There are certain events that can only happen in Mayfair. A luxury erotic performance art salon is one of them. Down the carpeted stairs and wood-pannelled walls of Dear Darling, the Sublime Society is about to make its London debut. It would not be at home in a grubby warehouse, or on a cabaret stage to an audience of sweaty, sticky club-goers. It has the heady flavour which is all too-often missing in modern sex: opulence.
I enter the main bar of Dear Darling shortly before the show is due to begin, trying not to trip on the stairs in pink heels. The room is dressed with plush sofas and velvet armchairs, lush green drapery and low, jangling chandeliers. In one corner stands a glass wardrobe which will later open to reveal a nightclub in the bowels of the building. Two hostess models in bloomer underwear, white wigs and boaters float around the venue fanning themselves, coquettish and glamorous. I sign in and head to the bar, where I try to order a Prosecco. The bartender pours me a glass of Moet instead, a true-to-form West End accident. I see hot married couples and artsy singIes, the erotic intellectual elite. I take a seat on a buxom fringed armchair, and breathe in the deep scent of designer perfumes, face powder and latex.
The Sublime Society is the creation of “international burlesque and variété artist” Charlie Bouquett, who holds a residency at former women’s prison venue The Knast in Berlin. Not exactly the turn-of-the-century Parisian brothel vibes of Dear Darling (the planned venue for the upcoming Paris show is an actual former brothel), but perfect for Berlin’s more industrial inclinations. She set out for the Sublime Society to move away from the male gaze of cabaret productions she’d worked on behind-the-scenes. “I was slightly horrified, I’m not gonna lie, when I started to work on the other side of things and I was in meetings, predominantly – as it would come to no surprise to anyone – with a lot of cis white men, who were just outright objectifying and discriminating against my fellow performer colleagues,” she tells me over the phone.
“It would tend to be, like, who do they fancy most that month, or who has the best set… There was a show I was in where one of the storylines was a character coming in and drugging all the girls and them all taking their clothes off. There was a common theme there, which seemed to be that these productions were being creatively directed by a very specific type of man. My response was to start something that was run and led by FLINTA [Femme, Lesbian, Intersex, Non-Binary, Trans and Asexual] creators.”
Charlie has co-created the London outing with burlesque artist and House of Fatale founder Missy Fatale, who is also the creative director of Wilderness Festival’s Queer arts and cabaret stage, the House of Sublime. In her ‘manifesto’, Missy describes Sublime Society London as an “exclusive hedonistic soirée, a sensual salon where fantasy and desire merge in an intimate, romantic setting.” She expands on this during our interview. “There’s loads of shows and lots of sex parties, but there’s nothing that’s totally femme-focused and a little bit more artistic. There’s no MC. So it’s not about giving applause. It’s more about the experience, and the audience absorbing it in a reflective way.”
Opening the event is Missy herself, who appears in cream lingerie and a feather-trimmed nightgown, with enormous ostrich strip tease fans. They tickle my shoulder as she dances past. The performers of the Sublime Society move through the audience, who lounge in expensive lingerie like cats on velvet cushions, or stand in heels and PVC boots to the sidelines. There is not a stage, but a small cleared patch of the venue housing a suspension frame for the shibari segment. I worry I won’t be able to see the “stage” from my seat, until my friend points out that you can watch over the crowd from the mirrored ceiling. This intimate, voyeuristic atmosphere is deliberate, according to the creators. “It’s more like you’re all allowed to watch, and it’s happening whether you’re there or not,” says Missy. “It doesn’t change the nature of what’s being viewed, but it’s a different, sensory experience for the audience.” Charlie calls it a “soft invitation” into the world of kink.
She is followed by a Queer fetish performance by Adreena Angela, a London dominatrix who on this night is dressed in a floor length burgundy latex gown. She guides the pin-up model Miriam Veil to the floor, where they start a lengthy, sapphic seduction routine to Ave Maria, which involves grapes. Miriam is an innocent doll, wrapping her arms around her white underwear, while Adreena is a vampish goddess, caressing her neck and unfurling her with a dangerous caress.
“Adreena and Miriam, you could just stick them in any old fetish club, and it would just be a fetish performance, but it’s about the context,” says Missy. “I think setting the scene for people to take from the art what they will is quite an important thing to do… the performers have to be completely comfortable in their own sensuality.”
If you’ve ever seen those vintage fetish postcards with Victorian women in black wigs, whale bone corsets and ankle cuffs, being bent over by other women, you can imagine the kind of aesthetic on display here. At one point a (male) sub is sat on and spanked with a bunch of roses (this is due to a femme dropout, but both creators say they don’t want any men in future performances). Leah Debrincat, a belly dancer wearing a gold rib cage bikini and chiffon skirt shakes out a fan of swords in one brisk movement, quietly sliding round the room like a dangerous reptile.
“The performers have to be completely comfortable in their own sensuality.”
Charlie champions the second half, with a lengthy and hypnotic shibari suspension show. She ties Miriam in layers of rope, lovingly, purposefully, and hooks her into the suspension frame, until both her legs dangle in the air. She weaves roses into the rope, petals dropping over her body.
“The ultimate goal is to demonstrate and encourage people to play more creatively,” says Charlie. “And break down the taboos and stigma a little bit around some things. Like Shibari, for instance – I take that and make it something very slow and sensual and romantic, beautiful… I want to introduce people to how I see it.”
Selling out from its first event, the Sublime Society is proof that for all the taboo breaking of the early 20s sex party boom, there is no replacing the exquisite beauty of tease. Sometimes sex should feel aspirational, fantastical, and inaccessible. You might secretly hope some of that art and sex rubs off on you as the performer’s feathers wick over your shoulder. Or you may just run to the nearest Agent Provocateur.
