Burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese achieves a greatness of her own

How a change in hair colour and name gave a Michigan girl and former go-go dancer the impetus to embark on a career in burlesque, bringing her glitz and glamour to stages as far afield as Paris, Hong Kong and Macau

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Dita Von Teese has five different giant martini and champagne glasses in which she performs her burlesque act.

Published: 1:39pm, 7 Feb 2017Updated: 1:41pm, 7 Feb 2017

As a young girl growing up in the US state of Michigan, Heather Sweet did not see herself as a burlesque dancer who would take off her clothes and bathe in a giant martini glass onstage. If anything, like many girls her age, she saw herself as a ballerina.

“You just never know, right?” says the woman better known today by her stage name, Dita Von Teese. “Some people become Olympians and some people achieve greatness at something, and then others don’t. I loved it, but my skill level was never up to par.

“It’s kind of a blessing in disguise. I got to use all my ballet training in a different way, and I got ultimately what I fantasised about, which was not dancing, but beautiful costumes and wearing tiaras and being backstage and having spotlights on me and overcoming my shyness.”

Von Teese, 44, is the “Meryl Streep of burlesque”, as Vanity Fair once put it, a dancer who va-va-vooms to elaborately arranged striptease music on stage while seductively removing her clothing, in the style of 20th-century heroines such as Gypsy Rose Lee and Lili St. Cyr. She has brought her burlesque act to both Hong Kong and Macau in the past few years.

Von Teese has worked as a stripper and a rave-party dancer, but identifies not so much with the titillation but the fashion and pageantry. Her book, 2015’s Your Beauty Mark: The Ultimate Guide to Eccentric Glamour, has a title printed in bright red lipstick, photos of Von Teese in backless dresses, a bit of biography and beauty tips such as taking care of your skin because “all the shimmering eye shadow and ruby lipstick in the world won’t make you dazzle if the complexion underneath it all is dull and damaged”.