“I know you’re confused. Christmas in March. You’re thinking: is this festival an idiot?”

No better words could sum up what took place in Tocumwal Lane on Sunday. Walking into Christmas Lane, the expected alleyway stench was masked by the strange combined smell of sunscreen and complimentary popcorn. Immediately after taking up residence on a milk crate, one of three Santa Clauses offers us sunscreen while hitching up his gargantuan Christmas stockings that serve as makeshift pants. Another jovially cries out “Merry Christmas!” as he staggers about with a square pillow stuffed up his red shirt and a string of plastic hot dogs in tow.

On a stage garlanded with tinsel and giant glittering stars plays 8-piece band Pocket Fox wearing green and red knitted sweaters. The alleyway is dotted with Christmas trees and spray-painted (empty) gift boxes. Around the fringes you can partake in a vintage styling session, peruse wares from local designers and retailers, sample some cupcakes or snags, and wash it all down with an ice-cold, Christmas straw-adorned coconut.

The onslaught of entertainment that follows includes the likes of Afrobeat ensemble Nyash!, Canberra Dance Theatre Teens Bollywood, hip-hop dance group Project Beats, Poncho Circus’s dazzling acrobatic spectacles, hyper-colourful African dance and drumming Troupe Olabisi, a Canberra birthday-themed choir medley, and Dutch trio DeWolff. We’re even treated to a revival of the high school Beep Test that, despite lacking any relevance to the day’s events, holds the crowd captivated as competitors run back and forth to a specially put-together soundtrack.

Later on, surf rock band Space Party plays among the sentimental sprinkling of replica snow, and a flash mob organised by fellow Papercuts reviewer Lucy Nelson overtakes the dance floor. Post-mob, the Great Santa Battle take place, in which Santas compete for the title of True Santa with a hohoho-off, gift-hoarding, and cardboard sword swashbuckling. Fats Homicide conclude the day and, on a very contemplative note, finish with a song dedicated to what reindeers think about when they’re hauling Santa’s sleigh around the globe.

And suddenly, it’s over. We’re left with that same feeling you get on Christmas when the roast turkey is reduced to a lukewarm half-eaten carcass and the only booze left is long-forgotten sherry. The magical excitement that comes with the festive season fades, and we’re wondering what the hell just happened.

But don’t worry – if you’re all very good boys and girls, Christmas will come around again, or at least some kind of hybrid interpretation of it.

Georgia Kartas has been published in Spun, Burley and Us Folk, and blogs about fashion and shiny things at www.red-magpie.com

(photo credit: Adam Thomas)

Last weekend the inside of the Canberra Museum and Gallery’s (CMAG) Gallery 4 housed Beyond Exhaustion, a three-woman dance performance exploring the notion of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion. Created by Courtney Scheu, Ashlee Bye, Kelly Beneforti and Hannah Wong, the Canberra show was performed by the former three, all of whom were brought together by QL2 Dance’s Softer Landing program here in Canberra.

From the onset we are hypnotised, voyeurs peering in, as one of the dancers crawls along the inside of the four glass walls. Her journey is achingly sluggish, yet paced against a Bladerunner-esque soundtrack mixed by Hannah Wong. The other two join her in this fishbowl arena and begin a systematic duet that’s all legwork, indifferent to their crawling companion, arms pinned to their sides. Combined with their blue-collar clothing and the industrial setting, it seems to mimic daily transit between home and public transport, desk to photocopy room, work back to home – the obligatory fulfilment of routine.

When wide, sweeping arm movements are introduced into the choreography, the dancers share panicked confusion as they realise that they’re trapped by their routine; literally embodied by the walls as one of them runs back and forth frantically. We feel how bound their pathways are – how limited their trajectory. Round and round they go, unable to break out.

Violent, thrashing movements and haunting expressions are thrown at one another like physical translations of hurtful words between desperately unhappy people. There’s great intimacy between the changing personas of each dancer – in some moments they’re sisterly, others like lovers – but there’s also an interaction of hatred, disgust and apathy toward one another’s weaknesses and lethargy.

A short film clip starts playing as a backdrop. Behind the dancers we see shots of traffic, supermarket aisles, apartment blocks, various pills in the palm of a hand, and a lifeless woman face down on a bed, which weaves clear intimations of attempted suicide into this dreamscape narrative.

Exhaustion seems almost a contradictory concept to convey through dance, a medium normally associated with energy and stamina, but I found myself thinking of the ballet Gisele, where dancing to the point of death by exhaustion is used as punishment. Here, however, dancing to the point of death seems like the only way out of life’s confinements and unrelenting challenges. Beyond Exhaustion leaves its audience in a dream-like state, and self-reflective on the toll of allowing our own daily toils to get the better of us.

Bio: Georgia Kartas has been published in Spun, Burley and Us Folk, and blogs about fashion and shiny things at www.red-magpie.com.

It’s Thursday night and the inside of Smiths Alternative Bookshop is packed with people (politely) elbowing their way to a table covered in children’s party food. Burley is celebrating its first birthday and launching its latest instalment, and issue 3’s cover is just as nostalgically colourful as the event’s complimentary fairy bread.

Burley is a Canberra literary journal that gives local writers the opportunity to be published in a print publication. The brainchild of editors Cara Foster and Patrick Mullins, its contributors range from lecturers to students, from public servants to full-time writers, all brought together by their “secret art lives”, their words bound and printed side-by-side

In the editor’s foreword of issue 3, Cara talks about reading the author bios and realising the diversity of backgrounds from which the pieces originate. This is made apparent at the birthday party. Raphael Kabo kicks off the readings, and the delivery of his fast-paced anti-nostalgic bushfire piece, a microcosm of imagery in every phrase, is rather reminiscent of Neil Gaiman. Sarah McCauley, whose short story ‘Leaving with gulls’ opens issue 3, modestly recites her complex verses of telephone calls and umbilical cords. Martina Hoffman gives us a self-doubting 25-year-old woman, wishing that she’d achieved more with her life when, ironically, she’s gained one of the most wondrous things of all. Monica Carroll, whose poem appears in fifty limited edition copies of issue 3 (handmade and hand-stitched), shows us the physical intimacy of words on paper. Veteran Canberra (now Goulburn-based) writer Nigel Featherstone wraps up the readings, tantalising us with the first page of his story from issue 3, ‘The People at the Gates’. It’s edge-of-your-seat suspense as we’re left wondering who the main couple are housing, and why the angry mob at their gates want him gone.

It was an evening full of sweet indulgences—a children’s birthday banquet to accompany a feast of poetry and prose. I’m told that Cara has a bunker’s worth of Rice Bubbles left over, so if you missed out this time we may be treated again to her chocolate crackles at the next Burley event. Happy first birthday Burley, and many more to come.

For more information about Burley Journal, head here.

To learn about other events happening at You Are Here festival, head here.