“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)

It feels almost sleazy wearing a ‘reviewer hat’ to an event as genuinely intimate as this one.  Selfishly, I am hesitant to tell everyone how blissful Saturday evening was, but this is a review, so make way for a very lovely cat being let out of its bag.

Often, our favourite experiences, films, books, works of art are things that we approach without prior knowledge or preconception. This was certainly the case for most participants of Saturday night’s Listening Party. In fact, it’s fair to say that most of us were there to discover what a Listening Party actually is.

So what is a Listening Party? Loosely speaking, it is the opposite of what happens when you’re on a road trip, and one of your favourite songs comes on, and all you want is for you and everyone else in the car to listen intently as they gaze out the window, but instead someone turns it down and starts a conversation and you become irrationally irritated.

You Are Here’s Listening Party invites you to bring a song, say as little or as much about it as you like and share it with a room full of eager ears on comfy couches. It indulges the urge we all have to say to friends: ‘You have GOT to hear this’.

On Saturday night the group was small enough that all attendees, save a couple of generous festival staff, got to have a turn. The range of music was more diverse than if a punk rock festival and a barbershop choir had a lovechild, and then the lovechild married Fiona Apple, and had another lovechild using the frozen sperm of 1950s musical comedy star Danny Kaye.

Thanks to the location of the festival hub, the delicious musical feast was enhanced by the colourful imagery of buskers and boozers on London Circuit.

Do yourself a favour and get along to the next one this Thursday night. But do yourself a bigger favour and keep the Listening Party alive – host one in your backyard, at your band rehearsal, introduce your book club to something different. In the wise words of Listening Partygoer Lisa Sampson on Saturday night: you will discover music you never knew you loved.

The next Listening Party will be held Thursday 21 March, 10.00pm – 11.00pm, Fletcher Jones, cnr Northbourne Ave and London Circuit

Lucy is co-founder of the Canberra chapter of global dance community No Lights No Lycra. She blogs here: http://nlnlcanberra.blogspot.com.au/ and tweets here: @fings_wat_R_tru

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.

Inspired by chaos, Ice-Age brings together twenty new theatrical pieces to showcase throughout the You Are Here festival. The three disparate works I was to experience featured Shakespearean bathtubs, kidnapped prisoners and a beauty queen murder.

Seating ourselves amongst the assortment of furniture in Fletcher Jones, we were given a questionnaire to fill out for the first performance; Trinculo’s Bathtub. An earlier Google search of “Marat”, “Artaud” “Corday”, and “Trinculo” appropriately did nothing to prepare me for the strange reality of the Shadowhouse PITS piece. Despite the ghostly features, bare torso and angel wings, performer Joe Woodward was disarmingly self-aware, keeping us amused with aside quips (“Oh lord, the flies!”) and impromptu retorts. Just as Artaud saw no difference between dreams and reality, this Trinculo in his bathtub saw no difference between wisdom and inconsequence. Drifting in character between the enlightened historical figure Marat and the jester Trinculo, he did not seek to provide answers; rather, as he made clear, we were there to help him find the perfect question.

The second performance came from Emma Gibson and once again relied upon audience participation which was, blessedly, willingly given by the amiable crowd. Styled in a gorgeous vintage dress, she offered us tea and biscuits before recounting the tale of a dead beauty queen. Passionately she attempted to sway us to the side of the killer, telling us beauty corrupts us to our very core. She accused an unfortunate member of the audience of being a beauty queen, and announced that the best they could do for the world was leave it, garnering much amusement. Rising from her seat, she called on us to free women from our status as commodities through the noble pursuit of murder; but thankfully the crowd remained subdued.

The final performance was a staged reading of Michael Crowley’s The Cell by Drama-Free Productions. Condensed to thirty minutes and reappropriating its North England sensibilities to a more relatable ocker Australian style, the play’s tense, methodical rhythm brought a reverent hush upon the crowd. Working with a bare bones set, the cast made use of the limited stage area to craft an energetic piece with solid performances from all.

In keeping all three plays short, sweet and snappy, the audience’s attention is never tempted elsewhere. That some light-hearted heckling made for a lively and altogether thoroughly engaging and unique night of theatre. If you loiter around Fletcher Jones long enough, you might just catch some more original works as Ice-Age continues its run with You Are Here.

Details: Dead Beauty Queens is on again Monday 18th at 7pm in Canberra Theatre Courtyard Studio, Wednesday 20th at 8pm at Fletcher Jones. Trinculo’s Bathtub and The Cell aren’t on again. Ice-Age continues until Saturday 23rd

Bio:  Alice currently works in regional television, occasionally writes television commercials but mostly writes film essays. Obviously she should be followed on twitter @aliceclaire, and at http://filmalice.wordpress.com/

Art Not Apart is a street festival held regularly throughout the year in the spaces surrounding New Acton, attracting a variety of Canberran artists and performers. Don’t allow the pretentiousness of the event’s marketing to discourage you: Art Not Apart proves to be an enjoyable day out for families, young people and arty folk alike. While there is a strong creative focus at the festival, New Acton delivers in providing entertainment and activities for all interests, with market stalls, live music, slam poetry performances and art exhibitions just a handful of the events on offer: there was so much to do that attendees benefited from planning ahead.

Art tied together the many areas of the festival, in particular white mesh sculptures featured throughout the stages as well as an abundance of colour: striped beach chairs surrounded the central stage while bright graffiti punched through once-grey walls. No space was left barren and you only had to walk a few feet to arrive at something different and new.

