Claire's pop up petit cabaret presents: ROBINA BEARD

3 courses from our a la carte menu and a fourty minute show $105 p/p

“You’re soaking in it” is funny, and nostalgic I have much to share about my endless ‘showbusiness” life, as a dancer, singer, choreographer, comedienne and...MANICURIST etc. etc. etc  with Lindsay Partridge, musician extraordinaire at the piano. There will be singing and dancing and laughing, audience participation and prizes, so come and have a delicious meal and a journey into Robina’s mad mind...

ROBINA BEARD OAM, MCA, LCBA

- Order of Australia Medal

- Master of Creative Arts - Theatre Strand

- Licentiate Cecchetti Ballet Australia

Born in England, and after having decided at the age of 7 to follow a career as a dancer, Robina single-mindedly did EXACTLY this for the next five decades, migrating to Australia as a child, and moving through many different styles of dance including tap, adding singing, choreography and directing to her theatrical repertoire and in later years, becoming a teacher, an advocate for dance and dancers, and an administrator of several dance organizations, the most important of which is CECCHETTI.

. She was totally fascinated by "modern" dance and with her teacher, dance partner and mentor Ronne Arnold, toured Australia in the first professional "contemporary" dance company to be created in Australia.

Her most well known persona is that of Madge, the manicurist in the long running advertisement (20 years) for Palmolive Dishwashing Liquid for Colgate Palmolive.

This has cemented her face and personality into many middle aged Australians

Throughout a career that encompassed dancing, singing, acting, choreographing, and directing for stage and television, she discovered a penchant (perhaps even a talent) for comedy and became well known for the sense of humour she interpolated into her work - even into something as SERIOUS as contemporary dance.

She studied at Wollongong University in 1992, achieving her Masters Degree in Creative Arts - Theatre Strand in 1993, and teaching in the Music and Dance Faculty in 2004 and 2005.

She finally performed with the Australian Ballet, at the age of 62, in Graeme Murphy's new version of The.Nutcracker, as one of the "older dancers" and knew then that wearing beautiful costumes and dancing to such beautiful music finally realized her childhood ambition.

In The Australia Day Honours, on January 26th 2011, she was awarded the OAM for "Services to the Arts particularly in Dance" and in the same year, she received a ‘Lifetime Achievement” at The Australian Dance Awards in Brisbane, so the smile has not left her face since then.

More recently she has appeared in a solo acting performance as Daisy Bates entitled

“Tales of Kabbarli” to great critical acclaim. Currently playing in “Shoehorn Sonata”

in Giant Dwarf Theatre in Sydney.