GLORY BOX PARADISE Set for fortyfivedownstairs, 7/10-8/11

The legendary, genre-busting, globally acclaimed seductive and subversive cult-hit Salon storms into Melbourne en-route to Buenos Aires via London and Hong Kong. Finucane & Smith's annual winter showcase of the best and the wildest - seductive spectacle, live art exotica, wild child circus and jaw-dropping cabaret - is in town for 5 weeks only and this year we are in PARADISE.

Watch the feathers fly as Queen Provocateur MOIRA FINUCANE and the world's most addictive divas unleash their latest exotic and inimitable Franken-routines in the atmosphEric Warehouse of fortyfivedownstairs. From vicious swans to visceral rock, demented disco to the darkly gothic, Shinjuku striptease to German expressionist fan dancing... take the plunge into GLORY BOX PARADISE...

Queen Provocateur MOIRA FINUCANE flies in London's infamous red hanky stripper URSULA MARTINEZ (La Soiree, La Clique, Your Emails My Stories) with a whole new bag of tricks; plus much awarded circus wild child JESS LOVE (Candy Butchers, The Little One Said) joining Glory Box favourites Tokyo Terawatt YUMI UMIUMARE, Parisian dance siren HOLLY DURANT and backroom ballerina LILY PASKAS. Also this year's bumper line-up includes guest star bombshell songbird & Circus Oz ringmistress SARAH WARD (Yana Alana, Sista She) as she's never been seen before!

2013 is a year of rapacious artistic appetites and international firsts for Finucane & Smith: their first regional and remote tour of Australia has only just wrapped after 8 months of dancing ovations from Tennant Creek to Sydney Harbour, Devonport to Darwin, The Pilbara to Alice Springs; Glory Box will become the VERY FIRST AUSTRALIAN SHOW EVER to be invited to Latin America's most prestigious arts festival, the largest in the continent, Festival de Internacional de Buenos Aires; and in March Finucane was awarded the coveted Australia Council Theatre Fellowship to pursue her passions to Antarctica, Mexico, The Galapagos and beyond for two years. Hola 2013!

GLORY BOX PARADISE: The Venus Fly Trap of Provocative Variety is back after setting 110,000 audience members worldwide in raptures, and critics raving from Budapest to Paris, Stockholm to Tokyo. Table seating, literary lounging, cocktail swigging, red hanky stripping, wild dancing, rock'n'rolling, demented disco, plus surprise pop up stars, and always MORE.

Eight years ago Moira Finucane & Jackie Smith were on the veranda of a southern Chinese avant garde nightclub, watching the pouring rain make hundreds of red lanterns sway like jellyfish in the branches of a giant tree, and they had a wild vision... they wanted to open a salon, a salon of the extraordinary and the underground, the unforgettable and indefinable, as seductive as it was subversive, as provocative as it was entertaining. They finished their drinks, bought boxes of red lanterns, went home and premiered The Burlesque Hour in the middle of the Melbourne winter.

Selling out the night it opened, The Burlesque Hour has played for over 110,000 fans around the world, has won eight theatre awards, including 6 Green Room Awards and Scotland on Sunday's "Hottest Temptation of the Festival", has been acclaimed in ten languages, had 50 sell-out seasons, including three under the sails of the Sydney Opera House. It has played from Croatia to Tokyo, London to Lubjliana, Italy to Edinburgh, Budapest to Taranaki, ever evolving and ever surprising, attracting a pantheon of guest stars.

In 2012 Finucane & Smith evolved again and The Glory Box .... Burlesque Hour meets Pandora's Box! opened its velvet lid. Once opened it has never been shut. In 2013 Glory Box continues to mega-mix the subversive and seductive and will headline festivals in London, Buenos Aires, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

Led by volcanic live artist, magic realist and creator Moira Finucane and PatRick White Playwright Award winner and director Jackie Smith - named "National Treasures" in their home country of Australia - the house of Finucane & Smith creates legendary salons, intimate theatrical spectacles and provocative variety; hijacking myriad artforms, engaging unique and extraordinary artists and pecking the eyes out of old style entertainment genres to create indelible visions of humanity, joy, freedom, power & desire.

Internationally renowned for their arresting mix of provocation and entertainment in works that both cherish and challenge their audiences, Finucane & Smith have seduced and captured the imaginations of an astonishing diversity of audiences and critics world-wide. From Sweden to Tokyo, Italy to Edinburgh, Ljubjlana to London, they are acclaimed in ten languages, They have won 15 theatre awards from The PatRick White Playwright Award to 8 Green Room Awards and in 2012 they took home the once-in-a-lifetime Outstanding Contribution to Cabaret Award. Finucane & Smith works blend artists, audiences and artforms in unexpected and powerful cocktails; they create worlds "so beautiful it hurts to leave them" (Aust. Theatre); from complex indoor Carnivals, to massive four-postered Gothic Boudoirs, to intimate velveteen salons, to sumptuous feasts in magic realist Cantinas; their work is infecting - moving, visceral, mystical, funny, dark and joyous.

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