Actor: Sidonia Von Bork

Mistress Sidonia is a Scorpio, living in the west of England in the UK. She was born and grew up in Greater London where she graduated from Art College in South London, specializing in photography.

She was drawn to sado-masochism and all things kinky at a very early age. It drew her immediately to the (then fledgling) fetish night-club scene. Back then it was much more of an underground and clandestine world, very different from today’s scene opened up by the internet. She describes her first club experience as “a dark room filled with a sea of black rubber and leather” where she immediately felt at home.

By the age of 21 she was actively involved in the founding and running of the infamous Club Whiplash at the Reflex in Putney. After two years she finally decided to leave the club as she wanted to travel.

By sheer coincidence her leaving party at the club was the night it was raided by about 80 police officers with riot gear and dogs. She reminisced that it was one of the funniest and surreal club evenings she ever experienced. The police broke down the door and charged in obviously expecting violence, drugs, drunkenness and a room full of difficult social deviants. They switched on the lights, only to discover that the majority of those attending were old enough to be their parents (some may well have been!) and included doctors, lawyers and other professionals, many literally enjoying a nice cup of tea. The subsequent court case actually set the precedent for fetish clubs to operate legally, as all the charges were later thrown out of court.

Mistress Sidonia then left the UK to travel in Europe and spent periods working in Amsterdam at Club Doma and in Antwerp at Candy’s Store. Here she says she learnt much about the heavy rubber scene, inflation, deflation and restricted breathing that is so popular on the continent.

Now in her mid-twenties she came back to London and opened “a house of fantasy & debauchery” with five other women in Streatham, London. The set-up was not that dissimilar from the movie ‘Personal Services’ and Cynthia Payne who inspired the movie, worked just around the corner from them.

Mistress Sidonia has had two works published, a book – ‘A Practical Guide to the Practice of CP’ and an erotic short story in a collection written especially for women. She was a regular contributor to the Fetish Times Magazine and has written many articles for a plethora of fetish related magazines.

She has received numerous alternative awards including – Best ProDom Sex Worker at The Sex Manics Ball’s Erotic Oscars and the 2003 Night of the Cane’s Caning Competition, in which she actually carried out the (very accurate) caning blindfolded!

She originally came out as a lesbian but has alternated with partners of both sexes saying now “the kinkiness of my partner is much more important than their gender”.

After Streatham she worked in a few different domination houses ending up in her own chambers in Shad Thames, Tower Bridge but explained that it was a bit like working in a chocolate factory. She had started working as a Mistress because it was something she loved and was drawn to, but the work was demanding and draining and she started to feel burnt out and disillusioned. One of the down sides to working in a commercial environment was that many of her personal fantasies were pushed into the background.

After a long break, a spell at college studying music theory (she plays the piano and xylophone) and another move across the Thames to Whapping, she did work again but now on a part-time basis, with new rules. She worked when she wanted to, with whom she wanted to and always on the understanding that clients were there for her pleasure and for her to do what she loved and enjoyed. Now in her 30s she says this was a golden period where she really came of age as a dominant woman discovering new heights, especially the psychological aspect of being Mistress. She believes this needs a certain amount of maturity, that only an older woman with more life experiences can possess. It takes years to have the practical knowledge, confidence, understanding of male sexuality and your own desires to be in total control of another person.

She has a life-long love of the arts: literature; music especially opera; drama and art. She is also a health and fitness enthusiast who loves walking, swimming, badminton, yoga and going to the gym. She is now back at college part-time studying Economics and Philosophy.

She still considers herself to be an artist. The movies she makes for The English Mansion are one aspect of this, but she also continues to make more personal and intense works in the form of short art-films. These are cathartic pieces which provide an outlet to explore the ‘darker side of her unconscious’. She also takes beautiful photographs that somehow look more like paintings or have an unreal quality about them. Her work is often based around sexual deviance, repressed female violence and explores a new extreme feminist perspective.

On asking what was her raison d’etre, she replied “I’m on a mission to corrupt the World – it’s a kind of kinky world-domination plan. I’m like a James Bond baddie sitting at my computer in my leather cat-suit with my cat Monty purring on my lap and my slave rubbing my feet”. Basically she feels passionately that adults, especially women should explore and enjoy their sexualities, whatever their interests, viewing it as a natural and positive aspect to their lives.