CABARET
Aurora Galore
Interview by James Burnside
Aurora Galore is a very well-known name in burlesque. Her dark and aggressive style as well as impressive fire-talents leave a lasting impression on those who witness her in action. Since she has arrived in Perth for Fringe World Festival, the UK local has been in high demand as both a performer and a producer for multiple shows. One of the biggest projects Galore is working on this year is her solo show Aurora Galore: Glamorous Weirdo;but she also casts a fairly wide net that finds her working in multiple venues across Perth.
“It is a very different experience being on the other side of it – the producer side,” she admits. “A lot less fun and a lot more chaos! But at least I have sun!”
As an art form, burlesque has attracted a great variety of performers over the years for various different reasons. For Aurora the fascination with burlesque started at a young age.
“I always liked it. I am not sure why,” she says. “Perhaps it was watching Gypsy so much when I was younger, or just being exposed to it through the alternative magazines that I used to read. I just loved the idea of it, and the idea that you could be a dancer without having to do the choreography that someone else tells you to do.”
Burlesque can mean many different things to different people. For Aurora her burlesque performances create a sense of freedom.
“I enjoy being able to perform on stage and just be myself. I can dress and dance how I want to and nobody can tell me otherwise,” she explains.
Aurora’s creative freedom certainly shines in her performances. While lots of cabaret acts tend to be brightly coloured, cheerful and upbeat, and often go for a cheeky 50s style vintage aesthetic, Galore distinguishes herself with a dark, aggressive and almost heavy metal approach. With gothic makeup and darker clothing, she radiates a much more edgy and ‘dangerous’ vibe.
According to Aurora, this comes in part from the things she was interested in growing up.
“I was into metal and the alternative scene in my teenage years and always preferred things on the edgy side rather than the pretty side. I just like to express myself in that way, because that is the world that I have always felt most comfortable in.”
Aside from her striking appearance and presence on stage, Aurora Galore impresses with her highly-accomplished acrobatic talents. These include violently-spinning feathers, acrobatic flips and jumps and remarkable contortions. Galore explains her goal is always to improve herself, training “every day, several hours a day. I am by no means anywhere near where I want to be, but you just train every day and get a little better each day!”
Without question her greatest crowd-pleaser is her many tricks with fire. Whether it is twirling fire, eating the fire or even blowing flames out of her mouth like a dragon she stuns the spectators with her calm in the face of terrifying blaze. But to her it is just a matter of toughness, shrugging that “fire performance is mostly about guts and comfort with flames more than anything. So once you get used to it, it will look better on stage.”
With this unique style and passion, Aurora Galore has taken the world of burlesque by storm over the last few years; she is currently considered the seventh most influential Burlesque performer in the world and the most popular burlesque performer in the UK.
“It is wonderful, of course!” Galore says. “It is a real honour to have my peers vote for me as the 7th most influential performer in the world.”
But far from getting complacent about her elevated position in the culture of burlesque, to Galore this milestone is a challenge. She feels the stress to live up to her reputation, and her peers’ admiration is what drives her to further improve her craft. She admits it helps her to “continue on with [her] work and fight to be as creative as [she] can be – more than anything else.”
This year at Fringe, Aurora faces an interesting challenge due to the wide variety of shows she has committed herself to. Often, she finds herself juggling many at once. In addition to Aurora Galore: Glamorous Weirdo (which begins February 11) to her guest performance on the currently-running Frisky and Mannish’s CabaRIOT, to a few spots in other Fringe shows (Le Carousel Bleu, Big Top Tease, Celebrity Lip Sync Battle), she will certainly have her work cut out for her.
Through rigorous training, passion and a dazzling array of skills, Aurora Golare has caught the cabaret world’s attention, taking the art to a dangerous and rebellious place. Will she successfully conquer Fringe World? Her future seems as bright as the flames she masters on the stage.
Aurora Galore: Glamorous Weirdo runs from February 11-20 at the De Parel Spiegeltent. You can find tickets to this show and more at the Fringe World website.
