The Victory Tour features Miss Burlesque Australia first runner-up Frankie Faux from Sydney, plus second runner-up Kelly Ann Doll, Bella De Jac from Queensland, Coppelia Jane from Brisbane, Danica Lee from Sydney, Ginger Leah Rye from the Gold Coast, Victorians Becky Lou and Miss Jane, and Lucy Sky Diamond from Tasmania. Why not more local girls? “They dance in Melbourne every weekend,” she replies. “I wanted to give people another reason to see the show and give state winners a chance to perform outside their own states.” The Strawberry Siren will be performing in her home town of Albury as part of the tour. Will they make a big fuss of her? “Oh, sure,” she says with a laugh. “There’ll be a ticker tape parade!”
The Siren’s background is in circus and she’s been performing for a long time, since the age of eleven. Back then she was twirling around on long stalks as part of the Fruit Fly Circus which lead to her becoming an aerialist and contortionist. What made her move away from circus? “I’m flexible but I’m not willing to keep doing those things to my body. I grew up as a circus performer and had a great 15 years of that but I had a few injuries. I stumbled across burlesque by accident, through the pin-up scene, and fell in love with it.”
“I call myself a retired aerialist/contortionist but I still do my circus stuff,” The Siren says. “It helped me win the grand title; I did an aerial routine. The Siren’s extensive circus training provides her with a point of difference in the saturated world of burlesque. “Burlesque has become a little too popular,” she says. “Audiences have faded. The movie helped to destroy things. I start my shows by saying ‘I hate to break it to you but there was no burlesque in Burlesque‘!”
The Siren is generous with her praise of Australian dancers. “We have an amazing burlesque industry here in Australia with amazing performers. They’re interesting performers,” she says of her peers. “They’re people I look up to.”
The Strawberry Siren, whose act is famous for her emerging from a gigantic flower which opens and closes on stage, is moving to the UK after a recent world tour where she performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the New Orleans, Kansas City, Vancouver, London and Stockholm Burlesque Festivals. How was New Orleans? “It was amazing! It was such an honour to be part of such a great festival! I’m sharing my time over the next 12 months between Melbourne and London. I’ve been performing this for the last six years. I’m sure people are a bit sick of me – well, not sick of me but there’s got to be a point where a fresh audience gives you a new experience. I don’t want to get stale; I want to keep pushing.” The UK, she says will give her inspiration and new ideas to bring back to Melbourne. Where do ideas for routines come from? “A piece of music. A picture in a magazine, finding a piece of costume in an op shop or a vintage store. Impressions come from everywhere. It’s just piecing it all together. Every routine is different.”
The biggest challenge for The Strawberry Siren is the logistics involved in putting the tour together – on her own. “It’s a lot of hard work. I can’t afford to pay anyone to help me.” In the meantime The Victory Tour has taken a toll on her personal life. So it’s a labour of love? “Oh, yes. I definitely do it for the love of it!” she says with a sigh. But the pay-off for her is feeling the raw excitement of the crowd when that massive flower opens up and she starts to slink out of it. “You can feel the excitement when they see me!”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
