UK ‘baby drag act’ cancels shows, blaming ‘trolls’ – media

CabaBabaRave, a UK performance troupe that combines “sensory events” for babies with raunchy cabaret numbers for their moms, cancelled all of its upcoming shows on Friday via an email seen by the Daily Mail, after outraged parents accused the troupe of sexually grooming children.  

Blaming “recent trolling and unfair media attention,” event organizers Gemma Daubney and Liz West told ticket-holders that CabaBabaRave was taking a “small breather for [their] mental health.” Parents’ concerns were initially ignored entirely, and later dismissed as bad-faith from transphobes determined to keep kids away from drag queens. 

The troupe locked down its social media profiles on Wednesday after footage surfaced showing scantily clad adults shaking their barely-clothed nether regions in babies’ faces at CabaBabaRave events. One image showed a topless woman clad only in pasties and a red thong hoisting a toddler into the air, while a video clip showed a man in a leather chest harness and thigh-high patent leather boots swinging from the ceiling surrounded by moms and babies.

While the organizers promised they were not saying “goodbye forever,” their website has been blanked along with their socials – though the Wayback Machine reveals a bizarre mixture of typical baby-themed playtime and heavily-made up drag performers staring down infants, similar to the Drag Queen Story Hour events polarizing parents on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Daubney and West waited until Friday to release a statement explicitly defending the age-inappropriate spectacle, again blaming a “pretty horrific trolling attack” for the decision to take their social media profiles private. They explained that in addition to more wholesome “family friendly performances” staged for “children of all ages,” CabaBabaRave also put on more risqué shows aimed at new mothers tired of hearing “the f***ing Wheels on the Bus” and wanting a “big London night out” instead. The twerking and G-strings would go right over the babies’ heads, they suggested.

However, the now-deleted ticket page for the canceled shows describes the troupe’s naughty “cabaret, drinks and dancing” experience for new moms – billed as “a little slice of afternoon delight that provides show-stopping cabaret interspersed with captivating baby sensory moments…ending in a RAVE” as “fantastic for families.”