Queer performance has long been associated with gay men. The cultural dominance of shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race and movies like Brokeback Mountain and The Rocky Horror Picture Show demonstrates how men have historically dominated LGBTQ+ pop culture and our understanding of queer performance.

While drag king and burlesque performances by women have long existed in queer culture, they have seen little of the spotlight.

21-year-old dancer Anja Morrison is the creator, director and head choreographer behind one of Melbourne’s newest queer events, Lestopia. The sapphic dance show, inspired by Magic Mike, has hit the ground running.

Lestopia reimagines Magic Mike for a queer audience by trading the traditionally male cast for a rotating troupe of sapphic performers. The show debuted in August, and though it was originally intended to be a one-off event, Lestopia added two extra dates in October, with the final show of the year falling on 30 October, just in time for Halloween.

“Once we started working on it and started selling tickets and marketing, I knew that it would become more than one night,” Morrison tells upstart.

The performance sees both “fem” and “masc”— cultural terms used by the LGBTQ+ community to describe gender expressions— performers take centre stage. Favouring heels and commercial dance styles, Morrison leads the choreography and creates the fem dances. While Jordan, a 22-year-old hip hop and street style dancer, is responsible for the masc elements as assistant choreographer.

“It just naturally merges when we choreograph together,” Morrison says. “It just flows so well.”

Morrison had some amusing, stereotypical moments when sourcing dancers. Many came from dating apps, whether through prompts she had on her profile or past matches who followed her on social media.

“That’s the queer way,” she says with a laugh.

Pema, a 21-year-old heels and pole dancer, joined the Lestopia troupe after matching with Morrison on Tinder and describes the show as a fun “celebration of queer love and friendship”.

Morrison attributes some of the show’s success to a “gap in the market” for young sapphic events.

“There are so many drag performances that are targeted towards queer people, but especially gay men, and we love drag performers, but where is the more female representative of that, [for] the female queer community?” she asks.

Almost thirteen years ago, Melburnians Meaghan Palmer and Tali Polichtuk founded Thursgay, an event that some say is now essential to the young queer coming of age in Melbourne. The inclusive queer party runs weekly out of

Nights like Thursgay, which feature diverse performances, are popular amongst Melbourne’s young queer community, but safe spaces like these are limited. Especially for sapphics.

Although she believes it’s slowly changing, Palmer tells upstart that at Thursgay’s beginnings, events for gay men dominated the scene. Meanwhile, inclusive queer parties and women and non-binary hosted events were limited to occurring monthly. These events offered an alternative to the male-dominated crowds of the time, but they were few and far between.

“Back then, when we started, a lot of venues weren’t very keen to give queer parties a Friday or a Saturday because they already make money on those nights,” she says.

Now, over 10 years later, Fridays and Saturdays are still the prime money-making nights for many venues. So, for new events like Lestopia, weekdays and Sundays are often the only option. However, on the corner of Smith Street and Gertrude Street in Fitzroy, with Thursgay running till late, New Guernica offering student discounts just across the road, a karaoke bar nearby, access to public transport, and a kebab shop all in the same area, Thursday nights now draw a large young crowd, so Morrison was excited for the possibility of hosting Lestopia on what has become one of Melbourne’s quintessential queer nights.

Ashlee Hickman was in the audience at the show’s debut and joined the cast as a masc dancer for the second night.

“On the Thursday night, it [was] a younger crowd, a lot of queer people, also a lot of allies, just people that want to celebrate dance, and watch performers from a Melbourne local-based group,” Hickman tells upstart.

Charlotte, an audience member at Lestopia’s second night, wants more queer events catered to those in their early twenties and late teens in Melbourne.

“I feel like there’s a lot of sapphic events catered towards older audiences,” Charlotte tells upstart.

Palmer says that in recent years, Thursgay has attracted a younger crowd. She recognised that the scene can be intimidating for first-time club goers.

“Sometimes it can be a little scary to go into a big nightclub when you first start nightclubbing or going out, you go into this really sort of older space,” Palmer says.

“We like the idea of creating a safe space for people, young queer people, when they first start going out. And something that’s very fun and light-hearted and doesn’t feel intimidating.”

Since COVID, Thursgay has welcomed performances to their weekly lineup, featuring drag, burlesque, and circus acts. Palmer says they try to create a platform for women and non-binary performers, DJs, and hosts to gain experience and step into the events world.

“[T]o have the diversity of performance is really important to us, but also to provide stages for people that aren’t normally perhaps welcomed into your traditional gay bars to perform,” she says.

“It has been very much dominated in the past by cis male drag queens.”

Two years ago, Palmer and Polichtuk began hosting the Thursgay Pride Pageant, an event that aims to platform new performers across a few weeks each year. Participants are paid for their acts, and the winner receives a cash prize.

Palmer says the inclusion of women and non-binary performers has “started to change a lot across the board”.

However, with most opportunities requiring experience, breaking into the events scene is difficult. For women and non-binary individuals, who already face extra barriers, this is exacerbated.

Mia, a two-time Lestopia attendee, noted the importance of queer events “for queer people to be seen and have a community”.

With 42 percent of LGBTQ+ individuals in Australia choosing to hide their sexuality or gender identity at social and community events, safe spaces for queer people to exist proudly are profoundly important.

“I’ve seen so many queer women in the space,” Jordan says. “I feel like we see a lot of events for gay men, but we don’t see that for sapphics, so having seen so many sapphics show up and be so excited.”

Article: Angelina Giannis is a second-year Bachelor of Media and Communications (Journalism/Politics) student at La Trobe University. You can follow her on X at @AngelinaGiannis.

Cover photo: Two dancers at Lestopia’s debut show by Jamie Whytcross.