Bon-Bon returns with Amazeball
Life isn’t a cabaret, old chum, but if Ana Bon-Bon has her way, it could be.
She has built her career on burlesque, performance art, vaudeville theatre, in the lounge, squeezing an accordion alone, in a duo, with a band that incorporates show tunes, country, blues, songs old and new.
Bon-Bon isn’t her legal last name; it’s her creation. It will be as BonBon that she headlines Amazeball, with her band The Naughty Gentlemen and her vision of cabaret.
Amazeball will be her first show in Vancouver in five years and promises to combine long-held views of entertainment with more recent experience.
“I had a background in performance art and in the Burlesque Follies,” Bon-Bon said. “For me, these ideas I’m putting into this show are things I’ve always wanted to try.”
Ideas — style, repertoire, persona — that developed more fully away from home.
“In 2010 I moved to London, England and lived there for five years,” she said. “Then, I went to Victoria for a year.”
In Victoria, Bon-Bon convened with her family and struck up friendships with, among others, Caroline Marks.
The night before she phoned, Bon-Bon had performed with Marks.
They shared the same irreverence, and though Marks won’t be at Amazeball, she is in the circle of friends who are on Bon-Bon’s wavelength.
At Amazeball, which is her concept, are Kitty-Kat-a-gogo, Mike Soret and his Broken Horns and Kitty And The Rooster.
“A lot of these people are from my past,” she said. “They’re my peers from those days.”
Those days have but a fleeting association with the rock scene. Rather, she developed through hearing folk-blues and then spinning off into theatre.
The Bon-Bon creation is something that is still developing that has given her a sense of freedom to explore and expand.
“It took me until now (to appreciate it),” Bon-Bon said. “And it’s taken me a while (to appreciate it). I want to make it into a cohesive thing.”