The Tiny Butterfly Club is Where Talent Begins

In Melbourne, the arts are a seriously high priority. Whether it's public art in city squares, or nurturing the art of new clothing designers or performers, the arts are a big part of the experience of visiting here. Even the highways coming into the city are lined with gigantic steel posts, angling sideways, there just to make the city look nicer.

Last night I met two men who have developed the country's most successful incubation center for new cabaret talent, and do it without a penny of government grants or other assistance. In a country where arts dollars flow freely, this is a big change. They prefer to make money with a jumping bar and sell tickets to the lucky few who can snap them up.

The Butterfly Club operates in a cramped Victorian apartment in South Melbourne, where guests stream for 600 shows a year. The one-hour cabaret performances are held in an intimate 50-seat theatre. Neville, the affable silver-haired gent in charge of the front of the house, welcomed me with a glass of wine as I mingled with the pre-show audience just before nine last night.

"We bring these artists in and about two percent of them go on tour with us to the US, London, and other cities. We have discovered some major talents here and after they hit it big in larger venues, they come back and see us. We have an extremely sharp eye for real talent."

Inside the apartment, people stream back to a bar tended by a former ballet dancer and another young man who works as a photographer's assistant. The one-hour shows are fine tuned, each progressive performance is tweaked to be as sharp as possible, and Neville pointed out that there's nothing like working such a small room without a mike. "They have to be perfect, there is no gap between them and the audience, there's no where to hide."