Review: Colour-Fool

Colour-Fool
ButohOut! 2021 New Ab/Normal
28 March 2021
Dancehouse
to 28 March
www.dancehouse.com.au

ButohOut! 2021 New Ab/Normal

My review is on artshub.com..au

Review: Glory Box 10th Anniversary

Glory Box
Finucane & Smith
16 August 2014
Melba Spiegeltent, Circus Oz
to 24 August
Facebook event

Ten years ago I saw The Burlesque Hour in the Famous Spiegeltent on St Kilda Road. Moira Finucane, Azaria Universe and Umi Umiumare (and the Town Bikes); I was blown away and I still haven't seen anything like it. Many try, and are bloody wonderful, but they don't find that bit of me that says 'thank you'.


Finucane and Smith's Glory Box, as it was renamed, has toured the world but never misses a home season. This year, it opens the super-gorgeous Melba Spiegeltent in Circus Oz's new home in Collingwood – and it feels like it's come home.

Burlesque and strip. There's always been some female-positive acts, but mostly these performances were (and still are) created to be seen by male eyes and leave the performing woman in the position of an object to be enjoyed by the watcher. Like so many of us, Jackie Smith and Moira Finucane see women through better eyes, so they devised work that that doesn't just subvert that image, but smashes it to pieces and recreates it as something exciting, welcoming and celebratory.


This is burlesque that artists love performing and are doing so to share the experience with their audience.


This is strip that embodies feminism without the need to repress those parts of the feminine that can be ignored, rejected, criticised or fetishised.

This is feminist art that embraces the diversity of the sexual feminine, be she masculine, frilly, wild, angry, sassy, despairing, bejewelled, saucy, sad, prudish, glittery or quiet.

This is art where power and desire have no hint of negativity.

These are people who see nudity without shame or irony.

These are audiences who welcome bodies of all shapes and ages.

Here is subversive, queer, feminist art that didn't give a hoot if you're straight, conservative or "I'm-not-a-feminist-but".

And it's hilarious, sexy and outrageously glorious.

So, thank you!

Over the years, Moira and Jackie have welcomed some of the most amazing guest artists and helped many others to find their voices and their passion. Some are special guests during the season, which makes it hard to choose just one night to go!


Our guests were the magnificent Maude Davey, amazing flyer Roxie Stone, and the seriously sensational Emma J Hawkins whose broken doll strip sums up everything the Glory Box is about.

And every night there's Moira, Yumi, Azaria, Holly Durant and, new to the box, the magnificent songstress and siren Saint Clare.

It's a best of show, so expect favourites including Moira's "I Touch Myself" and Azaria's "Total Eclipse of the Heart": two pieces that they have to keep doing for as long as they can stand.

If somehow over the last ten years you haven't seen this show, there's no more excuses. The sparkling wine at the bar is excellent, it's not that hard to park, it's near tram stops and I promise that you'll leave happy and proud of being exactly who you are.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Glory Box Paradise

Glory Box Paradise
Finucane and Smith
13 July 2013
fortyfivedownstairs
to 11 August
fortyfivedownstairs

"Art is fueled by passion, liquor and unrealistic expectations." Welcome to Glory Box Paradise and the ninth year of Moira Finucane and Jackie Smith's subversive and celebratory burlesque where the passion is as potent as any cocktail and unrealistic expectations are turned into exquisite beauty.

Is there anything left to be said about Finucane and Smith's Burlesque Hour shows? I've run out of passionate adjectives to shout about how damn amazing this work continues to be.

Nine years ago, the first Burlesque Hour performed to an in-the-know audience at fortyfivedownstairs and later in the Speigeltent. I'd heard about it and bought a ticket for the tent. Here was something we hadn't seen before and so wanted to see so much more of.

Over 125,000 people have seen versions of The Burlesque Hour – that's more than a full MCG. Artists have come and gone and come back, it's had 50 sell-out seasons all over the world, won awards and collected multi-wordgasm reviews from critics who only disagree about the the degree of superlative.

