Ritual Rhythms Chicago

Our annual Occult Cabaret will feature a special guest, presenting his version of the Great Beast, Aleister Crowley: Chicago’s own KᗩO ᖇᗩ ᘔEᑎ ✶✶✶✶ 🧿

Tickets still available for this Saturday's show! At Newport Theater 7pm. Link in bio.

Kao Ra Zen is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist, performer, poet, curator, educator, and cultural organizer whose work moves through hip-hop, spoken word, experimental performance, music, film, theater, and movement. His practice combines socio-political inquiry and existential reflection with an approach he describes as “piecemeal syncretism”—drawing fragments from music, literature, mythology, spirituality, politics, comics, cinema, popular culture, memory, and lived experience to create new artistic languages and temporary mythologies. Working both independently and collaboratively with musicians, dancers, filmmakers, visual artists, and writers, Kao creates performances that blur boundaries between artistic disciplines while building unexpected relationships between artists, audiences, and ideas.

This Saturday, one of our special guests for the Occult Cabaret will be Stella Mortadella (Lo Ca ) of the windycitywitches ! She'll be helping us conduct our opening séance invoking our seductive spirits! Tickets are still available! Link in bio.

Stella is a Chicago-based burlesque performer, instructor, choreographer, and producer. She is the founder of the Windy City Witches, Chicago's sluttiest q***r coven. She was an instructor at Siren Chicago for the entirety of its existence, and has been able to teach hundreds of students all over the world, through her Burlesque Babes performance series, her specialty workshops, and her signature seasonal class, Witch S**t, which she has taught at the Ritual Rhythms Creative Studio, among other venues.

Bringing a bit of chaos to the proceedings, the Occult Cabaret will evoke one of the 20th century's most unique occult minds - Austin Osman Spare!

Occult Cabaret is this Saturday, October 10th at 7pm, Newport Theater Get your tickets while you can! Link in bio.

Considered the godfather of chaos magic, Spare was a painter and artist who perfected a system of magickal sigil drawing and automatic writing still used by practitioners today!

Embodying the wild spirit of Spare, author of the Book of Satyrs, is none other than CRYPTITS

CRYPTITS has been performing for around three years now (or perhaps millennia, who is to say). They are members of the burlesque troupes Foxy by Proxy and the Lawrence Burlesque Society and have competed in local competition shows such as The Nerve (2025). They are varied in performance style, and is always performing something new, something strange, something altogether different.

We travel to medieval Egypt to raise our next figure in the seductive séance that is the Occult Cabaret by Illumi-Naughtie Occult Burlesque one week from tonight! Saturday, October 10th at 7pm. Tickets onsale now! Link in bio.

Ahmad Al-Buni was a well known Sufi writer on mathematics and sorcery. His most famous work was the Shams al-Ma'arif al-Kubra (Sun of the Great Knowledge, Arabic ) which is one of the most widely read medieval treatises on talismans, magic squares, and occult practices.

This magickal master will be brought forth by Sabina England ~ Deaf Poet Performer 🪷✨!

Sabina England is a deaf poet, performer, playwright and filmmaker. She writes and performs by using American Sign Language, combined with dancing, mime, burlesque, poetry and comedy. Sabina has performed in NYC, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Las Vegas, San Francisco, just to name a few.

At the Occult Cabaret, our séance will be s*xy, seductive, and scarlet!

Illumi-Naughtie Occult Burlesque reaches into the ancient world to evoke the spirit of Sosipatra, an influential Greek neo-platonic philosopher and mystic, embodied by scarletseance !

With her name inspired by Klaus Hargreeves from the Umbrella Academy, The Scarlet Séance began her career pole dancing in 2013 in California, then moved to Chicago, entering the performance scene with pole, burlesque, and recently, fire eating . She is a regular performer with the windycitywitches .

Get your tickets now! Occult Cabaret is Saturday, October 10 at 7pm! VIP $40, GA $25. Link in bio.

Bringing a little voodoo to the proceedings, Occult Cabaret presented by Illumi-Naughtie Occult Burlesque will dig deep into NOLA roots to evoke the legendary Marie Laveau, with the help of Madame Latte Mortez Tiffy Lee 💜Madame Latte Mortez 💀

Occult Cabaret is October 10 at 7pm at Newport Theater Get your tickets before they're gone!

Madame Latte Mortez is a Drag Queen Burlesque Entertainer who resides in Las Vegas, NV but born and raised in the Crypts of Chicago.

In tribute to Lady Frieda Harris, designer of Aleister Crowley's famous Thoth tarot deck, the Occult Cabaret presents Thorne Von Nosh 🥀 , all the way from Denver!

Get your tickets to the s*xiest séance this October! Link in bio.

Occult Cabaret is Saturday, October 10 at 7pm!

Thorne Von Nosh is Denver’s Polesque princess and Winner of the Pink Venom Competition! Thorne is also one of the producers of Denver’s only Q***r Strip Club! Thorne is a full time st****er of 5 years, pole instructor and burlesque performer of 3 years! Surrender to desire and let this Hex Girl put her spell on you!

Occult Cabaret is coming in two weeks! On Saturday, October 10 at 7pm at Newport Theater ! VIP $40, GA $25 (link in bio)

One of the spirits we will bring forth from our s*xy séance is Maria de Naglowska, Russian mystic and occultist from the 1930s who sought the union of masculine and feminine principles through s*x magick.

Bringing this sultry soul to life is none other than Moose Knuckle, the most esoteric girl in the sewer!

moose is a gender
f**k neo-burlesque performer with a drag sensibility and sideshow flair, dubbed ‘the best name in Neo-burlesque’ by Foxy Tann, they’re Chicago’s favorite glamorous freak and the patron saint of painting tops… inspired by John Waters films, bearded women from sideshows of yore, and various lichens- they’re the creator and cofounder of Problematique Variety Cabaret, Chicago’s punkest variety show, and are here to confuse and arouse… it’s Moose Knuckle!

Occult Cabaret is just around the corner! Don't miss our yearly spooky season show from Illumi-Naughtie Occult Burlesque at Newport Theater on Saturday, October 10 at 7pm!

We'll be conducting a seductive séance invoking key figures in occult history. And one of those figures is the legendary African Queen, Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba, who reigned in the mid 1600s with a power that could be described as...magical.

Portraying her is our headliner Shimmy LaRoux

Tickets are onsale now! $25 GA $40 VIP (link in bio).

Here's what you need to know about Shimmy LaRoux: she is genuinely having the time of her life up there, and it shows.

A Chicago burlesque performer, host, and teacher, Shimmy brings the kind of energy you can't fake — equal parts classic Hollywood, playful chaos, and "yes, I absolutely just did that." She's been called a bad girl with good home training, which is probably the most accurate thing anyone has ever said about her.

She was crowned Miss Burlesque World 2022. She's been named one of the Top 50 Most Influential Burlesque Performers in the World five times over. She's a two-time Mover, Shaker & Innovator at the Burlesque Hall of Fame. In 2023, she headlined the Baby Grand Festival in Cape Town, South Africa — the first Black performer to do so.

She's also a two-time International Pl***oy Playmate and FHM Cover Model, which she mentions mostly because it still makes her laugh a little. When Shimmy walks on stage, you're going to leave with a smile on your face, your shoulders a little looser, and the distinct feeling that you needed exactly that.

Shimmy will bring that royal magic to our stage for Occult Cabaret!