With a purr and a roar: Meow Meow pouncing on Ann Arbor
MUSIC
Cabaret performer Meow Meow: She's singing, dancing, high-kicking as fast as she can.
With a purr and a roar
Meow Meow pouncing on Ann Arbor
BY ROGER LELIEVRE
The Ann Arbor News
PREVIEW
'Beyond Glamour: The Absinthe Tour'
Who: Australian singer Meow Meow, presented by the Ann Arbor Summer Festival.
What: The darling of the Euro jet set brings a quixotic cocktail of kamikaze cabaret, performance art exotica and karaoke splendor.
Where: Power Center, 121 Fletcher St.
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday.
How much? $24-$42.
Details: 734-764-2538 or www.annarborsummerfestival.org. For mature audiences.
Australian cabaret performer Meow Meow brings trashy glamour to a whole new level with her “Beyond Glamour: The Absinthe Tour,” stopping at Power Center on Wednesday.
The goddess of kamikaze cabaret took time from jetsetting about Down Under to answer some questions posed by e-mail.
So, where are you from and where are you going?
No fixed address ... vague about my origins and my age, like all good divas, mainly because I can’t remember. So much information to fit into one’s head. Let’s just say I’m global (but sadly unincorporated), more Euro than Euro-trash, with a splash of antipodean ancestor somewhere...
This is not your mother's cabaret, is it? Tell me about your show.
The sort of cabaret I like has the potential to rile people, and it’s done so through the decades, if manifesting ostensibly differently. The power of music, the power of the text, they’re constants ... songs of politics and heartbreak always resonate, sadly.
Is there a story behind the name, the "Absinthe Tour?"
I forget. Absinthe certainly makes the fans grow fonder, though!
Tell me about the Meow Meow name. Is there a story there too?
The form is the content, my dear. I’m a cat with many lives, with a purr and a roar, and it must be said, I do get the cream occasionally. Sometimes I’m allergic to myself.
How did you happen to become Meow Meow?
You’d have to ask my mother about that. I just exist, that’s all. Very human. My training was in classical Russian ballet and operatic voice, law, fine arts, language and politics. Things went horribly awry, clearly. Or maybe not -I love my life!
What are your influences? I hear some Eartha Kitt in "Surabaya Johnny."
Well she should get out of the poor chap! I adore Eartha Kitt, and Lys Gauty, Damia, Dalida, Brecht, Brel, Eisler, Weill, Pavlova, Nazimova, Anita Berber, Piazzolla, Piaf, Communism, late 19th-21st century history, Noel Coward, Nina Simone, German Expressionism, Klimt, Schiele, Franz von Stuck, Schoenberg, Puccini, New Wave French cinema, Almodovar, Diamanda Galas, Duras, Mina, Francoise Hardy, France Gall, Serge Gainsbourg, Grace Chang, Bowie, Nico, Alain Resnais, Les Ballets C de la B, William Forsythe, Shanghai early cinema, Liza, Judy, G & S, Bill Henson... the tango, punk, thrash (and) the business we call show.
I assume this isn't your first visit to the Etats Unis ... or is it? Are you on tour, or is your Ann Arbor show your only gig here?
I’m singing and dancing and high-kicking my jetlegs as fast as I possibly can, young man!... It’s my only gig in the States on this tour - very pleased to explore the nooks and crannies of Ann Arbor. I’m coming straight from a season at the home of German cabaret, the Bar Jeder Vernunft in Berlin, then I start work on a new commission for the Sydney Opera House: “Vamp” with Gypsy orchestra, a snake pit and a theremin.... It’s exciting to come back to the States and I can’t wait to pounce on Ann Arbor.