Dance Hall

Blending top class circus feats, performance art, glam burlesque, song, dance, humour, full frontal nudity and a truck load of sequins, Finucane and Smith’s Dance Hall is an exhilarating, gender-bending, surreal, messy, wild, acrobatic extravaganza.

All sinew, muscle, loose skin and sharp edges, Moira Finucane oozes a fierce sexuality that is confronting and assertive. She’s no longer a young woman and doesn’t conform to classical western definitions of beauty, but her presence on stage is as sexy as hell. That refusal to cede the space of eroticism to younger performers is wonderful to see (particularly to me, as an older woman), and just one of the subversive elements of this show.

Along with regulars Yumi Umiumare and Paul Cordiero, Finucane has assembled a fabulous cast of breathtaking talent: Queen of Burlesque Imogen Kelly, songstress Willow Sizer and aerial performer Rocky Stone. Willow Sizer belted out strong renditions of Hi De Hi and Bridge Over Troubled Water, and salsa dancer Paul Cordiero proved you can be sexy while wearing a belt of stuffed animals, jocks and nothing else. Imogen Kelly uses extraordinarily elaborate costumes as almost as puppetry before stripping seductively to knickers and pasties. Rocky Stone’s circus acts on a rope and on what looks like a precariously balanced tower of chairs were jawdropping in their athleticism, flexibility and balance.

Our performance was missing Mama Alto, but made up for it with a striking reverse strip tease from full nudity by an utterly gorgeous young woman described as a talented local. But the darkest, most challenging and interesting part of the show was by Butoh cabaret artist Yumi Umiumare. In surreal pieces which were frightening, confusing and challenging, Umiumare seemed to be commenting on ways to rebel against social strictures: a tea ceremony that ends in wild chaos, a shy woman who finds shocking liberation in wine, a subtle segment where a tightly controlled business woman whose repression cracks in jerky little movements until she can no longer hold herself in.

Canberra, do get yourself along to see this. It’s a wild ride you won’t want to miss.

Cathy Bannister

Photographer: Greer Versteeg.