Coco Poppin (dancer), Jon Matthews (giutar), Mark Turner (sax) and Jessie Gordon (singer and dancer) perform in The Dirty Jazz Vintage Cabaret at the Ellington Jazz Club for Fringe.
Camera IconCoco Poppin (dancer), Jon Matthews (giutar), Mark Turner (sax) and Jessie Gordon (singer and dancer) perform in The Dirty Jazz Vintage Cabaret at the Ellington Jazz Club for Fringe. Credit: Supplied/Andrew Ritchie d464089

Busy Jessie Gordon producing and starring in five Fringe World Festival shows

Julian WrightEastern Reporter

PRODUCING and starring in five shows at this year’s Fringe World Festival, Jessie Gordon could be the busiest Perth artist at the moment.

The Ellington Jazz Club in the City will be the Kalamunda resident’s second home for the next several weeks, where four of her shows will be performed.

Being a jazz singer, Gordon said all her shows, An Evening in Paris, Anatomically Incorrect Gentlemen, Dirty Blues: The Sinning Edition, Dirty Jazz Vintage Cabaret and So Fresh: The Fairly Average Dance Party, had a jazz/blues theme running through them.

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“I have been in Europe for the last six months playing music, living and being cold,” she said.

“The shows are all part of a process that has lasted years and the product of relationships with musicians I know and perform with regularly.

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“For one of them we applied for it 45 minutes before the deadline, we were just like ‘let’s put on a show’.”

For Anatomically Incorrect Gentlemen, six-time Fringe Awards winner and her co-star Libby Hammer shed girly glamour for men’s clothes to deconstruct gender stereotypes in a fun and light-hearted way.

“We love dressing for as show without heels or 3kgs of makeup,” she said.

Gordon said the pair was passionate about equal rights, marriage equality and LGBTQIA issues and wanted to express that through their show.

“We combined our passion for equality with our passion for hats and pants and came up with an act where we play ukuleles and sing in harmony and occasionally Lib busts out a kazoo or we do ridiculous dance routines,” she says.

“Libby and I are known for our jazz singing primarily and when we started talking about working together we talked about how fun it would be to do something very different.”

Gordon said she gets to have some cheeky fun in the racy Dirty Jazz Vintage Cabaret.

“It is an extrapolation of a show I have done before; if you really think about some of the lyrics in jazz music from 1930s and 1940s, it can seem really filthy,” she said.

Never one to stay in one place too long, Gordon said she is moving to Broome in April, but will still return to Perth for Fringe and other future gigs.

For full show details and tickets, go to www.fringeworld.com.au.

More Fringe World Festival coverage online at www.communitynews.com.au.