GLOBAL SMASH CLUB - Cabaret Review

WHAT: Global Smash Club
WHEN: 16 - 19 October 2024
WHERE: Trades Hall (ETU Ballroom)
CREATED & DIRECTED BY: Moira Finucane and Jackie Smith
PERFORMED BY: Mama Alto, Glynnis Briggs, Maude Davey, Zitao Deng, Moira Finucane, Imogen Kelly, Ian Muir, Yumi Umiumare, Xiao Xiao

Moira Finucane - photo by Max Roux

Legend has it that the Finucane & Smith cabaret powerhouse began 20 years ago with the internationally phenomenal The Burlesque Hour. Their retrospective celebration, Global Smash Club, being performed as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, celebrates that tradition and those performances and performers who have helped to create the iconic performance history which makes up much of the modern Finucane & Smith suite of delectations.

In truth, the ideas which sit behind these cabaret iterations of Finucane & Smith date as far back as the early 20th Century and Weimar Germany. I read in an article that Moira Finucane become fascinated with this particular slice of human history and appears to have dedicated most of her performance career reminding us all of the great decadence, freedom, and rebellion that period fostered, and which are still leaking into the parched and starched world of today.

I say leaking because this speaks directly to the iconic selections for this retrospective. There is too much content, too many acts, too many collaborators for Global Smash Club to ever really do the Finucane & Smith legacy justice. Luckily, it is their wont to switch in performers across their seasons so whilst I will speak of what I saw on opening, each performance is likely to differ in detail and content depending on who has been programmed. It is like the lucky dip of the cabaret world.

Words which are thrown around in reviews of Finucane & Smith seasons are often the same. The works sit in questions of gender, power, violence and utter decadence. We have all come to think of decadence as supreme indulgence...and it is that. But more accurately, the world means to decline and fade which is the dark side of that coin which Finucane & Smith's Kabarett work kneads out. They constantly play with that thin wedge between elegant beauty and the fragmented grotesque. Interestingly though, the performances rarely judge, they merely expose. You could say they are both celebrated. After all, Finucane & Smith are all about love and acceptance. They only judge the judges.

For example, Yumi Umiamare reprises her Geisha all tightly wrapped and concealed in a glorious kimono, hidden from sight whilst standing high in the centre of the room. Slowly she is revealed, and chopsticks look to gouge out her eyes before landing safely in her perfectly coiffed top knot. These trappings of traditional feminine beauty peel away to reveal the warrior woman smothered underneath, a gloriously tattooed body replacing the delicate embroidery of the kimono.

Maude Davey's work follows similar patterns with a different aesthetic. In a skintight red leather cat suit, this tall, sexy, lithe woman belts out that 60s classic 'Let Me In' with a gritty mezzo edge. Suddenly the lyrics don't seem quite so sweet and cute anymore... Revisiting another of her classic acts, Davey comes out decked in cabaret feathers and booby tassles before ripping out that classic Australian hymn 'Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again' with all of that rock edge of the original Angels. It was delightful seeing the shock and delight on the Gen Z faces as us older folk spontaneously did that classic retort. Once they worked it out the whole room was in on the act. It was sublime.

Remember I was talking about leaking earlier? It was deliberate because Finucane brings back two of her truly classic characters which date all the way back to The Saucy Cantina - Sauce Girl and Dairy Maid. Both characters are still as iconic as ever and remind us that life and love and lust are messy and cannot be confined or controlled when set free. Another character who I love is the drag king character which harks back to Gotharama I believe. 

Piera Dennerstein opened the show with an operatic blitz from the recent iteration of The Exotic Lives of Lola Montez. In a work of truly sublime proportions, Dennerstein's soprano soars into the heavens. What was the crescendo of the previous show is just a launch point for the glories of Global Smash Club.

Imogen Kelly joined the ensemble on opening night providing comic relief with her Burlesque Hall of Fame costume billowing into a glorious collection of shapes and shimmering colours as the light played over the surfaces. For those of you who don't know, Kelly is the only Australian to have been crowned World Queen of Burlesque. It is also true that when this was happening, she was undergoing surgery for breast cancer. In her follow up Princess performance, in the same traditions as Finucane, Davey, and Umiumare, the princess is torn away piece by piece, to reveal a rock goddess, the final booby tassles removed to reveal breasts ripped open and rebuilt to save a beautiful life still performing glorious art.

Across the evening Zitao Deng brought us another original song. You will remember her from House of the Heart. Also from that show, we got a very special one-off performance by Yorta Yorta Taungurung Wiradjuri elder multi-faceted artist Glynnis Briggs and country star Ian Muir. Xiao Xiao was also with us, accompanying the performers on her soulful cello. Mama Alto was there as well (of course!) with a sob inducing version of 'First Time Ever I Saw Your Face'.

