Just Don't Call It Ballet

"This isn't ballet!” laughs Angus Little of Stomp. He's not kidding: this is a percussive dance theatre performance that involves rubbish bin lids, wine glasses, plastic water bottles and even shopping trolleys. “It's really high energy – it's two hours of pure adrenaline really.” Little, a self-confessed “normal bugger”, has been performing in the show for the last ten years. “I'm a big bugger, I've got a bit of a gut on me, so the audience gets to see a fat boy going hard, and using my belly as an instrument. It is like a whole lot of normal folk, work men and women just making rhythms out of everything they can find.”

After 20 years on the circuit, Stomp has evolved from a 40-minute comedy festival show to a two-hour extravaganza involving eight performers, and there are now iterations of the show all around the world, from New York to London. It's a gruelling schedule, and Little is going to take advantage of expensive Australian beer prices to work on his fitness during the Australian leg of the tour. “I'm actually going to try to get rid of the belly over this leg! Beer is just a little bit expensive in this country! So I'm going to try to avoid the beer this time and get fit. I'm thirty now and I started when I was twenty-one so I'm getting older now so I had a lot more energy back then, so I've really got to start thinking about my health. And it is great cardio, it's a great workout but it hurts as well and I've got a couple of scars on my face by now. I got a pole in my face on Sunday night, so you get bruised and bleed and it's one of those shows; it's pretty high energy and it's dangerous, there's a lot of metal and wood floating around, you've got to be ready for that.

“It's high-octane and it's fun all the way through. There's no interval and no language barriers so the world loves it.” The show has broken records all across London, and Germany “goes absolutely mental for it”, says Little. “Last week I was wearing Lederhosen in Germany, so here I'll be doing a bit of Aussie jokes and some local bits as well.” The last time Stomp came to Australia was in 2009. “In the last five years it's changed a great deal. It's got bigger and better and funner and it's a whole other thing now. And there are some new routines I've had to learn in the last month, which are great. My favourite routine right now is Shopping Trolley because it's a whole new thing. It's got all kinds of things going on with it, this routine. I'm really impressed and I love playing it.” The audience is a big part of the Stomp show. “We get them involved, we get them to clap along, we don't pretend they're not there. If someone laughs we make sure they know we know they're there. Essentially the audience is the ninth member of Stomp.”