A lady dressed in a red velvet bikini saunters out on stage with her hands full of the strings to 150 balloons. Within moments she begins to thrash her body with the balloons in a rapidly beautiful arrangement and you soon realise her bikini is covered in three inch pins. Welcome to Caravan Burlesque, a place where the audience is respected and nothing is dumbed down for anyone.
“It always has that mix of wild, charming; we actually call it the charm to alarm ratio and it’s beautiful,” co-creator and performer Moira Finucane beams.
“We’ve found everywhere we’ve travelled that people are up for anything; they’re curious, they’re excited and if you take care of them you can take them anywhere. We never second guess our audience we just give them the wild beauty that is Caravan Burlesque.”
The shows are wild, unpredictable (it’s best to predict the unexpected) and feature an array of talented performers from all across the globe.
“The fact is it’s really like a box of firecrackers and the audience love that. It’s the kind of show that sweeps you up into a roller-coaster ride,” she says.
“One minute you’re watching someone hanging from a trapeze in a death defying pose, next minute you’re listening to someone singing a heartbreaking song and the next minute you can’t believe your eyes as women in a red velvet bikini covered in three inch pins attacks 150 red balloons. It really is an explosion of art forms from all over the world set to music that is the best party mix tape ever.”
When it comes to deciding what act to run and when, Moira likens it to serving up a series of dishes to the audience. It’s been over a decade that Moira and co-creator Jackie Smith have worked together, and they sure know how to put on a banquet.
The skill is clear at the most simple of times, but when thrown in the deep end the team still bring their ballsy show to the audience just as it was intended.
“Last year we went to Sao Paulo in Brazil, which is a massive city, and two weeks before we got there we realised that we weren’t performing in a theatre, we were performing in a square in Sao Paulo at midnight and the square was going to have 10,000 people in it,” she pauses.
“We went, ‘Wow, we’ve never done that before’ and will it translate and will people love it? And oh my goodness they did and it was one of the most exciting things we’ve ever done. So that was certainly one of the more pinch yourself moments for us. Every time I think I don’t know whether I can do this I know that I probably should.”
People have loved it worldwide across the five continents the shows have been performed and it’s no difference when the group have come to Australia.
“People come to our show and they always say to me, no matter where we performed, ‘That is not what I expected and I loved it’,” Moira says.
Written by Amanda Sherring
When & Where: Potato Shed, Drysdale – September 29 & 30