Tear This Place Apart

Professional controversialist Alan Jones is no stranger to outrage, and when he commented earlier this year that women – Julia Gillard, Christine Nixon and Clover Moore, in particular – were “destroying the joint”, he probably expected to provoke a little criticism. What he might not have expected to provoke is a burlesque show ­– but it turns out he did. Destroy The Joint – A Burlesque Tribute To The Movement is a fundraising event for Zonta International, an organisation devoted to advancing the status of women in society. The event promises to bring together some of the country's top burlesque performers, and no doubt they'll be revealing more than just their aggravation with Mr Jones.

One of those taking part is the fantastically named Sheena Miss Demeanour. “When I went along to my first burlesque night, I was really inspired by the women performing on stage, and how they were doing all kinds of different things – from fan dancing to tap dancing, through to striptease,” she recalls of her introduction to the form. “I knew then it was my calling because I thought I could really put on a great show and make audiences happy, so that was really my mission from day one.”

For more than seven years, Sheena Miss Demeanour has been doing just that – performing everywhere from LA and San Fran to Tokyo, Macau and Vancouver. Her background in dance made the transition into burlesque a fairly smooth one. “I've done everything from cabaret to ballet and even hip hop, so my dance training is quite diverse. I saw burlesque as a way to fuse all of those dance skills together to create an entertaining performance piece,” she says. “I'm used to performing on stage, but burlesque is about being able to do my own show – to create my own choreography, my own costuming and my own message.”

These days, she focuses mainly on burlesque, though she still attends ballet classes and occasionally works as a choreographer, an area she'd like to move into in the future. “I still dabble in other dance forms, and sometimes I'll get booked at corporate events, which are often more of a cabaret performance – less strip, and more tease,” she explains. “But I'm not performing in any hip hop troupes any more like I used to. I'll leave that to the 19-year-olds.”

Although most burlesque incorporates a striptease element, don't expect to find an audience full of leering blokes. “A lot of my audience members are actually women. For some events, we'll look around the audience and definitely I'd say it would be around 75 percent female,” she says. “Women tend to be drawn to artistic and glamorous elements of it – it's more about the empowerment of a woman, rather than their objectification.”

Most people have heard of burlesque, but Sheena admits there's still a bit of confusion about exactly what's involved. “Sometimes people will book a burlesque act, and when I turn up I like to warn them that I will be using nipple tassels and that kind of thing, and they can be a bit shocked, so they ask me to leave the striptease element out,” she says. “The great thing about this event is that women are really pulling out all the stops and doing a show how they'd like to – it's really about women taking control and using their bodies how they see fit.”