NYX Professional Makeup speaks to this groundbreaking performance company about why representation matters
ADVERTORIAL, BY DIVA STAFF
If you’ve been to a performance by The Cocoa Butter Club, they need no introduction. The performance company was founded in 2016 to carve out space for performers of colour in cabaret and burlesque. It was started by Sadie who was exhausted by seeing blackface in burlesque and cabaret, as well as performers trying to tell stories that belong to Black people.
Now, The Cocoa Butter Club is a platform for performers of colour to be spotlighted. The performance company is one the trailblazing organisations that are being celebrated by NYX Professional Makeup’s Proudly Pro-You brand initiative this year. Created in 2019 and launched in 2022, NYX Professional Makeup’s initiative aims to help uplift and platform the LGBTQIA+ and the LGBTQIA+ people of colour, alongside support organisations that are creating queer-safe spaces and places for our community.
“One of the big challenges that we face in our community is getting people to value our performances and our shows. To understand that the content of our shows is going to look different because artists create from their lived experience,” Sadie told NYX Professional Makeup.
Over the last nine years, The Cocoa Butter Club has been encouraging people of colour to take up space on stage. Audience members have actually been inspired by watching The Cocoa Butter Club’s performances, and have enrolled in the Black Burlesque School to join the industry.
With the support of NYX Professional Makeup’s Proudly Pro-You initiative this year, The Cocoa Butter Club have been able to put on ‘The Black Burlesque Festival’, a three-day festival bringing 40 Black performers to London to put on an awe-defying show.
“It’s really important to understand that whilst we are platforming Black queer performers and queer performers of colour, allyship is how we have managed to last the last 10 years,” Sadie explained to NYX Professional Makeup. “We can’t only be speaking to the people that look like us, we need everybody else to believe in the mission too. We need them to believe that the melanated should be celebrated.”
Learn more about The Cocoa Butter Club and more about the great work that NYX Professional Makeup’s Proudly Pro-You brand initiative is doing at https://www.nyxcosmetics.co.uk/proudly-pro-you
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