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Anne Pigalle: Premieres her new show ‘L’Ame Erotique’

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Fighting against our intellectual and spiritual enslavement, the incomparable Anne Pigalle premieres her new show L’âme érotique, at the Hotel Bijou, Broadstairs in Kent, on August, 23.

The exquisite Anne is one of the world’s great chanteuses, and this new show brings together an intimate salon of her photography, her poetry, her discourse and of course, her brilliant singing.

The show’s title comes from Anne’s last spoken word disc L’âme érotique, which showcased a selection of twenty-one erotically charged poems, each with their own musical accompaniment. The poems dealt with love, sex, and soul, and was a fantastic oeuvre that ranged from the personal (“You Give Me Asthma”, “Lunch”) through the comic and the Surreal to the sexually explicit (“Saint Orgasm”, “X Amount” and “Erotica de toi”). Throughout is Anne’s richly seductive voice sounds as intimate as a kiss. It’s a fabulous mix, and for fans of the legendary Miss Pigalle, and for first timers, it’s a breathless, arousing and unforgettable introduction.

If you are in the UK, then this is your chance to see the legendary Anne Pigalle at her very best. Check here for details, a dn below a selection of Ms. Pigalle’s erotic photographs.
 

 
A selection of Anne Pigalle’s erotic photographs, after the jump…
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

‘L’Amerotica’: The return of the brilliant Anne Pigalle


 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.17.2012
07:07 pm
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Scottee’s ‘Follow’: how to gain more Twitter fans (or not)

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Scottee’s a bit of a legend in British performance art and cabaret circles, even though he’d hate to admit it himself. The 26-year-old writer/performer/director has already worked with some of the biggest names in this field and won a host of prestigious awards, not to mention a bunch of notoriety and some serious critical acclaim. 

While there’s more than a hint of Leigh Bowery to Scottee’s persona, he denies seeing himself as a “drag queen,” even if that’s how the staff at Marks & Spencer refer to him. What Scottee Scottee is, beyond the messed-up make up and torn stockings, is a performer, as his involvement with London’s Duckie collective, and his own Eat Your Heart Out troupe, proves. From his own website:

He has broken limbs, been questioned by Police and lost 100’s of pairs of high heels in his determination to please and challenge his audiences. Scottee has been critically compared to variety and music hall greats with his unique practice of light entertainment. 

His brash, clumsy and obnoxious approach to performance has left audiences confused, annoyed & covered in glitter. Whatever you think of Scottee - he probably won’t care.

But still, all this is not enough. Scottee wants more.

His latest project is called Follow and traces his efforts to attract more followers to his Twitter account. The end goal is for Scottee to have more followers on that social network than the British TV psychic Russell Grant, tho whom Scottee bares a passing resemblance, and often gets compared (it’s those sweaters, dear).

So far, so self-indulgent, I can hear you thinking. Well, yeah. All performance art is self-indulgent. What’s more important is what the viewer takes from the experience, and what light the artist can shed on cultural, and political, phenomena. And surprisingly, a project about attracting more Twitter followers is actually pretty good in that respect.

Who is real? What is real? Why should that really matter? Are online relationships as valid as real-world contact? Even if it’s with a robot? If they’re not as valid, then why not?

Scottee is open in proclaiming that social networking is the best invention in the history of humankind, and he makes for a compelling voice on our journey through Twitter’s seamy underbelly. Here is part two of the ongoing Follow video series, but if you’d rather watch Follow chronologically, part one is here:
 

 
Follow is running in conjunction with the Abandon Normal Devices festival, and you can follow Scottee Scottee on Twitter here.

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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08.03.2012
09:41 am
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Alan Cumming tells the story of ‘The Real Cabaret’

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In The Real Cabaret, actor, Alan Cumming goes in search of the people and places that inspired Christopher Isherwood’s novel, Goodbye to Berlin and the muscial Cabaret.

Starting with Isherwood’s arrival in Berlin in 1930, and taking in a visit to his original apartment (immortalized in the opening paragraph of Isherwood’s novel), Cumming takes the viewer through the sex clubs and cabarets, to the performers, and writers who turned the Berlin stories into a multi-award winning musical. With contributions from Liza Minelli, and Ute Lemper.

