Roll up for the grand Spiegeltent in Canberra

You'll never rock up to an opulent gypsy tent, erected at the back of her 24-acre farm in The Hamptons. You'll never share a champagne with the Material Girl and settle in for a night of dark Eastern European folk music and dance, lit by a single chandelier and candles.

But you know what? Screw Madge.

Because a glamorous tent packed with cabaret, champagne, hand-made lingerie and sexy bodies is being erected in Civic Square next week - and the whole of Canberra's invited. A brand new Spiegeltent and its all-singing, all-dancing crew is on its way to the capital and this time it features a show directed by the very same man who delivered Madonna's 58th birthday party event in The Hamptons, as outlined above.

Scott Maidment, founding director of Strut & Fret production house, is the visionary behind new Spiegeltent show Blanc de Blanc, the trailer for which feels like the models from Madonna's iconic Sex book stepped off the pages and walked into a Gatsby party.

Maidment has worked on and off with Madonna for the past couple of years; he was part of the creative team for her Rebel Heart world tour and, of course, was asked to deliver her a decadent party at home in upstate New York.

It feels "funny" to have a fan in the pop queen, Maidment says.

"Someone rang [the Strut & Fret office] and said, 'Oh, Guy Oseary is looking to have a conversation with you'," he recalls.

"And I was like, 'I have no idea who that is.'

"So I Googled him and lo and behold he's the manager of U2, he's the manager of Ashton Kutcher, Lucy Liu, he's Madonna's manager. He's the producer of the Twilight series.

"So then I'm like, 'Okay, yeah, I'm probably free to have that conversation'.

"Since then I think Madonna's come to see about all of my shows, so it's great."

The long list of cabaret, burlesque and variety shows produced by Strut & Fret in its 18-year history reads like a list of forbidden appetisers.

Feasting on Flesh, The Candy Butchers and The Dream Menagerie are productions of the past, while on the current menu is Strange Fruit, Le Gateau Chocolat and The Lovebirds. The company not only produces its own shows, but designs and directs entire festival precincts - Adelaide's Garden of Unearthly Delights is just one - and has a range of brightly-lit vintage tents for event hire.

The company's mission is "artistic experiences that are breathtaking, heart-gripping, unforgettable and entertaining" according to Maidment. And that starts with involving the entire cast at the beginning of every new show, and allowing them to help design the new world they'll bring to life inside a tent.

"A lot of the time I'm either starting with a mood board, or a whole range of music that has a tone or has a feel," Maidment says.

"Someone once said to me, 'The key to being a good director is to have good performers'.

"Which is so true of Blanc de Blanc - there's performers from New York and from LA and from Paris and Vegas. There's a couple of Australians and a performer from Japan.

"I've chosen a really diverse and interesting cast, and it's like ingredients in a cake.

"I've got some really great ingredients, I'm mixing them up and cooking it and just hoping the result is incredible."

If the performers are the cake, then for Blanc de Blanc, the audience is the icing.

Don't expect to sit in a formal theatre and look at the backs of heads and quiet actors on stage, Blanc de Blanc is immersive cabaret and Maidment expects a lot from the people who walk in the front flaps of the tent.

"In Spiegeltent it's in the round, so already it's a different kind of performance environment," he says.

"The audience then becomes as much a part of the show as the performers are, because you can see a performer on stage but you can also see an audience member behind them laughing or having a good time, and they can see you laughing and it brings this great energy within the tent.

"All you need to do is be open, and in Canberra, what you can do is you leave your troubles at the door and enter the Spiegeltent and you're in a different world.

"It's the world of Blanc de Blanc, which starts off smooth and sophisticated and by the end is a crazy debaucherous party. "

Maidment was "always a creative kid", he says, but finds it hard to list true influencers: "I'm more a sponge".

He lists David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet and La La Land as his all-time favourite movies and is humble about his role in innovating traditional performance genres like burlesque and cabaret at a global level.

"I think as long as you're not confined by thinking of yourself as doing a genre," he says.

"In Blanc de Blanc we have crazy comedy but we have super cool dance numbers.

"It's almost like a video clip at some points. And then we have high-flying circus stunts. So what you get is, I'm not trying to make a circus show or I'm not making a cabaret show or I'm not making a burlesque show, I'm just making a show.

"And I'm using all these different elements to give the audience the most unique experience possible."

For Perth's Jessica Mews, whose hula-hooping record includes swinging 130 hoops on her body at once, performing in Blanc de Blanc is just plain hard.

Not because of the elaborate circus tricks she performs but because she has to play "a real bitch".

"I'm quite the enigmatic personality on stage," Mews says.

"And there's no nice way to say it, I'm really a cold-hearted bitch.

"I'm Romeo [the ringmaster's] assistant in the show, and it's nuts. You don't want to be that person in real life, so forcing it out of you is a challenge."

Mews started performing circus at age five in Fremantle at the WA Circus School.

By age 16, her mum could tell "this wasn't just a phase" and that her daughter well and truly wanted to run away and join the circus.

Mews starting performing professionally in The Fruitfly Circus at age 18, specialising in hula hoops, aerial loop and bottle walking before a short stint with Circus Oz.

She joined Strut and Fret a year ago and is addicted to Maidment's signature style.

"By the end of the show the audience is hyped up, there's bubbles and champagne flowing freely, and it's just a party," she said.

"I feel like the luckiest girl in the world."