The Killer Dillers

Burlesque is a feminine and sensual kind of performance, reserved for the lady Killer Dillers! It brings together a sizzling dance style with elaborate vintage costumes, cool retro tunes, and a whole lot of sex appeal. Today, burlesque (or neo-burlesque) is one of the hottest trends in town, but just like jazz and swing dancing, it’s original heyday was in the first half of the 20th century.

Burlesque as an entertainment artform evolved from the late 1800’s through to the “bump and grind” era of the 1940s and 50s. In burlesque’s heyday (those golden days before television, when people had to go out to be entertained) burlesque was a grand affair! A burlesque show combined live music, comedians, variety acts, a chorus line and of course, glamorous burlesque headliners, in an elegant theatre with a full orchestra, grand sets and elaborate costumes.  A burlesque queen in this golden era would enchant with her beauty, delight with her dance, and captivate her audience with the art of the tease!

As a dance form, burlesque brings together the glamorous and sensual elements of a myriad of dance styles: vintage jazz dances, showgirls and chorus line dancing, European cabaret, sensual blues dance, and even exotic Middle Eastern, Oriental, African and Latin styles. Add to this the fine art of the Tease, as these burlesque glamazons slither out of their satin gloves and silk gowns, with grace and finesse. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of tease, but definitely no sleaze!

The Killer Diller brand of burlesque brings you a glittering spectacle of vintage glamour, sophistication and fantasy. Don’t miss their graceful feather fan dances and sparkling showgirl numbers, all a whirlwind of ostrich feathers, Swarovski crystals, tightlaced corsetry, silk stockings and high heels.

Like Lindy Hop and Charleston, tap dancing is another jazz-era dance style that came into its own in the early 20th century.  Vaudeville, showboat and minstrel shows had been displaying early African-American tap dancers since the mid-1800’s,  and helped to spread the popularity of the dance style across the nation.  Early tap styles included “buck and wing” (performed in wooden clogs) and “soft shoe” (performed with hard leather soles), evolving into the percussive style familiar today, enhanced by the addition of metal plates to leather soled shoes.

By the 1920s, 30s and 40s, tap dancing had permeated the entire entertainment industry, with famous tap dancers the stars of stage and the silver screen. Some of the famous tap dancers of this period that inspire The Killer Dillers are: Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, John Bubbles, The Nicholas Brothers, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, The Berry Brothers, Dixie Dunbar, Chuck Green, Teddy Hale, Hal Leroy, Eleanor Powell, Bill Bailey, Sammy Davis Jnr, The Four Flash Devils, Cora La Redd, The Clark Brothers, Daniel L. Haynes, The Three Chefs, Patterson & Jackson, Tip Tap & Toe, The Condos Brothers, Cholly Atkins & Honi Coles, James Barton, The Four Step Brothers, The Three Sparks of Rhythm, Jimmy Slyde, Donald O’Connor, The Four Hot Shots, Ann Miller, Stump & Stumpy, Vera Ellen and Leonard Reed…. just to name a few!

A great inspiration to The Killer Diller gents, are the famous flash act trio, The Berry Brothers, who incorporated both acrobatics and cane juggling into their soft shoe tap numbers. Don’t miss the Killer Dillers performing ‘Fascinating Rhythm’, a tribute to this legendary trio.

Vaudeville was the heart of American show business from the late 1800s through to the 1930s. A vaudevillian show was essentially a variety show, with any number of different types of entertainment, including musicians and dancers, but also a chorusline, comedians, magicians, acrobats, short plays or skits, minstrels and other specialty acts. By 1900 there were chains or “circuits” of vaudeville theatres around the country, such as Martin Beck’s Orpheum Circuit, of which New York’s Palace Theatre was the most famous (1913 – 32).

Vaudeville flourished as America’s variety theater from the 1880s to the late 1930s, when it finally succumbed to competing forms of popular entertainment, particularly “talking” pictures.
When vaudeville’s popularity began to fade, many of its stars carried vaudeville forms into the new media of radio, nightclub entertainment, films, and later, television. Entertainers you may know of, who began in vaudeville, include Mae West, W.C. Fields, Will Rogers, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Milton Berle, Bob Hope, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jack Benny, Sarah Bernhardt, Eubie Blake, Sammy Davis Jr., W. C. Fields, Cary Grant, Phil Silvers, Ethel Waters and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.

The Killer Dillers will entertain you, not only with their dance steps, but with specialty and flash acts, amusing characters and theatrical antics, in the true spirit of authentic vaudeville!

The phrase “killer diller” is jazz slang, in common use in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. To be a “killer” or a “killer diller” meant you were red hot, back in the day. So if you’re a Killer Diller you got chops, you’re gangbusters, you’re really the cat’s meow. Dig it?

The phrase can be heard in lyrics sung by the likes of Cab Calloway, Slim & Slam, Fats Waller, The Cats & The Fiddle, and Benny Goodman even played a tune called Killer Diller in his historic concert in Carnegie Hall in 1938.

Killer Diller was also the name of a film made in 1948 that, amongst other things, featured famed Lindy Hop troupe The Congaroos (including the late and great Frankie Manning) performing a fast and wildly acrobatic number that has gone down in swing dance history as one of the greatest ever. Here is that scene:

Oh, and the Urban Dictionary defines a Killer Diller as “Something so cool there are no other words to describe it.” That’s fine with us.