There's a lot of burlesque in theatres and clubs, but no one is doing anything like this. So what makes this burlesque so different?

Rarely do naked women on display make other women feel good about themselves. Whether it's designed to attract a straight male gaze (that really doesn't attract all straight men) or simply because it's rare for women to publicly de-robe unless they fit an image that was created by applying good lighting, a flattering position and Photoshop.

In her current show, My Life in the Nude at La Mama (finishing this weekend), Maude Davey, who has appeared in many Burlesque Hour shows, talks about her realisation that burlesque is about declaring that you are beautiful are worthy of the audience's gaze.

"I am beautiful and worthy of your gaze" is a magnificent beginning for the many women (and men) doing weekend burlesque classes and sewing sequins on undies for their graduation show, but Glory Box Paradise leaps beyond this premise.

On a Finucane and Smith stage, nakedness has nothing to do with a boring flash of boob. With bodies that don't conform to young, spray-tanned, waxed, enhanced and starved images of female naked perfection, there's never doubt that the women performing know their own beauty – and they don't give a hoot if anyone thinks differently.

There are well over 20, 30 and 40. They have body fat and muscle and scars and marks that declare their bodies as so much more than something to gaze upon. (Moira even refuses to uses a hair straightener and goes frizzy!) And they perform work that's as sexy and powerful as it gets.

These are women who are sexual but are never sexualised. Women whose sexual power has nothing to do with control. Women whose sex lives are shameless. Women who don't support any image or idea that going to repress, disapprove or hurt.  And this may be why every act is greeted with cheers.

The gaze of anyone is welcome, but this is performance that's not about earning the approval of the watcher, but about celebrating the performer and her view of the world. A view that's positive instead of critical and one that joyfully leans to the queer side of the spectrum while welcoming anyone who sits anywhere else.

And if you think you've seen it all before, this year is mostly new material, with a couple of old favourites.

Yumi Umiumare is back with genre re-defining punk Butoh, and dancer Holly Durant joined by new performer Lily Paskas. Melbourne favourite Jess Love (The Candy Butchers) is living in London these days, but is back home with some amazing and hilariously off-centre hoop and skipping routines. She also comes with Ursula Martinez. Ursula continues to treat with her disappearing red hanky and her sex change quick change number with Jess is pure joy (with a hint of raunchy goodness).

New to the Box is Sarah Ward and her alter ego Yana Alana. Yana's naked blue real-women-look-like-this gorgeousness thrilled audiences last week in her own show Between the Cracks, but Yana's lets Sarah out to play. In a mesmerising hologram silver corset, her duet of "Candy" with Moira's drag king is a highlight. The only one who nearly overshadows Sarah is Yana, whose cat-suited song about cats has left me singing "pussy wussy wussy" to my cat.

And there's Moira. There's no one like her. As an artist she creates work that is so from her heart and self that no one will ever be able to recreate it. It's gutsy and lusty and masculine and feminine and  refuses to be anything that isn't Moira Finucane.

Photos by Carla Gottgens.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

What Melbourne loved in 2012, part 9

Today it's Jackie Smith, Anniene Stockton and Jason Cavanagh.

Jackie Smith

co-artistic director of Finucane & Smith, playwright

JACKIE: My favourite theatre experience this year has to be Yumi Umiumare and Theatre Gumbo's DasSHOKU Shake at fortfivedownstairs.

It was wild and funny, sometimes deeply chilling, scary, touching, and completely bonkers. It was one of those fantastic theatre shows that happen with the confluence of hard work, passion and dedication, and will never happen in that same way again. Not to say the show won’t go on and have a life, but it will never be that season again. It had an impossibly large cast, and an explosive set, and a galaxy of hand made and found props to rival a Snuff Puppet Garage sale. And it had Yumi Umiumare. Her performance and genius left me stunned. Always does. And we are very lucky to have her in Melbourne.

