Kylie Minogue's gold hotpants take pride of place in anniversary exhibition

Treasures from the stage and screen are back in the spotlight with an exhibition to celebrate 50 years of the Australian Performing Arts Collection.

ENCORE! features 50 costumes, instruments and props from Australian circus, dance, music, opera and theatre performances.

They have been chosen from more than 875,000 items in the Australian Performing Arts Collection, which started in the 1970s but contains artefacts dating back 170 years.

Highlights from the exhibition include Kylie Minogue's gold hotpants from the Spinning Around music video and the gown worn by Olivia Newton-John while performing with ABBA in her 1978 US television special.

Others include the maracas used by internationally renowned Australian entertainer Peter Allen and the Grammy Award bestowed to Helen Reddy for her Billboard number one hit I Am Woman.

Nick Cave's personal visual journal from 1987 will be on display, along with the original neon red L'amour sign created by Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin for the stage opera La Bohème and featured in many of their films including Moulin Rouge, Romeo + Juliet and Strictly Ballroom.

While some objects have been included in previous exhibitions, items such as Midnight Oil drummer Rob Hirst's drum kit will be on display for the first time.

It was donated to the collection by a Midnight Oil fan group who crowd-funded to buy the drums at auction.

Exhibition to bring beloved memories 'back to life'

Arts Centre Melbourne's director of collections and exhibitions, Sandra Bruce, said the exhibition took three years to plan.

"We've called this exhibition Encore! because, for us, that's what this exhibition is," she said, explaining the hope was that the items would revive fond memories of visitors' favourite characters, shows and moments from history.

"Performing arts, in of itself, is ephemeral," Ms Bruce said.

"We're bringing these things back to life for people, or we're potentially introducing stories, objects, characters, costumes to a whole new audience."

She said one of the first items visitors would see was one of the vests hand-made for Gunditjmara and Bundjalung singer-songwriter Archie Roach.

"They were very precious to him and he very kindly left them to us," she said.

Dance and opera curator Ian Jackson said it was a tough task to choose only 50 pieces for the Australian Performing Arts Collection's anniversary.

"What we wanted to do was to give people a sense of the range and diversity of the performing arts in Australia throughout history," Mr Jackson said.

The silk cloak designed by Parisian couturier Jean-Philippe Worth and worn by Dame Nellie Melba in the marriage scene in Lohengrin in 1891 is Mr Jackson's favourite.

"It was one of the very first items that we collected way back in 1977," he said.

"We know that [Dame Nellie] loved it because she tells stories in her autobiography about how much it meant to her.

"It's just amazing that this has survived more than 120 years to come down to us."

Theatre and popular entertainment curator Margaret Marshall said she hoped the exhibition would allow visitors to feel the joy of Australia's performing arts as well as learn some of the stories behind some of the items, such as with Kylie's gold hotpants.

"They were a bit of a turning point in her career, and there's a great story that goes with them," she said.

"They were purchased at a flea market for 50p in London by a friend of hers, a photographer, and apparently the night before the Spinning Around video, Kylie's stylist pulled these hot pants out and it was suggested that she wear them.

"The very famous clip of her wearing these and spinning around on the top of a bar has made her very famous."

Sitting alongside the costumes, scripts and ballet shoes is a set model of a Carlton terrace house from the Melbourne Theatre Company's 1995 production of Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and 500-page Wirth's Circus scrapbook that is so heavy it requires two people to lift it.

The exhibition opens on Wednesday at Hamer Hall in the Arts Centre, just a little over a week before Minogue is due to perform in the pre-game entertainment show for the AFL Grand Final at the nearby MCG.

It runs until May 9.

"Melbourne's always been really key in the performing arts zone," Ms Marshall said.

"We have a really healthy music scene and theatre scene, and opera and dance as well, a long tradition of circus, particularly on the site where the Arts Centre is.

"Our collection has reflected that over 50 years as we've tried to document what's gone on."