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“Fringe dwellers pitch their tent” WA Today 15th December 2010

Posted 19th December, 2010 by

Fringe dwellers pitch their tent

STEPHEN BEVIS, The West Australian
December 15, 2010, 9:08 am

Fringe dwellers pitch their tent

More than 50 feathered Brazilian carnival dancers will shimmy, shake and help high-kick off Fringe World, a decadent tasting plate preceding an all-you-can -eat buffet of a revived Fringe Festival in 2012. Piff the Magic Dragon, Barry Morgan and his World of Organs, the Wau Wau Sisters, Frisky and Mannish, the List Operators and The Freak and the Showgirl are some of the offbeat international acts crowding into Perth’s very own Spiegeltent for Fringe World in February.

Skirting the edges of the main Perth International Arts Festival over three weeks will be more than 100 performances of cabaret, burlesque, comedy, performance art and music inside the Spiegeltent, the free-entry Fringe World outdoor space in the Cultural Centre and the adjoining performance space at PICA.

FRINGE WORLD HIGHLIGHTS

The opening night party on February 3 will feature Brazilian dancers, the gypsy dance of the Woohoo Revue, and percussion duo Ben Walsh and Tom Thumb from Strut’n’Fret, the producers of The Garden of Unearthly Delights at the Adelaide Fringe.

Perhaps the star attraction will be the 95-year-old De Parel (The Pearl), one of the world’s last surviving traditional Spiegeltents (mirror tent in Dutch), portable pavilions used as dance halls, bars and cabaret venues at festivals around the world.

Made of polished timber, mirrors, canvas, leaded stained glass and detailed in velvet and brocade, each tent is said to have its own personality and style. Fringe producer Artrage bought The Pearl from Belgium’s Klessens family, who had never sold one of their beloved portable antique funhouses. “There was a lot of negotiating back and forth over the internet with the beautiful grand matriarch of the Klessens family,” Artrage director Marcus Canning says.

May Klessens, whose family built and maintained the tents for five generations, says visitors can see and taste their atmosphere. “You have to know, I love old stuff,” she says. “For me it looks much better than brand new. I would like to smell beer and history.”

Seven international fringe directors will be coming to Perth for an inaugural summit designed to register Perth on the global fringe calendar.

The Perth event, dubbed “a boutique fringe at the edge of the world”, will be part of a global network of 100 such festivals, with its timing fitting between regional fringes in Hong Kong, Singapore and Adelaide, says Mr Canning, who adds that a Spiegeltent is a quintessential part of the international fringe experience.

“I thought we just have to do this. We could be the only fringe in the world that actually has its own tent. It is an amazing thing for WA to be the place where a Spiegeltent lives. This is a world heritage object that we have never had the chance to experience.”

Fringe World will begin a week before the main Perth Festival, restoring a link severed in 1988 when the old Perth Fringe morphed into the year-round Artrage. The Fringe World precinct in the Cultural Centre will have free entry, access to food and drink stalls and tickets ($25) to the shows inside the Spiegeltent.

With cheaper, accessible shows, a fringe will appeal to younger audiences, traditionally the toughest market to crack for arts producers, and foster the habit of attending arts events later in life, Mr Canning says.

The Spiegeltent would be available for regional festivals around WA and be used in next year’s Awesome children’s and youth festival in Perth. “Kids getting used to that space will turn them into fringe dwellers later in their teens and in turn become mainstream Perth Festival consumers when they hit their 40s.”

The Spiegeltent, which houses 200-400 people, arrives on Christmas Eve. “At some stage we are going to have to find a master carpenter who is going to love her,” Mr Canning says.

“Stepping through the doors of a Spiegeltent is just like being flown back in time into a 1920s-30s cabaret. It really does blow you away.”

He notes a resurgence of interest across the world in cabaret, vaudeville and burlesque. “These old school art forms are really about having a great time, have no pretention to them at all and are a total antidote to this mediated world in which we live. There is a lot of artistry going on but it is not high art with a capital H.”

Fringe World runs from February 3-26. The full program will be announced on January 6.

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