Few people who were at the memorial service for Canberra actor Renald Navilly in 2018 will forget the moment when Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentleman enticed the whole crowd on to the floor to join in Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me to the End of Love.

You can bet it will be more of the same when Mikelangelo, The Balkan Elvis, (Michael Simic) and his merry music-making mates take to the stage at the Vault in Fyshwick on Friday to mark the eighth anniversary of Leonard Cohen’s death.

In Club Cohen, Mikelangelo revives one of the greatest musical poets of our time, transforming the Vault into “a nightclub of the afterlife, where the realms of the living and the dead collide in a joyous, soulful celebration of Leonard Cohen’s musical legacy”.

Backed by The Band of Mercy, he will be joined by guests Shortis & Simpson, Fred Smith, Alice Cottee, Tom Woodward, Tracy Bourne, also introducing the talents of Peter Campbell, Gemma Clare, and Lily Acheson.

Expect late-night groove with Cohen classics like I’m Your Man, You Want It Darker, Tower of Song, and yes, Dance Me to the End of Love.

There’ll be club-style reworkings of Suzanne, Bird On A Wire, Famous Blue Raincoat, Hallelujah, and more.

“This show was born from a conversation with my old friend Martin Craft, whose work with Sidewinder and Jarvis Cocker many Canberrans will know,” Simic says, reminiscing that at age 19 he had stumbled upon Songs of Love and Hate in a secondhand-records shop.

“The moment I heard Avalanche, I was transported to a wild, dramatic, beautiful landscape… Now, more than 30 years later, his work still moves me,” he says.

Club Cohen: Nightclub of the Afterlife, The Vault, Fyshwick, November 8.