There’s a moment in Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett where she catches us off-guard, eyes still wide open from what we’ve just seen, with an unexpected invitation. “I ask people, ‘Take your hand, and put it on your neighbour’s thigh’,” Dieter says, smiling. Dialling in over Zoom, she’s mid-rehearsal for her return to the Adelaide Fringe, where she hasn’t performed since 2019. It’s the smile of someone who knows exactly what her audience needs – even better than they know themselves.
In the grand scheme of a show that contains sword-swallowing, jaw-dropping acrobatics and contortions, and playing with fire (literally: and with body parts you wouldn’t even think possible), it sounds like a small moment. Yet it captures something essential to the experience of Club Kabarett: that in this circus tent, we’re not just passive spectators, but bodies right next to each other, sharing our exhilaration, sharing our held breath. “It’s that beautiful moment where you look into each others’ eyes, like, ‘Are we going to do this? Is this okay– oh, it’s happening- okay!’” Dieter says, laughing. “It can be scary and uncomfortable. There are so many walls we’re putting up with all the screens on a daily basis. Bridging those gaps is more important now than ever before.”
Club Kabarett is the latest dazzling iteration of Dieter’s ‘punk cabaret’ show, a term she enticingly defines as a “sexy circus, a fire-breathing sideshow, a loud, beautiful rock band, satire, comedy, and political commentary”, or simply, “a big party we’re all having together, and everyone should come and play.” Her shows trace their Weimar-era aesthetics back to her oma’s, or grandmother’s, travelling circus, and her fascination with cabaret as a place of both illicit indulgence and refuge. “At times of political turmoil, people turn to the arts, specifically cabaret, where there’s a real freedom of self-expression,” says Dieter. “Weimar Republic cabaret was banned [when the Nazis came to power], and people were performing it in secret bunkers, tiny hidden dive bars.”
Pleasures and desires – especially those labelled deviant and queer – have always been politically mediated. Things feel sexier when they also feel forbidden, and in Dieter’s eyes, the quashing of eroticism in Western culture lives on. “The erotic, the playful, that’s at the root of human connection,” she says. “Maybe if people didn’t feel so repressed about what they desire, we would be in a much happier place.” As soon as you step in, Club Kabarett does indeed feel like the happiest place on earth: we’re asked to embrace our deepest, darkest desires before we surrender to a night of spectacle and pleasure. “You are welcome in our world, and we will make you feel at home,” she says.
On stage, Dieter effortlessly commands the room as the show’s singer and songstress, its compere and madame of the night. But what’s also clear is her prowess as a curator, working together with the cabaret’s artists to orchestrate the show’s emotional journey: strength, sexuality, and laughter are interwoven with disarming moments of vulnerability. Since putting on her first ever show in a pub in East London, Dieter counts herself lucky to have crossed paths with no shortage of extraordinarily talented performers. “I always try to work with artists that I obviously think are amazing in terms of skill, but also that I feel have something they want to say,” she shares. “And I try to help them tell that story the best way they can.”
Club Kabarett is, among many things, a deeply moving exploration of gender and gender performance – from the terrifyingly sexy femdom offerings of sword-swallower and fire-breather Jacqueline Furey to trapeze artist Jared Dewey’s anguished elegy for queer masculinity. “I think [Jared’s performance] is so beautiful, because it’s such an encapsulation of strength and power, but also beauty and grace,” Dieter says. “That those things can exist simultaneously in a masculine expression is really amazing. And I think showing that women can be fierce, sexy, and queer is really important. You know, maybe I can’t swallow a sword or a lightsaber – but just owning the space, owning our bodies, is a beautiful thing to do. It’s so freeing.”
What we see on stage might feel out of this world: but it’s all in the service of making us experience ourselves right here, coming alive together. “Spectacle really allows people to be present,” Dieter explains. “Because [when] they see something that is mind-blowingly impossible or ridiculous or hilarious, it snaps them out of whatever else is going on in their life, and allows them to turn to the person next to them, and go, ‘Fuck! Wow, did you see that? That really happened!’” Important for this, too, is her live band. “People’s hearts start to beat in time with the music, and it’s a physiological response that unifies us. No matter who you are, what kind of shitty day you’ve had, you come in and you’re transported to a different place.”
To Dieter, returning to Adelaide feels like coming home – and she loves what the confluence of its festivals bring to the doorstep of her circus tent. “There’s the Fringe, but there’s also the Clipsal [Adelaide 500], this car racing thing: all these big, beardie biker guys come for that, but then they come to the Fringe and see a show,” she says. “You might not expect to see them in the audience, but they just love it.”
That’s right: everyone, even you, biker guy who may be reading this, is folded into the horny, beautiful embrace of Club Kabarett. Asked what she hopes people will take away from experiencing it, Dieter has a simple answer. “I want them to feel alive. I want them to feel free. I want them to feel excited about what the future holds,” she says. “This world, at the moment, there is some scary shit that is happening. We’re all in this together, so we need to find each other.” Then, with that knowing smile again: “But also, you know, go out into the night – and see where it takes you.”
Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett, Aurora Spiegeltent at The Garden of Unearthly Delights, 21 Feb-22 March, various times