Kansas City Burlesque Festival returns with dance, comedy and music for five nights

The Kansas City Burlesque Festival will offer seven shows in five nights at Musical Theater Heritage in Crown Center and the historic Folly Theater, which was a burlesque house early in its fabled career.

Entertainers from Kansas City, Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, among other exotic locales, will gather to strut their stuff beginning Tuesday.

Among them will be Puss-N-Boots (aka Kat Kimmitz, formerly of Kansas City and now based in New York); Tifa Tittlywinks of Houston; Gin Fizz of Chicago; Greta Garter of St. Louis; Champagne Shuga Nova of Denver; Brandy Wine of Boston; Mika Romantic of Philadelphia and Marisa Mackay, founder of Burlesque Downtown Underground and co-producer of the festival.

Emcees for the fifth annual event will include Chris Holbrook of Kansas City, Naughty Pierre of Denver and bandleader Dave Stephens from Los Angeles. Among the special guests will be Chris Smith, trick-roping singing cowboy from New York.

The festival opens at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Musical Theater Heritage, formerly the Off Center Theatre, on the third level of Crown Center. Festival performances continue nightly through April 30 and then move to the Folly for shows May 1-2.

Tickets to the Crown Center performances are $15-$20 and are available at BrownPaperTickets.com. Tickets to the Folly events are $22-$47 and are available at the Folly box office at 816-474-4444. For more information, visit the festival website at KCBurlesque.com.

This story was originally published April 26, 2015 at 4:00 AM with the headline "Kansas City Burlesque Festival returns with dance, comedy and music for five nights."