The Australian Burlesque Festival

A scene with barely enough performers to fill a bill

The festival's origin is a single trip. Dolores Daiquiri, its co-founder and co-director, has said she encountered the burlesque revival while in the United States around 2001, at a point when Los Angeles had a movement and Melbourne had almost nothing. She came back, mentioned it to a friend, and the two began performing at a time when, by her own account, there were not many performers in the city to work alongside.

By 2009 there were enough to build a festival around. That first edition established the shape the organisation still uses: a curated bill of classic striptease alongside newer work, assembled from Australian performers and supplemented with guests from overseas. Daiquiri has been described in Australian media as a classic tease queen and a burlesque comedienne, and by 2019 she had been performing for eighteen years and producing events across the country.

Her stated reason for staying with the form is control of the output rather than exposure. Performers make their own costumes, choose their own music and build their own acts, which she has summarised as being in control of one's own art. That principle carries into how the festival recruits: it runs an open performer application each year rather than booking solely from an established circle.

Touring instead of settling

The decision that separates the Australian Burlesque Festival from most events of its kind is the refusal to base itself in one city. It tours nationally, and across its history has played Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, the Gold Coast, Newcastle, Gosford, Adelaide, Darwin and Alice Springs. That geographic spread — including two Northern Territory stops most cabaret tours skip — is the reason it describes itself as the original national touring burlesque festival in Australia, and as one of the largest touring burlesque operations anywhere.

The organisation behind it is Cherry Daiquiri Productions, a women-led company. Cherry Velour joined the team in 2016 and was named co-director in 2023, bringing event-management work and a focus on how the festival's rooms are run. Accessibility, diversity and inclusion are set out as operating principles rather than programming themes, and appear in practical form in the tour's venue choices and wheelchair provision.

The most measurable thing on its record is not a season but a marathon. Burleskathon, staged in Melbourne on 22 and 23 March 2014, ran continuously for 24 hours with 77 burlesque performers from across Australia taking part in relay, and holds the Guinness World Record for the longest burlesque performance marathon relay. Festival material also cites inclusion in the Australian Burlesque Museum's ICONS exhibition in 2015 and again in 2018.

Four shows, not one

The festival is not a single production repeated in each city. It is a set of formats deployed according to the room. The Big Tease Soirée is the touring workhorse, used in Darwin, Alice Springs, Newcastle, Gosford and on the Gold Coast, and built as a variety bill running from 1940s-style classic routines to contemporary neo-burlesque, with comedy in the mix and music leaning on swing, jazz and electro-cabaret.

The Big Tease Gala is the larger-scale version, reserved for proper theatres — The Concourse in Sydney and the Princess Theatre in Brisbane in 2026, plus one of the three Melbourne nights. Empress Erotique is the darker programme, built around erotic and more explicitly theatrical work rather than the variety format, and returns to Melbourne's Spiegel Haus on 23 October 2026 with RedBone and Bonita Danger Doll on the bill.

New Follies is the one that functions as infrastructure for the wider scene. Presented by Daiquiri, it is an emerging performers contest restricted to artists with under two years' experience, judged by a panel drawn from the industry, with the winner invited to appear at one of the festival's main shows alongside its headliners. It closes the 2026 tour at Spiegel Haus on 25 October. Daytime workshops run alongside the shows in every city and online, taught in 2026 by Bonita Danger Doll, RedBone and Daiquiri herself, covering classic tease movement, floorwork and vintage bump-and-grind, and all pitched at open or all-levels.

Where it stands in October 2026

The 17th edition runs 2 to 25 October 2026 across eight cities. It opens at the AANT Centre in Darwin on 2 October, moves to Araluen Arts Centre in Alice Springs on 3 October, then Flamingos Live in Newcastle on 8 October and Funhaus Factory in Gosford on 9 October. The Concourse in Chatswood hosts the Sydney gala on 10 October, the Princess Theatre in Brisbane follows on 16 October, Miami Marketta takes the Gold Coast soirée on 17 October, and the tour finishes with three consecutive nights at Melbourne's Spiegel Haus from 23 to 25 October.

The 2026 headline roster is seven names: Daiquiri from Melbourne, Carter C'artier from Perth, Lexxxy Loosa and Pearly Lustre from Sydney, cabaret performer Tash York from Melbourne, Bonita Danger Doll from New Zealand and RedBone from the United States. Beneath them the festival lists more than fifty further performers, grouped by the city where they appear, which is how the touring model works in practice — an international and national core, filled out locally at each stop.

Workshops are scheduled ahead of or around the show dates in each city: Darwin on 30 September, Alice Springs on 4 October, Newcastle on 7 October, Sydney on 11 October, Brisbane on 15 October, Gold Coast on 19 October, an online session on 21 October and Melbourne on 24 October. Most run 60 minutes, with some at 90.

The room on the night

The staging is deliberately variable. In Alice Springs the show sits in a subsidised arts centre with fixed theatre seating; in Newcastle it runs as a dinner show with dining from 6pm before an 8.30pm start; in Brisbane it splits between cabaret-style floor tables and reserved mezzanine seats; in Melbourne it plays a tent-style spiegel venue on Lonsdale Street. What stays constant is the bill structure — a sequence of self-contained acts rather than a through-written piece — and the 18+ door policy at every stop.

The recurring note in press coverage is scale rather than sophistication. Time Out Melbourne's line about the biggest burlesque bash this side of the equator has followed the tour onto venue listings for years, and the festival also circulates a blogger's description of a glam-glorious night. Venue copy warns that some acts use strobe lighting, which is a fair indication that the newer work on the bill is not all classic fan-dance material.