And so it is that for the fourth year in a row, Graham Coupland, lead guitarist and founder of Sydney-based ten-piece swing band The Velvet Set will be gathering up his motley crew of gangsters, gun molls, flappers, bootleggers and jitterbug devotees and putting on The Gangster’s Ball, an extravagant celebration of a bygone era.
On the phone from his Sydney home near the airport – “There goes an A-380,” Coupland laughs as an aeroplane roars overhead – Graham explains the move from playing swing music to throwing elaborate thirties-themed soirees.
“Well, there was a natural progression. When The Velvet Set first started playing around Sydney four years ago, I wanted to make things a little more intriguing,” he recalls. “So I started booking some burlesque performers to come and dance during the band breaks, and our shows became very popular. As time progressed, we started to run out of room: as our shows got bigger, the venues got bigger, and the whole concept of The Gangster’s Ball started to take shape. I decided to incorporate vaudeville and cabaret- voilá, Gangster’s Ball was born!”
Public imagination has long been stoked by the essence of molls, flappers, and fly-by-night bootlegging gangsters. What is it exactly that is so appealing? “There are a few aspects of that era that really strike a chord,” Graham explains. “For me personally, it’s the style of the era. It’s so unique in terms of the clothes, the fashions, the music and the humour – I don’t think we’ll ever see that era repeated. So for that reason alone, it attracts a lot of people to the event. Secondly for me, it’s the music. Swing music, coming out of the thirties and forties, has such great humour and such great vibes to it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a dancer, or you just want to hear music that puts a smile on your face … swing music will do that!”
But Coupland is the first to admit that things weren’t all peaches and cream back in those days. There was another reason for all the merry-making, he reveals. “Gangsters ruled the streets. It was a pretty tough time, back when you think [of the era]. World War I had just ended, there was Prohibition, there was the Depression, people didn’t have a lot of money, and they didn’t have a lot of hope in the world they lived in – especially in America, of all places. So they turned to the speak-easies where they could go and dance and drink illegally; that’s where the bands were playing, that’s where the burlesque dancers and cabaret performers were, that’s where people could leave their troubles at the door, and go and party and pretend the world around them didn’t exist. And that’s exactly what I’m trying to recreate with Gangster’s Ball.”
One delightful mainstay of the Gangster’s Ball is its variety. In each of its three stops (Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne), the headlining band will be unique, as will be the cast of contortionists, magicians, vaudeville performers, jugglers, and sideshow artists. “I’m taking some headline performers to each of the shows,” explains Coupland, “and then I’m using the best of the local performers to bolster the bill so there’s more variety – I do know people travel around the country and go to all three shows. So if they do, they won’t be seeing the same show in every city; it gives everything a bit of a different slant, and keeps it interesting for the core performers.”
Two of the local performers making an appearance at the Melbourne Gangster’s Ball will be Ruby Rubberlegs, contortionist extraordinaire, and Miss Ellaneous, whose juggling and hula-hooping prowess is the stuff of legend. When asked about her ability to cram her body into a tiny Plexiglas box, Ruby explains that “it was more of a discovery that happened when I was young – I could freak out my friends by dislocating parts of my body.”
“Who says juggling can’t be sexy?” asks Miss Ellaneous. A juggling performer since 2008, Miss Ellaneous says to expect “beauty, skill, grace, and some fancy footwork” from her show at the Gangster’s Ball.
Coupland agrees that the sideshow performers are going to be a hoot and a holler. “At each show there’s going to be at least one perfomer who will leave the audience squirming,” he laughs. “[People will be thinking] Oh, that’s gonna hurt. That’s the whole idea of sideshow vaudeville – we want people to be amazed and maybe even a little bit shocked. I try to use performers who are unique: I don’t want to put on a show where you can go out and see that particular act on any given Friday or Saturday night in your local town. So when you go to Gangster’s Ball, you’re going to see a remarkable show.”
But Coupland insists it’s the audience who are the real stars. “It’s not so much the performers,” he says, “it’s the people who come to the show. One of the biggest parts of Gangster’s Ball is having them there in their fancy dress, having a great time, having a drink, and dancing to the fabulous band that will be playing, and really contributing to the whole ambience of the event. That in itself helps Gangster’s Ball get better year after year.”
