Iva Handfull is a standout on the Seattle burlesque scene, not just for her platinum faux-hawk but for the rock ’n’ roll edge she brings to her super-energized act.

She’s known for a fan dance set to the frantic rhythms of the Prodigy’s “Firestarter”, soundtracks that range from Nine Inch Nails to Scissor Sisters, and impersonations of music stars like Prince and Billy Idol.

“I grew up watching music videos—I was a child of the ’80s,” the affable neoburlesque innovator says from her home in Seattle, before heading here for the Vancouver International Burlesque Festival. “I’ve always wanted to be in a rock band but I’ve never sung. It’s more about going out and dancing and feeling that energy. It took me a while to develop that. I feel like I’m blanketing the audience with my energy.…I find myself leaning forward a lot at the front of the stage the way a rock star does.” Then she adds with a laugh: “I have to be careful I don’t fall!”

Her stage act is wild and edgy. But Iva Handfull has an alter ego: she has an accounting degree, and does bookkeeping to allow enough time for her burlesque career and its requisite travel.

But if you assume her two career paths, burlesque dancer and accountant, would never meet, think again. Almost unimaginably, Handfull plots out all her dance routines in Excel, using spreadsheets. She breaks down every beat of every track, making notes on what she’s doing with her body and face.

It’s not just her inner accountant coming out, though. “I have a memory issue from my late 20s—I don’t drink or do drugs so I don’t know why,” Handfull reveals to the Straight. “It’s hard to remember an act, so spreadsheets and video are very important. And once the moves are ingrained in my muscles I don’t have to look at spreadsheets anymore.”

If Handfull has a different way of working, it may also be because her path to the burlesque stage was not direct.

“I’ve always been a ham, but not a performer,” she explains. “I’d go to clubs when I was 21 and dance all night and there’d be people standing watching me every night. These were goth clubs, ’80s clubs.

“I just never knew how to bring that to the stage because in theatre you’re taking someone else’s ideas on-stage. And as far as professional dance, I don’t like taking classes and having to do someone else’s choreography.”

She didn’t discover burlesque until a friend took her to a show in Seattle’s thriving bump ’n’ grind scene, after she moved there about nine years ago with her husband. “I literally couldn’t sit in my chair,” she remembers. “I said, ‘Holy crap—I’m in my 30s figuring out this is my art form!’ It was completely individual, and they had created what they were doing on-stage themselves.”

After the show, Handfull hopped on the stage to find out how to get involved, and she hasn’t stopped shaking it since. She attributes a lot of the individuality of her work to the openness of the Seattle scene, which mirrors our own array of burlesque forms in Vancouver.

“Burlesque is so strong and diverse in styles here, but it also allows us to do a broad range of what we want to do,” she says of Seattle. “What I found travelling around the U.S. and at the BurlyCon fest here is that a lot of people feel like they’re stuck in classic burlesque. But I never feel that in Seattle,” adds Handfull, whose accolades include headlining Las Vegas’s Burlesque Hall of Fame. “What I do is entertaining to the audience. I’m maybe driving burlesque in a way that you can be yourself on-stage. So I think it’s who I am, and the Seattle scene that said, ‘You can do what you want to do.’ ”

Burlesque fans at this week’s 10th annual fest at the Vogue Theatre will be able to see Handfull rock a hoop-skirted historical gown in her “Victorian Act”—a hypercharged mashup of techno songs that remix classical music. “My friend described it as ‘Iva’s in her favourite dress, dancing to her favourite songs,’ ” the fun-loving blond bombshell tells the Straight. But then, in a way, she was pretty much describing every act Iva Handfull creates—on her spreadsheets, of course.

The Vancouver International Burlesque Festival runs from Thursday to Saturday (April 30 to May 2) at the Vogue Theatre.