The Australian Performing Arts Collection (APAC), housed at Hamer Hall in Melbourne, is the nation's largest, a priceless archive of materials from circus, dance, music, opera and theatre. Established in 1975, and with more than 780,000 items, the facility has been undergoing a $2.2million refurbishment, thanks to funding from the Victorian Government and philanthropists Virginia and Harry Boon and the Maxwell and Merle Carroll Bequest.
Aside from much needed expansion, the new space will be the Collection’s first ever conservation lab to preserve items on-site, and has an enhanced photographic studio to continue digitisation and build on the development of online exhibitions. While its primary function is a workspace for preserving and documenting the collection, the space will also be opened to the public for a behind-the-scenes look.
A key part of the renovation is an internal lane, which allows visitors to watch the APAC specialists working, restoring and cataloguing the collection. In addition to the lane, display cases will feature objects in the restoration process.
In the lead-up to the opening of the new space, the APAC is presenting a new series of digital feature stories published on Arts Centre Melbourne’s website, with a different rare object presented each month. Theatre buffs and dance lovers can look forward to seeing:
1. The Museum Dress that Kylie created specifically for the Australian Performing Arts Collection in 2004, featuring visual highlights from her career
2. A make-up case packed with mementoes used by Barbara Angell, a Tivoli showgirl in the 50s, and pioneering woman in comedy in the 60s
3. Pointe shoes from the Collection including those worn by Ella Havelka, the Australian Ballet’s first company member of Aboriginal descent
4. A hand-decorated tribute presented to nineteenth-century musical theatre star Nellie Stewart in front of her adoring Melbourne public
5. The sequinned Aboriginal Flag costume worn by First Nations performer Dale Woodbridge-Brown as Circus’ Oz’s Master of Ceremonies, 2016
6. A model of the iconic bus from Brian Thomson’s set design for the stage musical version of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
7. Dame Edna Everage’s New York dress, with illuminated city landmarks and yellow cabs, worn on Broadway in 2004
8. A ‘Tiger Head’ costume from Peter Corrigan and Barrie Kosky’s famously controversial 1995 production of Nabucco
9. A newly conserved costume brought to Australia by Gertrud Bodenwieser, Viennese modern dance pioneer in the 1930s
10. Some of the biggest items in the collection – the signature L’Amour sign from Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin’s La Bohème (Opera Australia, 1990), and giant Dame Edna spectacles from Back With a Vengeance (2004).