A rare insight into backstage companionship, bonds and support the performers shared for each other, at the very popular WildSide Review at Surfers Paradise, produced by Gerry Harrington, 1988.

I was invited there with my camera by one of the dancers, who promised I would get some great photos.

Being there, I captured images of women in moments of extraordinary vulnerability, caught within a world where their bodies were being commodified for entertainment. Yet behind the spectacle, I saw something very different—the companionship, bonds and support they offered one another. There was a quiet solidarity between them, a sense of dignity and strength that existed despite the circumstances in which they were working.

In one image what appeared at first to be an invitation to photograph them became something more complicated. As two women exposed themselves to my camera, another stepped between us, physically blocking my view. In that brief gesture, I saw an unexpected act of solidarity—a woman asserting a boundary and protecting the dignity of her colleagues.

Behind the spectacle of the Wildside Review was another performance rarely seen by the audience. Backstage, women hurried to change, they rehearsed in extraordinary costumes, laughed, helped one another and prepared for the demands on stage. These moments of humour and camaraderie sit alongside photographs that reveal a more vulnerable side of their working lives. Together, the images offer an intimate glimpse behind the performance—where solidarity, humour and vulnerability existed alongside the demands of the show.

There is celebration, it was one of the women’s birthdays, and backstage a cake was shared among the performers. The birthday girl, exuberant and uninhibited, grabs a handful of cake and eats it with mischievous delight.

The dancers have purpose, immediately after coming off stage, a young performer counts the notes that had been stuffed into her stocking by men in the audience—a quiet moment that exposes the transactional nature of the performance.

In another image a young woman leaves the stage in tears. The performer told me that this would be her last dance. Her boyfriend had forbidden her from appearing in any more shows.”

The dancers’ nightly routine unfolded before an audience of heavily drinking men, whose behaviour became increasingly uninhibited as the evening progressed. These images document not only the performers but the environment in which they worked.

Bulletin Mumm Cordon Roudge Photographic Award 1989