My Story - Emma Herbert Vickers

I was born into a creative family. With a film director for a father, a great uncle in the WWII Berlin cabaret scene and my mother a skilled horsewoman, I grew up in a home full of art, sculpture, actors and performers.

My dad took me to a wrap party at the legendary ‘Madame Jo-Jo’s’ in Soho at 17. Here I saw drag queens and go-go boys and continued to go there most weeknights during my final year at school. They took me under their wing; awe-struck as I was by their scene and this thing called Cabaret. Inspired to be a performer myself, I forged my own route. Growing up fast, I briefly lived with punks in late 1980’s Giuliani-era Lower East Side of NYC. Returning to London I trained in circus aerial acrobatics & joined the anarchistic sculpture/performance/rave collective, the Mutoid Waste Company in 1990. Taking over empty warehouses in Paris, Berlin, Barcelona & Rome, we put on Europe’s biggest parties, and I was involved in every aspect from large-scale sculptures, event production and performance. Performing aerially in companies, circuses and clubs across Europe, landing in NZ, I finally quit high-flying trapeze for motherhood, I have continued to produce performance; driven by my enduring passion for daring, ground-breaking, genre-mixing artforms and artists.