I am not going to lie though. I think my favourite moment of Global Smash Club was Finucane, Davey, and Umiumare gadding about as little snow angel Harajuku Girls before Umiumare slides into her nightmare Hello Kitty routine. I was afraid to go home to my own cat after that! 

Global Smash Club is a show not to be missed. It is a greatest hits selection which still knocks our socks off. My one criticism is I don't think the song they chose to end the night with was the right tone or pace. The singing was glorious, but it was a slow song perfect for clutching your amore close and just swaying together in intimacy, but it did not reflect the energy of the performances which preceded it and did not give off an energy which made us want to leap back into the world and teach them what we had just been reminded of. Luckily, that was just a small moment and so much energy had been sent and shared and absorbed I can't imagine anybody leaving Global Smash Club without feeling renewed and truly alive again.

4.5 Stars

CONDUIT BODIES - Dance Review

WHAT: Conduit Bodies
WHEN: 9-13 October 
WHERE: Arts House (Main Hall)
CREATED AND PERFORMED BY: Melinda Smith & Alon Ilsar
SET BY: Jessamine Moffett
COSTUMES BY: Anna Cordingly
INTERACTIVE MEDIA ART BY: Sam Trolland
LIGHTING BY: Bronwyn Pringle

Melinda Smith - photo by Nicole Tsourlenes

One of the things I truly love about contemporary Australian dance is how it focuses on the exploration of how the body moves and works and struggles and fails and succeeds. Apart from making it endlessly intriguing to watch because of the unpredictability, it also opens the artform up to being a place for every body which means it is allowed to be a very real exemplar of the social model of disability. Perhaps nothing demonstrates this with more clarity than Conduit Bodies currently being presented at Arts House as part of Alter State and Melbourne Fringe Festival.

Lead artist Melinda Smith has teamed up with inventor Alon Ilsar to create a truly unique performance which opens art conception and realisation far beyond the teeny tiny bounds in which is has been confined in the able-bodied communities to date. I am calling this a dance review, but apart from the dance/movement component of the work, in Conduit Bodies Smith uses Ilsar's amazing Airsticks to perform as a duet with Ilsar (who is also a percussionist), and to create amazing live digital art.

Smith has Cerebral Palsy, so it is fair to say that portions of Conduit Bodies works within the paradigm of slow dramaturgies. Having said that, Smith's natural movement style mirrors Ilsar's percussive suite, and just as percussion can draw a long steady beat but also bring a fire storm of energy, so can Smith as she navigates an arena both in and out of her chairs.

Whilst Conduit Bodies is non-narrative, it is fair to say Smith has worked with dramaturg Zoe Boesen to create a linear arc which sweeps across the arc of struggling with the body to being at peace with the body, of struggling with existing technologies and being set free by new and future technologies, of isolation and of collaboration. And amongst all of these high concepts, the shot is scattered with humour and beauty.

Smith has been an early adopter of Ilsar's Airsticks and, watching Conduit Bodies, I admit I am dying to try this new technology. The show begins with Smith rolling up to a drum kit but if she can't even scratch her back with the mallet, obviously a traditional percussive drumbeat is not likely. She then makes her way to a typewriter. Looking at it, she feels around and finds what looks like a big paint brush and waves it around a bit. Words start appearing on the screen, cascading in meaning and repetition until we read the frustration when the wrong keys are hit. Ah yes, we've all done that but imagine how often that happens to people with less physical control? This wand is helping Smith tell her story with the words she struggles to type.

Smith leave the typewriter, and new magic happens as the words turn into images. They looked like very complex snakes being drawn on the screen. It took me a while to realise that these were embedded images which draw across the screen as Smith moved the brush (and later just her body) creating textured and dynamic moving art experiences. 

Up to that point Conduit Bodies is what you might expect, but once Smith leaves her chair and plays in a big projected 'sandpit', her body and the art becoming one in a surreal fugue things get truly exciting. I found myself thinking this art being created in front of my eyes should be preserved and sold as NFTs! 

A pause, another wheelchair rolls out and Smith dances a duet before remounting and then something special happens. Ilsar, who has been performing a muted score to Smith's adventures steps forward with his own Airstick and suddenly Smith's body is not a digital paint brush - it is a digital instrument! Together they perform duelling Airsticks - a sound and movement composition. (Airsticks can be most easily thought of as a digital iteration of a theremin perhaps...).

More happens, but the outcomes are the most exciting thing about Conduit Bodies. Across these lively artistic adventures - very picaresque in nature - Smith becomes at peace with her body and the world, which is opened up for her with creations such as wheelchairs and Airsticks. Assistive technology is a developing arena, but Conduit Bodies demonstrates just how much fulfilment and engagement they bring to people who have been historically shut out of life. Oh, and it is just fantastic performance too! 

4 Stars