After a decade of dancing, decadence and décolletage, Orlando’s award-winning Corsets & Cuties burlesque troupe is taking an extended final bow, kicking off their 10th and final season Sunday, Aug. 26, with a star-studded celebratory show at the Abbey.
I recently talked with founding director-producer Jaimz Dillman about her company’s achievements over the past 10 years, as well as her life before the Cuties and her decision to hang up the corset and move on to the next stage of her career.
A native of Winter Springs, Florida, Dillman graduated from Seminole High School and studied improvisation at Sak Comedy Lab before becoming an entertainer at Universal Orlando, performing as a Ghostbuster in the streets and inside Nickelodeon’s Game Lab. She worked her way up through special events like Halloween Horror Nights and Grinchmas into stage management, and acted as an audience warm-up host for iVillage tapings.
After leaving Universal and Sak, Dillman says she and fellow actress Lori Babson Jessup were looking for a regular outlet for performing, and encountered “a void.”
“We found … women who maybe didn’t fit the princess role anymore, because we’ve grown out of that ingenue stage,” Dillman says. “We were now moms; we were not quite in the fairy godmother stage. There was a need, but there was no opportunity.”
Through Wade Hair’s Breakthrough Theatre, they presented Red Light: The Bad Girls of Broadway, a cabaret of risqué showtunes that was a hit of the 2012 Orlando Fringe. Dillman wasn’t originally supposed to appear in that show, but when a performer dropped out, Hair encouraged her to go on stage.
“I was over the moon,” Dillman recalls. “It was a really, really happy accident. He knew that I had the passion to perform. I just had never been given the opportunity, because I wasn’t cookie-cutter … I was always the comedy, the comic relief, [so] to be included in something that’s kind of sultry and burlesque and bawdy, I was like, ‘Yes, give it to me!’”
That sold-out run eventually led to the birth of Corsets & Cuties, which debuted in 2014. Early members who came from Red Light included Risa Risque of Blacklist Babes and Jax, who is still with the cast today. “The goal was to give people who had a passion and a talent for performing, but no place to do it, that very outlet.”
Corsets & Cuties sold out their very first weekend before ever having a performance, which Dillman says “reinforced our belief that there was something needed in this community that we seem to hit on that wasn’t being already provided. … We were very proud of being able to present all body types, all levels of talent, men, female, trans performers. We’ve had gay, straight, bi — everything on the rainbow. I’m very proud of [our] representation, and opening stages to those who want to perform.”
When Dillman’s co-founder moved away, she was unexpectedly handed the reins and has since guided the troupe beyond Fringe to performances at spots including the Venue (R.I.P.) and Theater West End in Sanford. Corsets & Cuties also supported the community with fundraising for breast cancer awareness, victims of the Pulse shooting and victims of a warehouse fire.
After a decade observing burlesque audiences, Dillman says they’ve “become a little bit more educated as to what burlesque is. When we first started, I remember some of the first shows at the Venue that the crowd was just crazy, hooting and hollering and screaming, and sometimes they were just talking amongst themselves,” she recalls. “I think the audiences have kind of gone along with us on the ride, and maybe evolved and grown up a little bit along the way with us.”
Given her troupe’s long history with the Fringe, it’s no surprise that Dillman has some sharp words regarding Gov. Ron DeSantis’ scapegoating of the Festival for his veto of all state arts funding.
“It hurt my heart to hear him belittle Fringe and reduce it to such a nasty, dirty sentence,” she says. “Bringing it down and reducing it to something that’s ugly and dirty takes so much away from the talent and the passion and the empowerment that a show like we do gives to these performers. … We are much more than what reductive statements like that make us out to be.”
Since the Cuties began, Orlando has spawned nearly a dozen other burlesque groups, so Dillman says she no longer feels like she’s hosting the only platform for “misfits,” noting that “the theme parks have taken a huge step in going outside their their boxes that they used to keep everybody in, and that has been a huge thing, I think, in the scene.” So, Dillman says she simply decided that “10 years sounds good,” calling it both “a nice round number” and “a long time to herd cats.”
Directing The Vagina Monologues “showed me that there’s more I can and more I want to do,” says Dillman, adding that she’s interesting in creating “more socially conscious theater” when not occupied by her day job in catering sales. But she promises Corsets & Cuties will live on in amateur shows and community-fostering all-star productions. “I can’t see what the future holds. I just know that it looks pretty great.”
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