SM: It's no secret that I adore everything Jackie has a hand in creating, but 2012 was the year that I missed most her stuff. I was crook for this year's The Burlesque Hour and was so incompetent at reading a phone map that I missed most of the return season of her play The Flood. Acts 2 and 3 were still bloody good (but not the same as the cramped intimacy of the La Mama season), but the best bit was the post-show conversations with Jackie, Moira and co.

22/12. Opps. I DID see The Burlesque Hour. Just found my notes.  I went on the last night. I loved it, but I was sick and my brain had forgotten. It's come flooding back now. 

Anniene Stockton
producer, performer, arts addict

ANNIENE: Last week I went to the HotHouse Theatre season launch in Wodonga. I took my cousin, Tennile, as  she lives in the area and is fabulous company.

When we arrived, Tennile said that she had never been inside the HotHouse before and couldn't explain more than, "Just hadn't gotten around to it".

As we enjoyed the food and drinks before the official proceedings, she was asking loads of questions about the company and what happens there, so by the time we hit the "official" bit she was keen to hear what the Artistic Director had to say.

He started with the good news that Arts NSW had returned its funding and that Hothouse could continue its work. This was greeted with cheers and woops. He went on to share the dire stats around the steep decline of regional companies presenting Australian work. They are an endangered species.

Next came the season info and my cousin sat silently.  I wasn't sure if she was listening or bored out of her gord.  Had I done the right thing dragging her along? She might never wast to hang out with me again...

I gave a gleeful yelp when I saw that the season includes a work by the overly talented wordsmith Van Badham. Tennile smiled, leaned over and asked “do you know him?” I whispered back. “Her. Know her. Van is short for Vanessa and yes. Dear friend, exceedingly talented. Makes me the best cups of tea.”

At least she was listening. But, once the last work is announced, she turned to be and said, “Well I'm going to buy a subscription.”

It's very nice to introduce someone else to your passion and be there at that very moment when they become passionate too.

SM: I was also crook for Anniene's only performance this year (it hasn't been my best year), but Club Tristen will be back in 2013 and I will be there. As for a favourite moment with Anniene, well that's  too difficult, so I'm setting for every time she laughs louder than anyone else in the theatre.

Jason Cavanagh
actor, The Owl, co-founder of 5Pound Theatre

JASON: It was week two of the 5pounds of Repertory season.  I was walking out of the theatre, after having choreographed one of the musical numbers for Sally: A Musical, which I had only learnt to sing that morning. Leaving the theatre, I had to step over the little army of set makers, sourced from the Celeste’s first year Monash students, cutting and creating our cardboard sets and props.

Up the stairs I went to cook something quick, easy and healthy so we had time to get ready for the performance of Pygmalion that night. Whilst I cooked, I had the sheet music on the bench and was going over my melodies. As Dave (music director) passed, packing his gear away in the dressing room, he joined in for a second and then stopped in to help me with a specific bit I was having trouble with. He then left the room saying I shouldn’t do too much on it until he has sent me the mp3 of him singing it, so I don’t get into any bad habits.

So I continued to sing the bits I was slightly more confident in. I used the song to jokingly serenade Celeste as she passed the kitchen and she started singing it to herself, changing the lyrics slightly.

Then Sebastian bounded up the stairs asking if he could use my computer to email the script to someone or other for a reason that is still unclear to me. I said ‘fine’ and pointed him towards my room.

A short while later, as I had gone through the song a little more and the soup was on the boil, I went to my room to find Seb on my computer and Susannah sitting on my bed singing to herself. I flopped onto the mattress next to her and lay for a second.  I could vaguely hear Freya and Tom singing in the theatre downstairs.

In this moment those last five minutes came flooding through my mind – of course, what I haven’t been able to capture is the details, the multitudes of little things that was adding to the chaos of that five-minute period, the ambient noises, the other people in the building and beyond – and I thought, "If it could only always be like this".

SM: Finally getting to The Owl and the Pussycat space (founded and managed by Jason) was a highlight in itself. Once a single-front cottage in once working-class Richmond, it's now an intimate theatre with a super-gorgeous bar that's established itself as an independent theatre venue that assures something worth seeing. And it's so easy to get to. Get a train to Richmond, walk out of the Swan St exit and cross the road.

