Where I am in my life right now is about genuine self-expression. I spent a lot of my childhood and adolescence suffering and hiding. Self-expression through creative words and movement kept me alive. Dancing and writing poetry are how I have honored my experiences, acknowledged my pain, and found beauty in my vulnerability and my strength. As a child, dance class was the one place where it was safe to be in my body and have fun. I started practicing yoga as a teenager to heal my body and my spirit. My development as a professional dancer was a development of that healing.
I worked hard to build a life and career focused on alleviating other people’s suffering, and drawing on my painful experiences to help others. I am very proud of the work I did as a social worker and I know I changed people’s lives. I was still suffering. Moving to New York and turning my focus to yoga and dance is about letting genuine self-expression drive my life, rather than finding it despite my life. Yoga and burlesque may seem like an odd combination, but it is not for me. Studying burlesque and Yoga simultaneously made a lot of sense. Both are about being in one’s own body, exploring, accepting, nurturing, and expressing one’s truest self, then taking that very personal and private knowledge of self out into the world to connect with other people from a genuine, loving center. I am not just my body, but I am in this body. Taking ownership of my body and sharing it on my own terms is hugely powerful and healing. I love doing this through dance.
I am genuinely a sexual person, so my sexuality is evident in my dancing. What I discovered in burlesque is an even bolder expression of my own power. I can create my own act, my own choreography, my own message, show all the parts of myself- the parts of my body as well as the parts of my personality. I can be child-like and mature, silly and sexy, hungry and satisfied, soft and strong, exposed and in command. In performing burlesque I feel genuine. I feel connected. Being without clothing and not without control is so huge for me and for all women. If you know and care about me, you get that. So I don’t see a need to really separate my burlesque life- it’s all me. I am not ashamed of it. Maybe for the first time in my life, I am not ashamed of my body or sexuality. I refuse to be ashamed. Stella de Lis is not an alter ego or a secret, it’s a name I chose to honor where this expression comes from, where I come from. Just as I chose to be called Renée because it honors the rebirth I had when I reclaimed my life as my own.
I wear my feminism proudly, and it is evident in all aspects of my life. I fight for women to be seen and heard and respected, myself included. I am choosing now to do this through yoga and burlesque because they are both self-controlled; I am no longer struggling within broken systems. I can be truly genuine in my purpose and effect.
All this to say, I am being my truest self, and the people who love me see that. Thank you for reading this. Thank you for seeing me.
Renée Gaubert, LCSW 