is no telling where the engines of fate will lead you. Take Katrina Darling. Early last year Kat was a 20-year-old burlesque dancer with a show called God Save the Queen, living in a coastal English city. By night she performed in small local clubs for fun, working day jobs in retail and finance to make ends meet and not thinking too much about tomorrow. Then one day in April, while she was in Glasgow to perform a show, an unfamiliar number appeared on her cell phone. A reporter was calling to ask Kat about her second cousin Kate Middleton— Prince William's fiancee. Kat Darling, related to the royal family? "It was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard," she says, laughing. Turns out Kat was the second cousin of Ms. Middleton, the future Duchess of Cambridge, a bona fide royal.
Suddenly this sensuous young burlesque dancer's face was all over the worldwide press, from the New York Post to endless tabloids in Britain. Her cell phone wouldn't stop ringing. "At first I thought it was hilarious," she says. "It's not every day something like that happens. It got completely out of control, however. It brought a lot of scary things to my doorstep." Lines now formed outside the underground clubs and cabarets where Kat performed God Save the Queen (the name of the show taking on a wonderful irony). What did Kat Darling do? You bet: She went on stage and knocked 'em dead. "Burlesque is a platform for me to explore these kinds of things," she says. Is the show meant to be political? "Not really," she says. "It plays on the whole thing in a British satirical way, just poking fun." The show has taken off, gathering big audiences all over Britain. Kat brought her stage show across the pond to New York, where she wowed audiences with her sardonic brand of sexiness.
For your enjoyment, Kat has offered us a private dance, a taste of burlesque the likes of which you'll find nowhere else, here in the pages of this magazine. What goes through her mind when she's performing on stage or in front of the camera lens? "I try to keep as in the moment as I can," she says with a sultry British accent. "The more into it the audience is, the more into it I am." We're loving it, Kat. Long live the queen.
"THE MORE INTO IT
THE AUDIENCE IS,
THE MORE INTO IT I AM."