As this is a day of missing shows, I missed two of the five 5Pounds of Repertory shows, but three was  enough to see the impact this process had on the creators involved and I so hope Jason and 5Pounds do it again.

part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

part 5

part 6

part 7

part 8

part 10
part 11

Review: Salon De Dance...Deluge

Salon De Dance...Deluge
Finucane and Smith
5 March 2010
La Mama

Bienvenue à la deuxième Salon De Dance, avec beaucoup de merde franglais et la gall to call itself Deluge.

The independent theatre world takes its art very seriously, but Finucane and Smith’s salone is about having fun, some Absinthe and a dance with a good looking stranger in the brand spanking new La Mama courtyard.

In its second year, Salone de Dance...Deluge lets some of our favourite performers show us the stuff that doesn’t always fit into shows. Sometimes it’s very funny, sometimes very personal, sometimes a bit odd and even a bit indulgent – but the combination is brilliant and seedy and sexy and I hope the La Salone returns to La Mama regularly.

This year Azaria Universe writhes with razor blades; Jess Love makes martinis; Paul Cordeiro gets out his Michael Jackson wig; Brian Lucas let me dance with him and showed us his own special ‘Something’ ; and Rob McCredie, Harriet Ritchie and Holly Durant are back.

Special guest Christopher Green from the UK (who I’ve only just recognised as the fabulously wonderful Tina C) brings a new level of wow to Yumi Umiumare’s always extraordinary butoh by singing as she dances, and later proves that you don’t need tits to be Molly Blume.

Moira Finucane recovers from The Feast of Argentina Gina Catalina (there is no question about it – see both shows), puts on the hard rock, the white uniform and brings out a meat pie and sauce. Everyone who has seen her over the years knows what happens when Moira has food on stage, but she still gives us something unexpected.

And, of course, it’s hosted by Maude Davey. On Friday night she mocked the passing shower as she introduced the la Deluge and appreciated the irony when she sang “I can’t stand the rain”. After Saturday, I have to wonder if we offended someone or something very powerful. (For anyone not in Melbourne, on Saturday the rain fell on our city in a way we had never seen.)

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Salon de Dance 2009

En Trance

En Trance
Yumi Umiumare
Malthouse Theatre
27 August 2009
Tower Theatre, CUB Malthouse

En Trance is a gut-felt provocation of passion and emotion that re-defines our understanding of Butoh. If you’re already amazed by Yumi Umiumare’s extraordinary burlesque cabaret, her first solo show cannot be missed.

As words are almost redundant in a Butoh performance, it’s difficult to find enough of them to capture the experience. Perhaps it’s best not to try and understand, because it’s not about conscious thoughts and intellect. Leave logic at the door and just watch, listen and experience it with your instinct and those parts of you that make you feel without understanding why. The performers know what they have created; the audience are there to feel the results.

En Trance is a Butoh-inspired solo work where Umiumare’s extreme and controlled physicality flows from sublime to grotesque and from human to alien, as she takes us from the perceived chaos of a Tokyo street to the apparent serenity of an Australian river, and leaves us caught between unexplained joy and hints of despair.

Now established as a contemporary art form, Butoh developed in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s as a rejection of western ballet traditions and a subversion of traditional Japanese performance. My only experience of a Butoh class was in the 1980s where Nigel Kellaway made us stomp (‘toh’ means stomp in Japanese) for hours and reduce a Greek tragedy scene into a moment to repeat and re-create. Butoh doesn’t remove unnecessary expression, rather it takes the whole and distils it into something so pure and potent that it would be unpalatable if swallowed in one gulp. I was crap at it, but left beginning to understand how a performer’s physical connection to a space, a text and an experience can create that unexplainable visceral reaction for their audience.

