With naked circus acts, poets, comedians, musicians and performance artists, Gurlesque is much more than just a strip club. As it celebrates its fifth birthday, Sex Intents and Glita Supernova offer KATRINA FOX their views.

On 23 January, performers at lesbian striptease club Gurlesque were forced to cover up their genitalia from the all-female audience because the venue where they'd hosted previous shows - the @Newtown RSL - received a complaint and the RSL clamped down. It may not have been on the scale of Janet Jackson's boob flashing which attracted the highest ever fine levied against a US TV broadcaster, but it's yet another example of the censorship and control of women' sexuality.

"It makes me angry," Intents says. "I'm angry with the government and the venues for not banding together and saying 'this is what's happening in our town, these are the shows and they're popular'. The laws around women's sexuality are archaic and completely controlling. The whole thing about us having to cover up all the time is so ridiculous that we might as well be in burkas - we think we're free but is anybody really free?
"My body is a costume so you take it all off and there's your bits and pieces and then if you want to simulate sex or fuck yourself, that's part of your journey as an artist. I went to the [strip club] Eros recently to watch a friend strip. I watched the porn showing and it did my head in. It brought up this whole thing again of where are women in control of their sexuality and how are they represented? And it's ok for these really bad porn films screening in clubs where women look like they're being raped but women in control setting up arenas and showing sexuality in a more empowered way come up against censorship."

Intents and Supernova spent several years during the 1990s working in the straight striptease theatres, with both having different experiences. Always one for high camp, Supernova donned big wigs and glitter and explored the art of theatrical performance within a sex environment "Everything I learnt about the stage I learnt from strip shows," she says. "It was an amazing journey and it's been really empowering." For Intents the experience wasn't so positive. "I don't have tits so I had to work really hard. It wasn't challenging for me at all. I prefer working for women." Even Supernova admits that nowadays stripping in its current form of table-top dancing is not an empowering experience for women. "The table-top clubs are set up in a way where women have to compete against each other, and the sex industry is underpaid - over the years, the prices have plummeted, they haven't gone up with inflation."

A sex tsunami is Intents' answer to instigating change in the industry. "The girl I saw dancing at Eros recently was so into what she was doing, she was fully into her sexuality and empowering herself and I thought 'you've done all that for $35 and that's fine, but where's the appreciation?' There's always this struggle of women trying to transmute energy in really bad places to find empowerment and I just think 'when is the scenery going to change'? I think we need something that wipes out the old and something new is created - I'm a bit of an extremist in that way."

A desire to create just such an empowering arena for women to explore their sexuality was what led to the birth of Gurlesque, although neither was sure how a lesbian striptease club would go down with a women-only audience at the time. "Sex and I were doing double acts as the Kosmic Love Dolls in the straight clubs and at subculture parties. Every so often we'd go into dykeland and do a show but they never got it," Supernova explains. Intents adds: "Around 1995 we worked at Kinsellas when it had a lesbian night. We would be performing and the girls would turn their backs - they just couldn't handle it."

The first night, however, allayed any doubts that they were onto something. "We both cried," Intents remembers. "The room was packed to the rafters and the smiles and laughter coming from the audience was amazing. We were told that a feminist group from uni were going to picket the show, saying we were fucked up and setting everybody back - that it was really wrong and there was no empowerment in women doing striptease at all." Five years and several hundred shows later, Intents and Supernova have proved the hardline feminists wrong. Moments such as the one where Elizabeth Burton, an old-school stripper in her 50s stood in rapture as audiences clapped, cheered and screamed for more speak for themselves.

It's the combination of striptease and theatrical antics that have encouraged women who would never dream of going into a strip club to flock to Gurlesque, and although it has its roots in burlesque, it's in a league of its own in terms of content, style and mix of acts that would never normally be found in the same space. "I find the resurgence of burlesque that I've seen to be really lame," Intents says. "I think it's safe sex for the mainstream." Supernova agrees. "They're not strippers, they're performance artists going 'ooooh'. Burlesque from the beginning has pushed the boundaries of society and now everyone's looking back to old times, but my interest in burlesque is to push the boundaries and confront now."

Intents admits that Gurlesque was originally formulated as a five-year plan but says it could be a 55-year-old one now. Although both women are keen to open up their performance work to a mixed queer audience, they are adamant that Gurlesque will always be "a total theatrical experience of women's empowerment for women". So, it seems we can rest assured that despite censorship attempts, nude hoola hoopers, sexy clowns, kinky performance artists and hot chicks popping ping-pong balls out of their pussies are destined to grace the Gurlesque stage for many years to come. "It's entertaining, educational, political, it's a complete turn-on, it's a complete turn-off at times, it covers every spectrum of sexual energy and performance art," Intents says. "And Gurlesque will always be a brand for women. We started a revolution and we're going to keep moving with it."

www.gurlesque.com

LOTL is Australia's national lesbian magazine covering. For more information visit the magazine's website at www.lotl.com