42nd Melbourne Fringe Festival
October 1 – 20, 2024
This year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival program showcases bold and daring circus, dance and physical theatre by groundbreaking movers and makers from around Australia and the world. Nationally acclaimed, and cutting-edge emerging outfits including Dancenorth Australia, Head First Acrobats, One Fell Swoop, YUCK Circus, and Karma Dance present thrilling new work at the festival which runs from 1 – 20 October. Some highlights from the program include:
Breathtakingly beautiful new dance-theatre from Karma Dance, featuring 16 dancers trained in the classical Indian dance form Bharatanatyam, in a meeting of eastern spirituality and queer sexuality. This 3000-year-old artform is de-colonised, subverted and queered-up in a divine and sensual spectacle where pleasure and joy are celebrated as pathways to liberation. Directed by Govind Pillai, it explores culture, tradition, colonial loss, and gendered oppression in a visually stunning and subversive work that is steeped in tradition. 4 – 5 October, Malthouse – Beckett Theatre.
A kaleidoscopic collision of dance, music and visual art, presented by the nationally recognised Dancenorth Australia. Set on a custom-made inflatable stage that evokes feelings of joy and wonder, the dancers move to a soaring composition by three-time Grammy nominated Australian band Hiatus Kaiyote working with sound artist Byron J. Scullin, evoking pleasure and possibility. Physical exuberance, sonic resonance, and collective exhilaration explode onto stage in this sublime new performance presented as part of Melbourne Fringe’s Fringe Encore at Geelong Arts Centre. 25 – 26 October, Geelong Arts Centre.
Virtuosic juggling, innovative lighting and relentless energy collide in this pioneering new show from Throw Catch Collective. Australia’s best jugglers rip through an explosive hour of entertainment, pushing the boundaries of their art with a unique eye for musicality and timing, effortlessly blending rhythm and movement with juggling. It’s stylish, playful and curious. 9 – 20 October, Circus Oz.
Winner of the Melbourne Fringe People’s Choice Award 2022, Head First Acrobats return with this smash hit event that uniquely combines storytelling, circus and physical prowess, elevated to god-like proportions. Follow your favourite Greek gods like Cupid and Hercules as they perform gravity-defying stunts, true tests of heroic strength and muscularity, and surprise comic twists. GODZ is currently touring Australia and the UK in preparation to tackle the heights of the West End and Las Vegas. 9 – 26 October, Circus Oz.
Seven acrobats use 30 metres of rope as their apparatus, tying, wrapping up and connecting each other as they perform spectacular aerial acrobatics to explore ideas of risk and trust. The actions of one acrobat affect and implicate the movements of others, in a mesmerising negotiation of cause and effect, featuring virtuosic acrobatics and intricate choreography woven together with moments of hilarity, romance, playfulness, fear and friendship. Presented by One Fell Swoop Circus, the cast includes Shona Morgan who represented Australia at the Beijing Olympics. 11 – 12 October, Gasworks Arts Park.
Fringe favourites YUCK Circus return with a totally hot, totally bitchin’ brand-new show that winds back the clock to the early 2000s. Audiences can expect Backstreet Boys, Britney, and big throwback energy, mixed with high-flying acrobatics and award-winning ripper comedy. 17 – 20 October, The Ukiyo.
A genre-pushing work from Taiwan that is equal parts performance art and contemporary dance, Girl’s Notes takes its cues from a 1990s Taiwanese book instructing women on how to behave. Artist SU Pin-Wen and pianist LIN Mai-Ke take dance into conceptual realms as they interrogate contemporary gender politics, power dynamics, nudity and their experience with the female body. Girl’s Notes is a part of Fringe Focus Taiwan, a program that shines a spotlight on the innovative art coming out of one of Asia’s most creatively inspired centres. 11 – 12 October, Melbourne Recital Centre.