For families and creatives the public paste-up wall was a highlight as kids and grownups got to see their drawings made into street art on the spot. Ninja turtles, cats and rocket ships adorned the previously blank wall whilst further down the laneway artists including Mike Watt painted walls live in front of crowds, providing a dynamic space to sit back and relax.

Two stages played host to film festivals on the day including Palace Electric’s French film festival and the short film festival, both of which provided welcome respite from the jostling laneway crowds. Meanwhile on the central stage there was a constant rotation of live bands and poets, including Canberra local Raphael Kabo, who captivated the audience with humorous references to the ubiquitous street art that populates Civic (in particular the giant goon bag of Garema Place).

Art Not Apart explores the connections between audience and art. The day works to encourage the public to engage with art, but its let-down in this mission by its overly-intellectual marketing scheme. If you headed along anyway you were bound to have a great time, and that’s what matters in the end, right?

Bio: Elizabeth has previously published reviews of bars, nightclubs and art exhibitions online. She currently writes reviews and essays.

ALEV is an evening of singing, dancing and funk music at Kremlin Bar occurs semi-frequently, and showcases Canberra’s burlesque, drag and music scene. It’s a garish evening filled with incredible performances by confident singers, musicians, dancers and entertainers who entice and delight the crowd. It’s the type of fiery performance that sets You Are Here apart from other cultural festivals: it’s bold, brash and unafraid of its audience’s perceptions. Despite the fact that before Friday night I knew nothing of burlesque (except that Dita Von Teese is the postergirl for it) I came away from the performances amazed and wishing the evening didn’t end so early.

The glamorous host Melina Fahrenheit brought charisma to the stage and order to the crowd: when the audience was lamely quiet she called for cheers and when they wouldn’t be silent she would tell them to shutup.

Confidence was the main attraction as pride and allure met in sensual performances by the burlesque dancers. The costumes varied hugely: one performance involved a literal dance with the devil (in the form of a hand puppet) whilst another used giant feather fans and vajazzling. Never in my life have I seen so many pasties in the one place, and yet it was awesome. Everyone in the bar cheered for more as each item of clothing was removed and screamed with delight as the performers came closer to nudity.

Local Canberra funk band ZoOpaGOo played on the night and got the crowd psyched up with their infectious tunes. Most of the bar leapt to their feet to dance along with the band, with the lead singer being particularly involved with the audience as he danced through the crowd. Minor issues with the sound setup did not distract the singers or dancers who ignored the occasional volume discrepancies and it only made the audience more rowdy.

Ultimately, ALEV is the perfect example of what You Are Here is all about: showcasing the wonderful and diverse arts scene that exists in Canberra. ALEV was an awesome night and I would recommend that anyone with even a passing interest in burlesque, sensuality, drag or just a fun night out, heads along to their next event.

On once during You Are Here – Friday, 15 March 2013 — ALEV is held semi-frequently at Kremlin Bar throughout the year. Facebook page is here

- Elizabeth has previously published reviews of bars, nightclubs and art exhibitions online. She currently writes reviews and essays for TheSemicircle.wordpress.com and tweets from @elizabethivy_

When was the last time you heard someone say the name ‘Joseph Gordon Levitt’? For the audience of ‘You Are Here versus Teen Make Outs’, it was Friday night at Lonsdale Street Roasters.

In a lively cocktail of storytelling and teenage nostalgia, four artists offer their musings on the thriving, gyrating melting pot that is the adolescent pop-culture industry.

Although the performers warn us to expect some ‘truly terrible stuff’, it’s clear we’re in safe hands as the sombre tones of Rosie Stevens’ cello plink out a medley of instantly recognisable teen pop hits (think MmmBop). We are now officially transported to a time when the words ‘quadrangle’ and ‘Dolly doctor’ featured heavily in daily conversation.

David Finnigan offers us a vociferously verbose summation of the evils of teen pop culture. Having discovered that it is a thirty-billion-dollar-a-year industry in Australia alone, he appeals to the crowd to invest in his plan: pluck a teen with star quality from their ho-hum existence, teach them how to be hot, how to be hip and how to be a star. A sort of sponsor-a-starlet syndicate. He coins the phrase ‘Long tail Lindsay’ to describe the drawn-out, public, slightly icky decline that will likely follow. Needless to say, many LOLs were had by all.

Jess Bellamy treats us to an imagining of her own tortured friendship with Taylor Swift after a fateful encounter in Nashville. In an attempt to teach Taylor to use her fame as a catalyst for change, Jess dispenses sage advice (if you see her out and about at the festival, ask her why ‘revolutions are like shopping for vibrators’). For this reviewer, the laugh-out-loudest moment of the night goes to Jess, for confessing that she listens to Kan Ye West’s ‘Touch the Sky’, to feel safe when walking alone at night.

Adam Hadley shares his treatment for a screenplay which may be best described as Groundhog Day meets Mean Girls… partially set in space. Compelling narrative and vajazzling references aside, I now have an insatiable desire to see Maggie Smith play a high school bully and say things like ‘Lost something, Ass Mouth?’

Teen Makeouts, despite the absence of a Harlem Shake reference, was a satisfying smorgasbord of teenage reverie. Don’t miss the chance to see these wordsmiths perform again throughout the festival and the year. You will totes LOL. For shiz.

Teen Make Outs was held on Friday March 14th as part of You Are Here festival in Canberra. To find out more about the festival, click here.

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.