Umiumare’s performance is physically and emotionally astonishing, and enhanced by a team of co-creators (Bambang Nurcahyadi – digital painting, Naomo Ota – design, Ian Kitney – sound , David Anderson – costume, Kerry Ireland – lighting and Moira Finucane – dramaturgy) whose individual perfection never distracts.

The only distracting element is sight line problems, so make sure you get in early and sit in the middle section.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Photo by Jeff Busby.

Burlesque Hour Legends

Burlesque Hour Legends
Finucane and Smith
25 June 2009
forty five downstairs

I’m searching for a superlative that hasn’t been used to describe The Burlesque Hour. Reviewers from all over the world rave every time this show appears. Created in Melbourne, it’s back home as The Burlesque Hour Legends and I’m trawling my thesaurus for any word that comes near to grasping the wildness, the sassiness, the spectacle, the irony and the understanding behind the show that continues to leave my brain wet and wanting more.

The term burlesque is readily applied to anything that shows a bit of nude and, too often, this results in moments that leave some of the audience feeling uncomfortable, inadequate or just sad that women continue to let themselves be seen as something less than a whole person. It’s not easy to take the exploitation and the wank factor away from strip.

This is where director Jackie Smith and performer Moira Finucane stepped in and, with other like-minded performers, perfected a style that has re-defined burlesque as political, inspirational and liberating. Strip is, of course, about exposure, but the exposure of bodies doesn’t compare to the exposure of secrets, of longings and of the unexpected. It’s still also totally hot and squeal-out-loud hilarious.

Don’t give it a miss this year because you’ve seen this show before. Legends is mostly new material and has an overall more rounded and complete feel about it. The regular performers explore some of their favourite themes from new perspectives and new guests try out their ideas. This does mean that some of the most loved moments are missing, but the new compensates for the loss of the old.

Yumi Umiumare’s new pieces are extraordinary. With characters including a lost and manic Tokyo pop singer and an office worker (or an executive) trapped in a suit of regret and longing, her Butoh inspired choreography is unsettling in its ability to grasp the essence of a character and expand it to a point that it’s almost overwhelming. I’m looking forward to her solo show at Malthouse in August.

Maude Davey changes the pace with dancing words, discussing her grandmother’s cunt, and her faded showgirl’s “Say Goodbye” must be what Mark Seymour’s unconscious was thinking when he wrote the urban anthem.

Then there’s Moira Finucane, whose new Veil act may well be responsible for making smoking an acceptable social habit again. With Jackie Smith, she continues to create work that challenges every boring and clichéd notion of femininity and sexuality. Her electrifying grotesques are powerful, terrifying and disturbing, but they affirm that the real grotesques are those who want women to look like 20-year-old size 0s, cook like their mums and fuck like blow up dolls.

And that’s just week one and two! The Burlesque Hour Legends changes every two weeks. The incredible Azaria Universe returns on July 12, as the marvellous Maude leaves, along with swinging Jess Love. But plan for at least three Burlesque trips in order to see the special guests. The blissful Paul Capsis joins the girls from 9 to 19 July, then Toni Lamond (yes Toni Lamond!) will be confirming her own legendary status from 23 July to 2 August. Which only leaves until July 11 to see Ursula Martinez. Ursula has been seen at La Clique with her nearly-ethnic dilemma and her perfected the red hanky strip, but she brings more to Legends, with an opening act that sets the room on fire.

Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Salon de Dance

Salon de Dance
La Mama
Finucane & Smith
22 March 2009
La Mama Theatre

So you think you know dance? Forgive the television analogy,  but you don’t know squat until you’ve been to Salone de Dance.

I’ve written a lot this week about authenticity, originality and other words we bandy around in regard to art. All are difficult to define, but obvious when we see them. The cabaret/burlesque/butoh/gothic/ bloody-terrific creations of Moira Finucane and Jackie Smith continue to be both – and so much more.

LaMama is transformed into a back ally Kabaret with pale crushed-velvet table clothes, candles and swinging light blubs, highlighted with sips of bright green absinthe (that may have been crème de menthe) and carefree toasts to La Danse. If you bring some coins, you can even buy your own dance during the most perfect of intervals.

