Our Story
Returning in October 2024 after a multi-year hiatus, TBF is back and bigger, brighter, and better than ever before!
Our festival proudly celebrates the best of Canadian and international burlesque, cabaret, and circus arts.
We are a volunteer-run nonprofit organization.
TBF’s mission is to showcase neo-burlesque artistry with a focus on creating spaces where diverse perspectives and experiences are valued, appreciated, and championed.
Read more about our history below.
2008 - 2019
The Toronto Burlesque Festival was founded in 2008. Originally titled “Northern Exposure” it was co-founded by members of Skin Tight Outta Sight, Les Coquettes Nouveau Burlesque, Coco Framboise and others. This committee also ran the first “Strip Search” for new performers at legendary Toronto club Goodhandy’s. By its second year, TBF was running events at Cadillac Lounge, Gladstone Hotel, Mod Club, and Centre of Gravity. Many executive members have come and gone over the years, but consistently, it was run by the Founder/Executive Director Sauci Calla Horra (from 2008-2020), and Coco Framboise, who served as Artistic Director from 2013 - 2019.
During that time, TBF delighted over 20,000 audience members and hosted over 60 full-length revue theatrical shows across numerous diverse Toronto event venues, nightclubs, art galleries, and theatres.
TBF has brought Internationally recognized Queens, Kings, and Legends of Burlesque to Toronto to perform alongside amazing local talent.
Changing hands
A community call for more diversity and inclusion in 2019 led to TBF putting out a call for an "Interim Council" - a volunteer team of individuals who would assist the festival in its operations, oversee things like casting of talent for the festival, the finances, the administration and the run of the business. That's when Bianca Boom Boom, Força, Ivory, Loretta Jean, and Zilly Lilly joined the team (along with Zyra Lee Vanity and Betty Quirk). Taking the reins of the festival in the fall of 2020, the Interim board undertook anti-racism & anti-oppression training, creating policies and processes surrounding anti-racism, safer spaces, accessibility, and conflict resolution between community members, and rebuilding the corporate organization of this entity from the ground up to create a clear and concise structure which will help to better support the day to day functions of TBF.
In 2021 we registered the organization as a non-profit corporation, and have since been hard at work writing arts grants and strategizing ways to better serve our community, to grow the festival to be as large, diverse and successful as other fine art organizations, festivals, and foundations.
Today & Future Aspirations
The members of the Board function as a volunteer oversight body to help steer the festival’s direction. We plan to get the festival up and running for the first year back and then hand it off to a new and diverse Board team chosen through community nominations and votes at the end of this calendar year.
As a non-profit org and collective, we aim to continue our tradition of being a cultural icon amidst the Toronto arts landscape through periodic revues and educational events alongside our festival.
We’re successfully granting and fundraising for the return of the festival in the fall of this year - the heart of our nonprofit organization.
With our newly minted status as a nonprofit, we aim to use the momentum from this fall’s festival to create residencies, artist initiatives, workshops, mentorship and continuing education opportunities for our diverse community.