So You Think You Can Bitch?
Written by Ola Kotnowska
The Real Hot Bitches is a mob of ferociously colourful
lovers of feeling the
80s rhythm through uninhibited dancing, leotards, g-tards
and, naturally,
channeling their “inner bitch”. One of Melbourne’s most
original treasures,
this garage-band of dance not only entertain their audience
through their
choreographed routines and, as they call it, “crotch
emphases”, but through
their non-chalant bravery of answering their natural
instinct to dance, they
teach their admiring fans of letting go…
Theresa had never imagined that, four years after the
encounter on the tram,
she would be otherwise referred to by her stage-name,
Teleesheah Sunrise. Nor
did she ever imagine owning a collector-card dedicated to
her very self, with her
face and pseudonym boldly printed across it. Teleesheah
Sunrise’s affair with the
stage is perhaps akin to the quintessential rags-to-riches
story: it begins with a
syendipidious encounter.
One night, Theresa was sitting on a tram on her way to a
party. Scattered
islands of glitter floated around the corners of her eyes,
dripping down all the
way along the rise of her cheeks. A touch of golden and
turquoise sequence
speckled across the shoulders and sleeves of her jumper. She
did what she did
almost each time she hunted out the nightlife for a dance –
Theresa transformed
into a subtle nocturnal party-peacock.
One stop before Theresa was due to hop off the tram, a
strikingly colourful
pack of youngsters, drenched in the signposts of the 80s as
if freshly teleported,
approached her. Molly Moonshine stood at the centre, a
bleach-wigged queen
supported by her possé decked out in lycra, pattern on
pattern, flouro clashes
and fierce hair. Molly Moonshine offered Theresa a piece of
paper with a number
scribbled across it: “wanna join my 80s dance troupe, the
Real Hot Bitches? Call
me.”
The Real Hot Bitches are exactly that - a group of (real)
hot bitches, both female
and male, who act out their unanimous love of leotards,
lycra on lycra on lycra,
legwarmers, mullet-wigs sprouting out of leopard-print
headbands, makeup
dripping in fluro glitz and Swayze through choreographed
dance routines to 80s
tunes.
In the spirit of the untamed, experimental mentalism of the
1980s, the Real
Hot Bitches do not keep their explosive moves to the
bedroom, but flaunt it
far and further across the stages of Melbourne. On stage,
you see a hotpot of
colour, sharp and daring hip grinds, impassioned air
guitarists, floor-workout
and, if you look close enough, a sultry look with perhaps a
glittery wink from
the performers who, with the sweat, confidence and
contagious energy of their
routines, seduce their fans to the sexiness and carelessness
of dance.
It is this seductive invitation to reconnect with dance in
wild costumes that,
since 2008 - around the time when Theresa the Tram Girl
metamorphosed into
the alluring Teleesheah Sunrise – has enabled the Real Hot
Bitches to carve their
name deep across Melbourne’s arts and entertainment scenes.
In both 2009 and
2010 the Real Hot Bitches sold out their respective
Melbourne Fringe Festival
shows Dance is a Battlefield and So You Think You Can Bitch.
Since 2010, the Real
Hot Bitches have been invited to entertain audiences at The
Rainbow Serpent
Festival, with this year being no exception. Apart from
their larger gigs, the Real
Hot Bitches perform at various parties, events, openings and
festivals across
Melbourne. Due to popular demand, to keep their fans
satiated between shows,
the 80s babes have recently released a set of Real Hot
Bitches collector-cards:
each card representing one of the 15 bitches in their truest
bitchin’ element.
The birth of the Real Hot Bitches starts with Molly
Moonshine’s personal
leap across continents. When Molly Moonshine migrated to
Melbourne from
Wellington, New Zealand, she did not arrive alone. With her,
she brought the
seed of the original Real Hot Bitches: the dance troupe
that, alongside other Kiwi
bitches, she had started a few years prior. In Wellington,
the Real Hot Bitches
have mesmerised audiences with TV appearances, regular gigs
around town
and sold-out tickets to Fringe Festival events. In her new
city, Molly Moonshine
had missed bitching so much – the euphoria of dance,
costumes and channeling
the “inner bitch” - that she had started approaching
Melbournians with the
somewhat wacky premise of what made her tick: dance and
lycra and Def
Leppard! In-closet “maniacs on the dance-floor” across
Melbourne were sold, and
with each side-show, party performance and training, the
Aussie possé began to
gain momentum. Into their fourth year, with each upcoming
gig, the Melbourne
maniacs hip-grind straight into new horizons.
Today, Teleesheah Sunrise is five minutes away from joining
the rest of the
bitches on the floor of a studio in the inner suburbs of
Melbourne, where they
are about to practice their latest set for the upcoming
Rainbow Serpent Festival.
To start the New Year in true bitchin’ fashion, Teleesheah
Sunrise is wearing her
favourite outfit – one that is a little wilder than her
get-up on the day when she
bumped into the colourful mob on the tram. Teleesheah
Sunrise stands tall, fluro-
pink boots are pulled up over tight black lycra leggings
invaded by neon floral
prints, a custom-made electric blue leotard is layered by a
purple holographic
g-tard found in the kids’ section at an op-shop. One hand is
covered by a white
lace glove, one which Teleesheah confesses that she must
regularly replace due
to the wear-and-tear it suffers when she seductively crawls
and thrusts her
body across the stage during performances and practices. The
knotted black
wig, pulled into a side ponytail that springs with the
slightest head movements,
contradicts the blue and pink streaks of glitter painted
across her eyes. “More
is more” – Teleesheah Sunrise quotes one of the bitches’
most widely practiced
maxims, she pauses, and confesses – “when I leave the house,
I go back, and chuck
on another five layers, and that’s when I’m ready to bitch.”
Stevie Nicks’ Age of Seventeen fills the studio, and
together with Teleesheah, the
rest of the troupe sweep their way into the middle of the
empty space, a flock
of Rainbow Lorikeets filling empty skies. In the heat of
their trance on stage,
with the combination of rhythm and hip’n’body shakin’, and
an almost perfect
synchronisation of the two, the dancers look untouchable.
But, Teleesheah
explains as she warms up by attempting a moonwalk, arms
flailing in all
directions - anyone can be a Real Hot Bitch because here,
whatever you lack in
technique, you make up in passion. The Real Hot Bitches
challenge the idea of
dance as a set of strictly preconceived moves, performed
only by those who
have devoted to it decades in tightly fitted slippers. Dance
is for everybody:
the feeling of truly letting go that dance exudes should not
only be restricted to
Madonna. It is this idea - the natural desire of all humans
to feel dance without
the overbearing shadow of instructions and technique – that
is what pushes the
heart of each bitch. Their almost theatrical, sexually
infused movements in front
of audiences is not a way of satisfying the show-pony
within, but it is simply a
response to their desires of self-expression. With the
costumes (very) tightly
intact, the performers are further “bitchspired” to conquer
limits with their
routines. As soon as you put on your costume, you
instantaneoulsy transform intoan 80s rock-star! – Teleesheah pipes in - people
underestimate the power of lycra.
