Is it true what they say? Is it all fun and games? Or is there more behind the makeup and the faces full of paint?”

Christina Aguilera, Enter the Circus

“Have you fellas been to a burlesque bar before?” laughs the doorman, exchanging fifteens for tickets at the entrance. “It’s very, very naughty…”

Welcome to a world where fun is the number one venture. Welcome to a night filled with whooping crowds, swooping girls, laughter, dancing and adventure. Welcome to the Burlesque Bar, Fitzroy – a slimline cigarette holder of a venue filled with Parisian features and the swinging hips of elegant, deviant sweethearts.

The Burlesque Bar is almost a well known hidden little secret – a Chinese whisper amongst the ether. Within the curtained windows and lamp filled façades, the pretty little wild things of the Burlseque Bar own the night…and they love it.

Firecracker quick, shooting star soon, the lanterns begin to dim and flicker. In a ripped millisecond the tiny one foot high stage whip-crackles and burns, poised to cum with human electricity. The host for the evening, Natalia, erupts strident and eager out of the kitchen and onto the stage wearing black lace underwear and corset singing ‘Bring on the men’ – a song about feasting and munching on men for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day. The crowd roars in aroused approval – this is their kind of kink.

A few moments later Natalia’s haranguing and shanghaiing members of the audience, daintily and cheekily mocking them, asking them their names and deviously commenting on “beautiful, voluptuous breasts,” and men named Margaret.

“Anyway, enough of this joking,” snaps Natalia, dominant, curtly and abruptly. “Put your hands together for Betty Bump and Pippy Squeak…also known as Slap ‘n’ Tickle!”

The audience erupts, flares into beauty. Whooping rebel yells fill the arena. Big band music quickly follows to the sounds of liquor inducement as Betty Bump – an enchanting Bettie Page esque wonder – bounds onstage filled with feisty vivacious beauty. She quickly slinks into cabaret, slivering and snaking to the sound of Mein Herr by Liza Minelli.

Pretty soon she trades places with Pippy Squeak – a sultry and cutesy Gatsby style blonde – who shimmies and strips to silk knickers and garters…a hit of champagne from a heel to blow out her show.

As the night moves through many movements, licks and manoeuvres, the room becomes louder, electric, blasting with liberation and dynamite. The mood heightens as each girl bounds into the darkened heart of the tiny but tightly wound crowd. Javier, the bar man, dances around in a fetishistic fiendish slamming his hands on the bar in excitement, feverishly yelling with pure, uncut, walla-walla.

The speed and sound reaches a syncopation of climax and chaos – the devil is dancing, the snake charmer is lancing. Boom! Amplifier interior gunfire, pop-pops of small detonations bounce around the theatre. Snarling radios, echoes, weirdness.

“Frickin’ technical difficulties,” quips Natalia. “Now I sound like I’m talking out of a fish bowl. That’ll teach me to fuck up my lines. Ahem. Anyhow, darlings, it’s time for a little interaction…”

Natalia entices Margaret and his girlfriend onto the stage, dragging Javier along for the ride. A flick and a lick later she’s adding pink feather boas and having them pole dance and play for the room around Javier – much to the whooping crowd’s delight.

“You see, Margaret,” says Natalia. “When you use a woman’s name you get to snuggle with men. But anyhow, here’s the last part of the show for the night…Slap ‘n’ Tickle!”

Pippy Squeak and Betty Bump wander out of the kitchen, Pippy crawling on all fours seamed up  like a cat, Betty Bump walking her on a soft, satin leash.

“There’s something appealing about a woman licking up milk,” says Natalia, buzzing with a mischievous grin.

A couple milk soaked minutes later and the fun is flipped in the opposite direction – Betty Bump is tied to the leash and it’s her turn to walk on all fours through the crowd.

“Ah,” says Natalia. “There’s nothing like a woman in bondage…you should try it sometime…”

Paris, Berlin, 50s L.A. and a little dabble in grindhouse – these girls take you around the world in a whiplash. $15 a hit for a series of blitzkrieg quick humour filled striptreats would usually make people feel cheated. But this is burlesque and this is an amyl-nitrate esque funky ride. Fast, kooky, goofy and lusty. A cartoon manoeuvre with a foot and a toe in wild love and darkness, and a foot and a toe in the art of awe and performance.

As the crowd drifts into the murky neon cast offs of Johnston street, Natalia sits high on the window balancing herself between glass ledge and thin air. Sipping from a beer, she says in leering to the crowd “It’s not the worst thing I’ve had between my legs, darling!”