Jan 27, 2010

Poison's "Talk Dirty to Me"

Last weekend at The Floating Kabarett at Galapagos (my favorite place to perform!), I brought back a number that I've been very fond of but have not had the opportunity to do often (stage size). I debuted it last June at Femme Appeal's Kitty Night's to a very positive reception. That was the only act Femme has ever seen me do and based on this act, she recommended me to another producer which led me to develop my Patsy Cline "Your Cheatin Heart" act. I absolutely love doing "Talk Dirty to Me" because it's so high energy and the choreography is very active. Unlike my fan dances which are languorous and melancholic, "Talk Dirty" is ALL ABOUT THE DANCING!

This time I invited Brassy to sing it live and Michael to play electric while I did my dance! The concept, very quickly, involves playing with the stereotype of Asians being really smart at school and general goodie-goodies. I come out dressed in a private school girl outfit (magenta sweater with letters, striped tie, plaid skirt, converse sneakers). In my hand I'm holding 5 composition books that have different messages on them. Since Galapagos has the huge screen that I can use, I made a slide projection of each message to match as I am showing them to the audience. They say, "Straight A Student", "Really Good at Math," "Perfect SAT Score" etc. etc. It's a riff on those chain emails that were popular a while back called, "99 Reasons You Know You Are Asian" and it includes things such as, "Your parents ask you why you didn't bring home a test score of 100 instead of 99" and "Your parents use the dishwasher to store dishes instead of washing dishes" - etc etc. I don't want to give away the whole act cause I want you to come see it, but basically the act is about rebelling against those things.

The act was made even stronger with live music. We all went to Beacon's Closet and found stuff to wear that tied us together visually. Michael had on a similar stripey tie that I wore and Brassy wore the same magenta color in her skirt and flower. We really rocked it out. The way Brassy sang it with all her usual sassy improved commentary and with Michael looking every bit like the rock star, I was INSPIRED. The knee pads helped too. Lucky for me, we get to do it again Monday night at House of Sugar's Monday Night Burlesque at Public Assembly! Come check us out! 10 PM.

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