If you’ve ever watched a performance on Channel Ten’s So You Think You Can Dance and thought ‘what the fuck genre is that?’, chances are Pete Shenton and Tom Roden make fun of it in their new show: The Big Bag of Boom. First-timers at the MICF, this well established British comedy-dance duo kept a packed audience at the Bosco giggling for well over an hour by offsetting a remarkable number of dick jokes with a likable series of set pieces and dance routines.
If you’ve ever watched a performance on Channel Ten’s So You Think You Can Dance and thought ‘what the fuck genre is that?’, chances are Pete Shenton and Tom Roden make fun of it in their new show: The Big Bag of Boom. First-timers at the MICF, this well established British comedy-dance duo kept a packed audience at the Bosco giggling for well over an hour by offsetting a remarkable number of dick jokes with a likable series of set pieces and dance routines.
Throughout the performance, the wiry Shenton played something of a Simon Says character, instructing the audience to open and close their eyes. A simple trick, but one that earned him the audience’s trust and set up an atmosphere more reminiscent of an old-fashioned magic show than your average modern standup. Of course, it wouldn’t be a New Art Club if it skimped on New Age content. Most of the first half went on self-aware parodies of contemporary dance, including a hilarious re-telling of the story of Isadora Duncan, the founder of modern dance, being inspired by ancient greek etchings at the Louvre. In this, as in all the dances, the pair were impressively in tune – comedically and physically.
There was the occasional dash of flatness in this show, perhaps a few too many dollops of chaos and maybe a bit much in the way of cross-dressing jokes for my own tastes, but these things were easily forgiven when the boys came out with numbers like a balaclaved IRA-style punching and beating dance set to KC and Sunshine Band’s Baby Give It Up.
The New Art Club have been described as the ‘dancing Flights of the Conchords‘, part of a recent disturbing trend in which referencing Flights of the Conchords has become a catch-all gold star. Shenton and Roden need no such accolades. They are their own men. Go and see the show, there’s nothing else like it.
