The Tease Factory
The Court Hotel
Friday, October 17 2025
For opening night of the 12th Perth International Burlesque Festival, The Tease Factory had collected a pool of artistic talent so deep, the audience almost needed a submarine to appreciate it fully. The production team at Tease Industries had curated a fantastic roster of local, interstate, and international performers, all of whom provided a delightful showcase worthy of likely the largest burlesque community in the country.
Ms Honey Bee Rose, the Mx Exotic World 2024 title winner from the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas—basically the Academy Awards of the art form—had winged their way almost as far as possible from their native Chicago to give the audience not one, but two absolutely knockout performances.
The first of these was a classic jazz bump and grind, sexy and sensual, while Rose’s second routine, the closer for the night, was an exquisite feather fan piece scored to a bluesy cover of The Stooges’ I Need Somebody, all throbbing bassline to the fore. Rose’s movements were expressive and sultry, while their final emergence from under the feathers recalled Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. The crowd leant forward in their seats, baying for more.
Fellow headliner Dale Woodbridge-Brown exhibited a wide variety of circus skills, soundtracked to the unlikeliest combination of Shirley Temple and Nicky Minaj. Between marching batons, sexually suggestive balloons, and a faux tantrum worthy of Drag Race, in a few short minutes Woodbridge-Brown had near enough brought the house down.
Melburnian Evana De Lune dazzled with a sinuous, kinetic routine—fabulously accompanied by intense strobe lighting and the mournful, genre-defying electric wail of Ramsey’s Love Surrounds You, this was an act so cutting edge as to almost escape categorisation itself.
Tonight’s MC was Minxy Milva, with her words as integral to the show as any of the sexy body parts that appeared elsewhere. She deferred to her natural Wheatbelt accent, doing most of the heavy lifting in the role, but Milva had sold her own talents far short there. At every transition and introduction, she displayed an assured ease, delivered multiple quick-fire quips, and effortlessly shone with any and all audience banter.
Modern burlesque is a multitude of influences, ideas, inspirations, and seemingly endless rabbit holes to lose oneself in. This evening alone, there were tap shoes on fire, plague doctors, button eyes, dog leashes, and even Eighties jazzercise fluoro.
From Japanese traditional dress and theatre, through futurism that combined Daft Punk with The Fifth Element with Bjork, to laugh-out-loud comedy as a Californian banana danced to Hot Chocolate’s Everyone’s A Winner on a game show, collecting a sex toy in the process—if it could at all be imagined, it was almost certainly an act tonight.
To wit, Ruby Slippers specifically brought a performance both divine and profane, high art quite literally wrapped around a toilet bowl, a jaw-dropping concept piece that was equally as inspired as it was ridiculous, all to the thumping, iconic beat of Frankie’s Relax.
Taken all together, The Tease Factory was a wonderful and thoroughly entertaining evening at The Court Hotel that brought some of the world’s finest burlesque artists to Perth yet also demonstrated the strength and variety of the local scene. The knowledgeable and very appreciative crowd lapped it all up and screamed out for seconds.