Alan explores the origins of the Cabaret story in the writings of Christopher Isherwood and uncovers the story of the real life Sally Bowles, a woman very different from her fictional counterpart.

He talks to the composer of Cabaret about the inspiration for the film’s most famous songs and discovers the stories of the original composers and performers, among them Marlene Dietrich. Finally, Alan reveals the tragic fate of many of the cabaret artists at the hands of the Nazis.

The documentary pays tribute to the magic of the original film and explores the fascinating and often shocking reality of the people and stories that inspired it.

This is an excellent documentary, and Alan Cumming is quite superb as our host,
 

 
Previously on DM

Revealing portrait of Christopher Isherwood: ‘A Single Man 1904-1986’


 
Parts 2-6 of Alan Cummings ‘The Real Cabaret’ after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.02.2011
08:34 pm
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Blixa Bargeld: Tomorrow Belongs To Him
05.04.2010
10:09 pm
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Wow, Einstürzende Neubauten frontman Blixa Bargeld singing Tomorrow Belongs To Me from Cabaret!  Back in the answering machine era of my youth (and much to the dismay of my Jewish friends and parents), I had this sweet, Nietzschean pastoral set for a time as my away message.  The song was used to great—and chilling—effect in the Bob Fosse film (you can compare Blixa to the original here).

The clip below is from the documentary Berlin Now.  And here’s Stormfront’s white-pride take on the song.  Is it at all perplexing that some of them find the song, written by the Jewish Kander and Ebb, “moving?”

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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05.04.2010
10:09 pm
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A Basterds Antidote: Kobayashi’s The Human Condition

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Although I found parts of Inglourious Basterds entertaining (especially the acting), Quentin Tarantino’s rewriting of World War II’s end days left me, as a whole, both confused and disappointed.  I can understand film as wish-fulfillment (that’s why we go to movies).  I can also recognize the appeal of what-if scenarios (The Man In The High Castle, anyone?).  But fighting genocide with genocide, and showing it triumph, over Hitler and History, strikes me as infantile, and reduces to cartoonish dimensions the very real horrors of the time.

And if you’re of the camp that thinks QT’s commenting, like, ironically on this stuff, that would mean you could detect, amid all the gunshots and carvings, a trace of regret here and there—even some ambivalence.  Well, you can’t.  Not in a single, gleeful frame.  It would also presuppose some recognition on Tarantino’s part of life beyond film—of film as a reflecting pool that’s capable of bouncing back at us something more than the shards and slivers of other films.  I’m not sure he’s that self-aware.  I’m not sure he cares to be.

For me, the war film, or, more specifically, The Nazi War Film, best conveys its horror when its full dimensions haven’t yet been realized.  As something approaching on the horizon, dark and inevitable for the film’s participants.  I think that’s why the below clip from Cabaret chills far more effectively than anything in Basterds or Downfall; why a Weimar-era Aryan youth singing as he salutes freaks me the fuck out far more than the table-banging Hitlers of Wuttke and Ganz.

 
So, with all this in mind, I read with great interest Grady Hendrix’s Slate piece about this week’s Criterion release of Masaki Kobayashi‘s The Human Condition:

Deep where Basterds is shallow, expansive where Basterds is puny, and profound where Basterds is glib, Kobayashi’s humanist triumph is finally getting the Western exposure it deserves.  Based in part on a six-volume novel by Junpei Gomikawa and, in part, on Kobayashi’s own wartime experiences as a pacifist trying to survive in the Japanese army, The Human Condition is as grand in scale and scope as that other anti-war classic, Gone With the Wind.  Like the South, Japan lost a war and can’t stop talking about it.  Every great Japanese director has a movie about the traumas of WWII under his belt, but none is as ambitious as The Human Condition.

Before you rush to queue this up, though, Hendrix also warns that the movie runs nine-and-a-half hours (albeit spread over three films), and is so “monumentally painful to watch, that it stands as the Grand Canyon of despair.”  Well, for those of you willing to commit yourselves to only, say, the San Fernando Valley of despair, the following trailer for Part I clocks in at just under 5 minutes.

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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09.09.2009
05:40 pm
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