Why Lola LaBelle is naughty but nice

Coco Framboise performed with a giant telephone, Scarlett Diamond twirled an ostrich feather parasol. Yet London's third international burlesque festival, held last weekend, was far from sleazy. Audiences were 50-50 men and women, the former swellegant in spats, the latter in halter-neck dresses and many a small fascinator and veil. In fact, everything harked back to the Twenties, Thirties and Forties - to an imagined softer, coyer time.

The performers had platinum blonde bobs, Hollywood starlet gowns and satin kimonos. In each five-minute slot they pouted, pulled off gloves and threw an array of graceful, rather than bawdy, poses. Lola LaBelle did a glorious dance with two huge peacock fans, while Sturdy Gurlesque, a Rubenesque creature built for comfort over speed and dressed as the Statue of Liberty, brought the house down with the way she shimmied and wiggled and ate fire. And not a nipple in sight.

It was a sweet, eccentric, even uplifting affair and all the more surprising because it seems to have grown quite organically: a grassroots riposte to Stringfellow-style overt sexual expression. The genre, spearheaded by the milky-skinned siren Dita Von Teese, has been growing steadily in popularity since the early Nineties, variously championed by the Sound Theatre and the WamBam, Whoopee and Lady Luck clubs.

The contrast to the sex industry is jarring. Type a few words into your computer and you can see graphic sex on the internet for free. Yet in many ways, burlesque exists because of, rather than despite, hardcore porn. The Chinese are right - wherever there is a yin, a yang is never too far away: they are both parts of a greater whole, not only connected but interdependent.

It works the other way, too. Thus, in Iran, the morality police go around bullying the populace about public displays of affection and unIslamic dress. Yet there are more than 100,000 prostitutes working in Tehran.

Our fascination with each other's naked forms is never going to go away, whether we live in Tehran or Soho. Londoners do not take kindly to being lectured about what is or isn't acceptable, but even in a free society, where pretty much anything goes - bar hot farmyard love - we still always need a counterpoint to the overt. So, in current mores, what could be the fluffy yin to our filthy X-rated yang? The answer is the guileless glamour of burlesque.