Source : the age
DANCE
CreepyPasta ★★
Dancehouse, Carlton
Until August 8
Creepypastas, for those who don’t know, are short but crude horror stories posted on the internet. And they really are awful. The prose is awkward, the pacing erratic and the content banal. Of course, that’s part of their grubby folkish charm: these are disposable, authorless texts, copied and pasted from forum to forum.
Can live performance create a creepypasta analogue? Unfortunately, yes. Harrison Hall and his new-media accomplices have pretty much nailed it.
Its opening scene is the most effective. Three large LED screens face away from us, their dark backs looming over performer and co-choreographer Nikki Tarling. She, too, faces away, attached by a rope to one screen. Is she umbilically tethered to the machine?
It is a potent image, especially with the red status lights on the backs of the screens staring like little eyes. But once the screens are wheeled around, video content gradually takes over the performance. The live elements – dance and clowning – feel underdeveloped.
Some of the material is comic, such as a video using Google Maps to explore the streets around the venue. And some of the material is more challenging, such as the lurid collages of digital detritus, which are accelerated and convulsive, and hard to watch for any length of time.
Hall, meanwhile, naked except for a long, lank white wig, capers madly about the stage, and into the audience. He has plenty of energy, but there’s not much choreography. His antics resemble creepypasta cosplay more than an embodied critique of technological alienation.
Perhaps all this is as it should be: a work modelled on creepypasta should be misshapen, excessive and slightly embarrassing. CreepyPasta captures the internet’s ugliness; as dance theatre, however, it is superfluous because we never see that ugliness landing in the body.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann
MUSIC
Laufey | A Matter of Time Tour ★★★★★
Rod Laver Arena, until August 1
Ever dated someone and found them so boring, you wondered what you were doing there? That’s what Laufey asked us halfway through her first night back in Melbourne. The Icelandic-Chinese artist sits on the stairs built onto her stage, casually chatting to the crowd before launching into Bored .
Laufey, 27, has cracked the code for making jazz a staple for her generation. She found fame online – from original work like debut single Street by Street, to jazz standard covers Misty and It’s Been a Long, Long Time. Then came three nights in the Palais Theatre in 2024, before a massive upgrade to Rod Laver Arena in 2026.
The bright, whimsical Lover Girl comes early in Act I (across the show, silent movie-style projections divide the show into acts). Laufey twirls, claps and bounces in a blue dress straight from a fairytale book, and later moves across a castle-like stage structure for Dreamer – half damsel in distress, half determined girl-boss.
This act extends beyond the stage. Like any pop fandom, the uniform is clear – here, it’s coquette. Bows, earthy colours or pastels, then flowy skirts, or yellow or blue felt crowns. “I should’ve brought my bunny costume,” says one fan before the show, referring to Mei Mei the Bunny, the main character of the musician’s children’s book.
Like any star with an ever-giving pop fandom, Laufey descends to high-five the crowd in Bored, and returns with a fan-made Australian flag with her face on it. “Revolution chic!” she reacts, one of her many witty one-liners of the night. “Hamilton could never.”
She crowns a best-dressed fan, and shouts out two fans dressed as coffee and pie, a nod to Let You Break My Heart Again. Seriously, it doesn’t get any more jazz-pop than this.
Act II brings us back to Laufey’s roots. A cover of Old Devil Moon, then jazz remixes of Haunted, Valentine, and Fragile. Her aura shifts from a twirling lover girl to an alluring vocalist as the stage becomes her jazz bar. The circus-like third act brings us Carousel, and the Swan Lake-esque Forget-Me-Not – an ode to her home, Iceland.
After an outfit change in Act IV, Laufey emerges in a showman-like set for an abundance of sass in Mr Eclectic, Madwoman and Tough Luck. This one’s a real emotional rollercoaster – she returns to the piano for Promise, the ultimate tear-jerker of the night.
As always, Laufey continues to flex a widely ranged classical upbringing. She plays a guitar in Falling Behind, a piano in Too Little, Too Late, and plays the cello alongside twin and creative director Junia on the violin for Madwoman.
Before closing the act with From the Start, Laufey gets vulnerable about her struggle with beauty standards in Snow White. Perhaps the key to making jazz and bossa nova mainstream among Laufey’s generation, myself included, all boils down to relatability. A first crush, being “too much”, the most boring or character-altering relationship in your 20s, and struggling with body image – these are some core experiences she sings about. And perhaps we sing along to sing the feelings out. It’s therapeutic, vulnerable and heartfelt especially in a crowd of thousands.
The night ends on a dark, ear-piercing note: Sabotage. The track that jump-scared the internet upon release. Whatever I heard when I flinched on my first listen, it was louder and more intense tonight. Three words sit on my notes app here: “WHAT THE HELL”.
The encore is surprisingly intimate for a pop show. The stage and orchestra rest for the night, and it’s just Laufey, her guitar, and us. She says bye (for now) with Letter To My 13-Year-Old Self, and fulfils a fan’s request to sing Slow Down.
Laufey’s songs are intimate and warm; they feel right for a quiet day at home or a cafe on a rainy day. But her tour shows that her quiet can be loud, that intimacy can be scaled up – and that you sure as hell can belt out bossa nova and jazz – and maybe think about an ex or a crush – for four entire acts.
Reviewed by Gabriela Sumampow
The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.
