Biography

Plucked from rural New South Wales and raised in the crumbling majesty of Rome, Tanzer delivers culture-clash disco dramarama and hyper-colour haughtiness with a voice from another dimension.

Known for her cinematic, high-glamour, escapist works that are at once intensely powerful, deeply fragile and darkly humorous, her work spans stages, clubs, galleries and festivals and fuses musical forms to a multitude of performative and artistic outcomes. Her musical compositions move fluidly from opera to disco and from the experimental to pure pop – exploring self-image, gender, romance and the power of the alter ego.

Her film and curatorial works are renowned for their elaborate dreamscapes and meticulous aesthetic that take stylistic cues from 70s retro-futurism, Euro camp and Australian pop culture nostalgia.

A two-time Green Room Award-winning performer, Tanzer has played at major events such as Falls Festival, Secret Garden Festival, Vivid Sydney, Laneway Festival and the Eurovision Song Contest.

She has released two capsule fashion collections as a designer in collaboration with much-loved Melbourne designer Alice Edgeley, and is an award-winning music video director, heading up her own video projects as well as directing clips for other artists including Ella Hooper, Kira Puru, Bec Sandridge and Sex On Toast.

Tanzer is also a well-known DJ in Melbourne, and a mainstay within Melbourne’s alternative queer community, performing at weekly gay/drag events in Melbourne and Sydney as both a DJ and a drag king/super-diva. She is also a curator of music events for Melbourne Music Week, Chillout Festival and Brunswick Music Festival.

Tanzer also toured Australia and overseas as part of queer drag cabaret YUMMY, taking part in Midsumma Festival, Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Melbourne Fringe Festival.

She is featured in the acclaimed Her Sound, Her Story documentary and photographic exhibition showcasing iconic women in Australian music, alongside the likes of Tina Arena, Missy Higgins, Camp Cope and Nai Palm.

She was the 2020 Artist In Residence at Abbotsford Convent, and launched her debut video installation ‘Disco Instamatic’ as part of Midsumma Festival in April 2021.

Tanzer lives and works on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and wishes to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, paying respect to elders past, present, and emerging. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.