Last Sunday night my friend Angela invited me to a burlesque night in town. Now I like burlesque as much as the next man and having spent the weekend staying in I decided to make something of Sunday night.

It wasn’t until I reached the venue that I realised this was not going to be what I had expected. Sirens is hosted at legendary lesbian club, The Candy Bar, where the clientele tend not to consist of straight men. Indeed, at the weekends you generally won’t be allowed in as a man unless you are known to the door staff or accompanied by a number of women. I wasn’t sure I would be too welcome, but got in none the less. Apart from the unisex toilet - one person per cubicle please - I found the place to be just like any other, with great music and a good atmosphere (initial uncertainty of peoples gender aside). A world where the men are dressed as girls and the girls look (sometimes) like men, a refreshing change for those of us without prejudice.

Siren’s seems to be basically a strip club night by women for women. There’s no actual nudity but the ladies strip down to their tassels and pole dance to a range of different songs, from disco to System of A Down. The theme of the evening was fairy tales, and everyone seemed to get stuck in. Photographs were not allowed, my friend took one, not realising, and the bouncer ran over and made her delete it. Only snow white was allowed to take photos, and he was a surprisingly burly chap. I must add, I have yet to go to a place hosting a night such as this where taking photos is acceptable, so no surprises there.

Now, during my time traveling in Canada and Australia a few years ago I was lucky enough to find myself in a few strip clubs (hell, one of them was even inside the hostel itself, so not a lot of choice there). I found them to be either dirty sordid affairs where the men were either wankers, or embarrassed, or people ignore the dancers. The women go up one at a time and take everything off. Unlike strip clubs here (so I’m lead to believe) the beer and entry is cheap, no private dances are available, its one woman on the stage at a time. This evening looked similar (well, the stage did) but it was worlds apart.

The women at Sirens were sensual and demanded respect and applause, not lust and lewd remarks. In not actually stripping it was far more of a tease and left more to the imagination. The pink pounds game, whereby you buy a pink slip of paper for a pound and tuck it into the gusset, winning a lapdance if you place the most pounds, added an element of big brother style voting to the proceedings (Elaine and her friend were the lucky winners tonight). The dancing too was quite acrobatic, with the girls hanging from the top of the pole and spinning to the floor. It must require strong thighs!

All in all great fun, and although not for me and my straight kin, well worth a single trip if you are a daring man with plenty of girls to go with, and many trips if you are a curious lady.

Sirens is next at The Candy Bar Sunday 17th June where the theme is Space Age.

Learn Burlesque!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Theatre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.