From the bizarre to the gorgeous, la tres French Maude Davey hosts the soiree’s collection – all in a space barely big enough for a full split (as Paul Cordeiro demonstrates with ease, in a pair of crucifix decorated undies). None is suitable for a prime time telly “competition” – and for that, I’ll have another swig of green liquor and declare Viva! This isn’t dance that’s rated by popularity; this is dance that breaks the rules and lets us see what lurks in the hearts and thoughts of the dancers.

Jess Love combines ease with distress en pointe – with hoops; Rob McCredie charms with freestyle in a tux; Yumi Umimare battles with a possessed coat; Codreiro shows us his god complex; Holly Durant and Harriet Ritchie burst some fantasies about tits; and Moira barely moves, but her partnership with the smoke from a cigarette makes me want to abandon a life of non-smoking.

The most complete piece of the night is The Banquet Room directed by Jackie. Recently performed in Japan, it was described by one reviewer as,” The most shocking dance I've ever seen in my life.” Its gothic inspired butoh style is exaggerated, extreme, unexpected and macabre; it’s everything that dance isn’t meant to be – and all the more wonderful for it.

Finucane and Smith productions welcome audiences into their world, which, for all its darkness and oddness, lets us feel the liberation of unhinged and unencumbered passion.

Great shows find audiences, so Salone de Danse (and its scrumptious partner The Feast of Argentina Gina Catalina ) are already sold out – but turn up early and there’s a good chance of getting a seat at the door.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

The Burlesque Hour

The Burlesque Hour
fortyfivedownstairs
21 June 2007

I was told off this week for having a 'feminist rant' about The Burlesque Hour. Let me share.

The Burlesque Hour takes a genre that has (at times) and is (at times) used to demean, objectify, humiliate and embarrass women. This show subverts this genre – then rips it to shreds, cut the shreds into smaller pieces, grinds them into the ground with a Doc Martin and a Manolo Blahnik and re-creates something that is positive, empowering, celebratory, powerful and just fabulous.

If this kind of questioning of gender roles, sexuality and sexual politics is ranting, then I’m very happy to rant.

The Burlesque Hour has been around since 2004. This was my third viewing and it gets better every time. There are some old favourites missing, but the new material is just as addictive. Jackie Smith and Moira Finucane continue to create extraordinarily original, daring, shockingly hilarious, sassy, sexy and mind-blowingly intelligent theatre.

Each piece is superbly conceived and executed. Azaria Universe’s bearded sheman proves the inter-changeability of gender roles; Yumi Umiumare reminds us that the cute little hello kitty girl could be a demonic little hell cat, and the fixed pout of painted doll could mean she’s broken; and Moira Finucane finds the grotesque within the coquette.

The strip in this show isn’t just about tits and titillation and the final revelation is not a brazilian wax. These women reveal power, humour, strength, moodiness, frustration, joy, loneliness and pain. This strip isn’t about the body. Bodies are simply bodies in this show.

Seeing this strip isn’t about anonymity or hiding or voyeurism. The Burlesque Hour is as much about the performer as the audience and makes the gathered crowd interact and join in the fun and celebration.

For the ultimate subversion, Angus Cereni (a bloke) guest stars. Angus strips to a song written for a teenage girl in a most un-teenage girl manner. This is mighty fine irony. I do, however, wonder why it wasn’t a complete strip. It felt slightly strange to have the one male in the show not completely reveal.

It’s hard to pick favourite moments, but two always stick with me. Moira’s butohesque “I Want You” is as true and powerful expression of repression and longing and guilt as I’ve ever witnessed. And then there’s Azaria’s “Total Eclipse of The Heart”. She takes drag, strip and 80s pop and hurls herself, and the absurdity, frustration, sadness and hilarity of it all into our faces. It’s brilliant.

Finally, as Moira’s Argentina Gina Catalina says, “Big minds have great sex.” So please, enlarge your minds and your thinking and get to The Burlesque Hour.

This review originally appeard on AussieTheatre.com.