Today we’d like to introduce you to Dame Dynamite. Them and their team share their story with us below:
Dame Dynamite is the creative producer, alter ego, burlesque clown, and fever dream personality dreamed up by Esther Bramlett. With a background in contemporary dance, she performs and directs multiple Cabaret shows in Austin, TX. Spending her childhood in Austin, a rare wild native of Central Texas, she left to study dance, kinesiology and bodywork in California from 2008-2016. Esther attended the University of San Francisco by day while exploring the clubs of the city as a go-go dancer by night. Early in her career, she performed with contemporary Bay Area artists such as Anna and the Annadroids, Janice Garrett, Samantha Giron, Detour Dance, and others. Making her burlesque performance debut with Hubba Hubba Revue, a renowned burlesque and variety production in San Francisco, she found a community that welcomed all her queer talents and creative narratives. She has performed in festivals and events across America from Electric Forest to Trauma Columbus to Burning Man.
Returning to Austin at 26, she performed with local performance companies such as Frisky Business Burlesque, Ballet East and Chamacos Dance before embarking on her journey creatively producing work for companies such as Lotus Frequency and Cheshire Cat Productions. Collaborating with performance artists, costume designers, sculptors, and musicians, her creative community inspires most of her projects. Her highly collaborative, immersive performances have been circulating Austin since 2017. Her choreography and work has been seen at the Waco Dance Festival and Bay Area Film Festivals.
Recently, she has embarked on an ambitious project in which she will create a 78 card Tarot deck over the course of three years inspired by Dame Dynamite’s cosmic follies. With the many contributions from visual and performance artists across the globe, this deck will plumb the depths of her absurd subconscious and feature mystical meanderings of her existential musings. This deeply personal project is part of performance art, photography, poetry, design, painting, collage, drag, fashion, and autobiography. To learn more about supporting her process, visit her Patreon.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Choosing the artist’s path isn’t a smooth road for most of us, and I am no exception. Growing up as a queer person in Texas suppressed a lot of creativity and progress towards my authentic destiny. It is still a struggle learning how to balance work, my heart’s true desires, making rent, relationships, and contributing to my community. Most specifically, finding the people who supported me in real ways while I was young was very difficult. Sometimes, it still feels difficult finding those people.
I am lucky to have had good teachers. I have always flocked to my mentors, both artistic and otherwise. There are always teachers teaching what you yourself feel called to do, and it is a good idea to turn to them for direction, foundation and guidance. As a physical person, connecting and communicating has always been difficult for me, and I am still learning how to show up better for others as well as myself in my work, my personal life and my art.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
As a stage performer and producer, I specialize in engineering myself. The stage is a place where I’ve learned to shed expectations of how I feel I “should” be doing and attempt to get more real. At first, the stage looked glamorous, and I pursued it for affirmation and reputation. As I’ve gotten older, the stage has become more like a journal to which I can tell my deepest secrets. Though it is technically public sphere, I can reveal my vulnerability and point of view with style. It is my moment where I am the center to call out to others. It is a moment I broadcast my truth and hopefully encourage or empower others to feel more comfortable broadcasting theirs.
I’m sure dancing vintage burlesque and cabaret solos dressed as a bright orange clown doesn’t seem authentic to some people, but my character I am working on creating presently in collaboration with Fou Fou Ha! has felt the most comfortable to me. This character is the endless optimist while also being utterly bitter; she fancies herself the epitome of elegance, style, decorum; and yet never sits with her legs crossed. Within my clown, all sides of myself exist without shame or embarrassment. I can rehearse with her in mind, but she only reveals her true self on the stage. She always surprises me. It is a sweet surprise to find a container in which you can shut off your default mind and ego and exist in pure joy without any inhibitions.
Fou Fou Ha tumbled into Austin in 2018-ish? From humble wildly colored beginnings nearly two decades ago as San Francisco’s premier cartoon performance ensemble, Austin’s chapter of Fou Fou Ha continues the antics and adventures with that special big hair showgirl flair which can only be found in the heart of Texas. Branching out from San Francisco to include New York, Portland, and now Austin, Fou is part glitter, part fool archetype, part dance company, and above all, inhibition annihilators. Described as having a Fosse precision with a Jim Henson sensibility, Fou Fou Ha truly represents the mashup of drag, witty political acts, a fashion forward paradigm blender, with a twist of party monster. Austin’s chapter sets itself apart as the Showgirl Clowns of Texas, adding equal parts of vintage Rockettes and Las Vegas showgirls (and a whole circus tent for good measure).
Currently, I think the project I am most proud of is producing my Horrorscopes Cabaret which takes place seasonally at the Highbrow Lowbrow Venue in Austin, Texas. This dark, surrealist, absurdist, cosmic horror mashup of old and new spooky themes collides with astrology to bring the darker sides of the Zodiac into the light. Twelve performers embody the Zodiac signs as we journey through the wheel of the year in one destined evening of entertainment. Dame Dynamite’s Horrorscopes Cabaret is one of the only consistent shows in Austin with a rotating, diverse cast featuring a variety of talent from fire performers, burlesque, sideshow, clowns, contemporary dance, theater, immersive performance, water acts, clowns, poets, comedy and more. Our foray into the spooky absurd nighttime activities borderline on occult ceremony, and our Witches Market creates a community event that is not to be missed. Join us as we dance on the dark side of the moon! To view our calendar, visit www.damedynamite.com
How do you think about luck?
I feel the same way about luck as I do about fate which is: it is both real and not real. My perspective about luck is that it is a magical blessing, and I’ll take it when it is presented. However, I don’t think Luck is a real person who has an address you can Mapquest with GPS. It was lucky for me to leave Austin in 2008 and discover queer culture in California. Intuition has played a larger role in my life than luck. I think luck might be more a thing for gamblers, and I don’t ever gamble.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.damedynamite.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/damedynamite/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=dame%20dynamite
- Other: posh.vip/e/dame-dynamite-presents-horrorscopes-cabaret
Image Credits
Tyler Whitman Joe Lucky
