My third time competing for Queen, and I can barely believe it.
I’ll be bringing The Gilded Birdcage, an act I began building in 2019 with the luminous costumier Manuge et Toi. This act began as a dedication to my Grandma Edna, and the costume itself is a monumental feat of beading, boning, craft, memory, and love. We worked on it back and forth across the pandemic, quietly wondering whether we would ever make it back onto the stage at all.
Then life moved in ways I could never have imagined.
I moved to New York in 2021. My face had “stopped working” earlier that year. When I received the costume, my facial palsy was so severe that I did not want to perform. I did not want to debut this act until I was “perfect again.” The choreography was in my head, the music was mixed, the costume was waiting, but I hit an artistic block unlike anything I had ever known. I felt sapped, broken, invisible, and unsure whether I had any big acts left in me.
When I was diagnosed with cancer, The Gilded Birdcage became one of the things I did not know how to carry forward. The evening before my 15-hour surgery, I wrote out my will and wondered where this costume would go, or whether this masterpiece would ever be seen.
And then came the long return.
Relearning to walk. Regaining facial movement. Finding the desire to perform again. Committing to the studio journey. Getting the archivally cited movements out of their celluloid sites and into my body. Seventeen studio sessions in three weeks. And finally, the birdcage opened.
I debuted The Gilded Birdcage as the 2025 DisabiliTease Festival headliner, and now I am bringing her to the Burlesque Hall of Fame.
BHoF has never been far from my heart. I first attended in 2012 with a cohort of best friends: Bella de Jac, Cherry Lush, The Diamond Dahlia, and Strawberry Siren. We were lucky enough to witness Australia’s Queen of Burlesque, Imogen Kelly, become the first Aussie to win the crown. I made my BHoF debut with Tribute to the Follies in 2015, alongside Zelia Rose, who won Best Debut. In 2017, I competed for Queen with Siren of the Swamp. In 2020, I was accepted to compete with Icarus Fallen, and while the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the world, the Burlesque Hall of Fame migrated online for two years of the Virtual Hall of Fame. I was finally thrilled to take to The Orleans stage in 2022.
In 2023, alongside Jacqueline Boxx, Lakota Shekhar, Apple Angel, and BHoF Executive Director Dustin Wax, the Accessibility Committee was formed to undertake evaluations of the competition and support changes, updates, and accommodations for disabled performers. While BHoF took place that year, I was in cancer treatment. In 2024, I was invited to judge the Tournament of Tease.
And now, in 2026, I return to the competition.
This is not a healing narrative. My disability does not define me. This is a story about living with the body I have, returning to the stage I love, and sharing my life through performance.
This song was the last one my Grandma and I listened to together before she passed.
To all the women who came before: tassels to the sky.
I am thrilled to be returning alongside the crème de la crème of international burlesque, and especially thrilled to be joined by some shining stars from Australia in Best Debut: Sugar Du Joure, MISS TICKLE ALLURE, Winter Greene, and Hot Blonde Slvt.
