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| Thursday, 15 November 2007 21:08 | |
Dances of Viceby Jack NewcastlePhotos by Bernard Delgado  Promoters Shien Lee and Lucas Lanthier selected the ideal venue when they decided to bring Dances of Vice to our great gotham, for where else but a converted garret should we find a few score vamps, vixens, dandies, flappers, and rakes foxtrotting and shagging to hot jazz from the twenties through forties? Admittedly, it was with trepidation that I first climbed the stairs of The Pussycat Lounge, the thirty-six year old strip joint on Greenwich Street, because the promise of cabaret on New York invitations has historically meant performance artists working with greasy foodstuffs, but I'm delighted to report that for the last three months Dances of Vice has been keeping true to the original form. Key to that original form is having a talented emcee, one with the ability to pace the festivities, and it is Mr. Lanthier, himself, that more than ably fills the bill. Because he is gaunt and fair-haired, it is difficult not to liken him to Joel Grey, and upon our tardy arrival (due to a fire down the street) we found him derby-ed and bow-tied and just finishing up an ethereally operatic guitar/vocal performance. It was within moments, however, that he turned himself into a comic buffoon and it was with a few fast quips and a sideways grin that he introduced the fashions of Vecona, a talented young German designer of Victorian to Depression Era clothing. Like the bands and fans of the steampunk movement, Vecona seems to have been inspired by the collected works of filmmaker Tim Burton. Vertical black and white stripes are prevalent in her designs as is the high ruffle collar that gives a nod to the French streetwalkers of the belle époque. The presentation of her line was the continued highlight of the night, for rather than give us the typical runway routine of sneering, bellicose models, she presented us with choreographed vignettes populated by women you would like to get to know but soon discover you shouldn't know at all. In the first of these cameos, it is to Edvard Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King (the tune hauntingly whistled by Peter Lorre in M) that a raggedly dressed automatonic brunette dances with a yarn and black burlap doll, the music building up to its crescendo till she produces a tribal dagger that she repeatedly thrusts through its heart. Though this sounds disturbing, it actually isn't, as the model (actress?) commits the murder with an 'I do good' smile bereft of rage - a sort of grown up Wednesday Addams who has finally snapped and so we can't find her accountable for her actions. For real levity, however, we're next treated to a feather-dusting maid installed into a curve-hugging black and white affair worthy of Leslie Caron herself. As Julie Andrews sings A Spoonful of Sugar, the maid sneaks sips from a bottle of Absinthe while receiving admonitions from a black-clad spinster who seems to also be having a bit of trouble with a third girl of undisclosed identity. The trio moves about the stage like a well-timed slapstick team, the dynamic staged right down to the shiftiness of their eyes. 'Why can't Broadway do something like this,' I asked myself during the performance, having been entertained far more by this fashion show than the current crop along the great white way, and, the answer, of course, is because Broadway is devoid of its sense of historic larger-than-life showmanship that Vecona has embraced. A third amusing vignette involved Mr. Lanthier's abduction of a beautiful chanteuse. She is bound and gagged, and it is at gunpoint that he forces her to sing for his proprietary pleasure, but the table is turned when the chanteuse gets the gun.During the evening there was also a performance by Andrea Zerilli, a one-woman orchestra that goes by the name Oryx Incruentus. It is on the cello that Ms. Zerilli accompanies her own digital compositions, proceeding to drag her audience through the nine planes of hell, and no that is not a cheap shot by this reporter, for Ms. Zerilli's compositions, are based on Dante's Inferno. 'Hell is repetition,' she notes in her biography and as the 1911 silent classic L'Inferno unfolds on the screen behind, she works her way through tritones and minor seconds to create a soundtrack for the miserably monotonous eternity to be found in the fiery pit. Perhaps with it being the inaugural event for Dances of Vice, the crowd was too giddy for such somber material, but I suspect the room will eventually find its arc and performers of this variety will be allowed to entertain in a respectful hush.  Unfortunately, Mr. Lanthier was out of town for the September edition of Dances of Vice and so I have to note that without a proper emcee a cabaret can sometimes fall into a disconnected series of acts with audience interest waxing, waning, and occasionally peaking. Veteran pianist and singer Jill Tracy performed a couple of well-received sets but by two a.m. the crowd was starting to thin and fifty dollars worth of Johnny Walker Black even got the better of this reporter. Days later, I learned The Stumblebum Brass Band had shown up for an impromptu late-night performance and I rued Mr. Walker's usual dark influence. As of late, this hypnotic rumbling-raunch-jazz trio has been turning up all over the city in a nearly Mephistophelean manner. They appear from nowhere, breath smoke and fire from trumpet and tuba, pound on their drum whilst parading through the crowd (or through a wedding party, which is how I first saw them), and then abruptly disappear into the New York night. Are they banshees? wraiths? demons? Do they possess some uncanny ability to locate a lull in frivolity and then dispel it with ungodly powers? November finds them back at Dances of Vice where I'm sure none of these questions will be answered with any certainty. The third Saturday of October had me once again climbing the steps of the Pussycat, this time in dinner jacket and Venetian fox mask, to attend the Blue Moon Masquerade Ball. Of course, wherever there's prohibition culture in New York, there's eventually going to be Michael Arenella and his Dreamland Orchestra, and for weeks prior to the event everyone was anticipating their appearance in the converted garret. The Dreamland Orchestra is the premiere 1920s dance band of our town and because Mr. Arenella and the boys have a way of not transporting its audience back to that long-ago era but rather of bringing all its frolic and fast madness to the here and now, we knew it was going to the shimmy-shaking, cocktail-dropping, ribald and rowdy event of the Halloween season. Mr. Arenella, it should be noted, never disappoints. With cornet in hand and paper moon over his shoulder, he fired up the locomotive that is the Dreamland Orchestra and started shoveling coal in cut-time. Miss Annabelle Lee, Thou Swell, My Blue Heaven - the dancers shagged and balboa-ed, dipped and occasionally slipped, all while flat fifths and syncopated trills rose above their heads like smokestack embers. Rounding the bend of midnight, Mr. Arenella finally dismissed the brakeman altogether and had us holding on to our drinks while the room pitched from one side to the other. I recall there being a fight over a girl, her malaise suggesting it all too commonplace, and at some point I looked around for Ring Larder, fearing he'd erase us all with a stroke of his pen. The next morning, I awoke feeling as though I had been dumped on the tracks somewhere between Cleveland and Cincinnati with neither direction holding much promise. My clothes were rumpled, my head doubly so, and all I had in my pocket was a few bucks and a ridiculous picture of a fox-masked man atop paper moon. Up ahead, there had to be coffee. Ever since Andy Warhol combined film, art, dance, and The Velvet Underground to create his Exploding Plastic Inevitable back in 1966, New York party promoters have endeavored to create the next 'happening'. Some were successful, like Steve Rubell with his Studio 54, and others infamously so, like the murderous Michael Alig of Limelight, and though my days in rock and roll bands had landed me in a number of these supposed 'happenings', I realize with Dances of Vice it is the first time I had actually been to one where anything of interest actually happened. Even more remarkable is that Ms. Lee had just moved to New York from Montreal just a few weeks prior to the August event. She saw a void in our city and immediately filled it, and it is for that reason The Cad lauds both her and Mr. Lanthier. With a crowd of men and women attired in the elegance of yesteryear, Dances of Vice brings back to New York all the glamour of El Morocco, The Latin Quarter, and The Stork. I'm honored to be a guest at this rebirth of café society.Dances of Vice is held at: Pussycat Lounge 96 Greenwich Street New York City, NY 10006 Telephone: (212) 349-4800 More information can be found at: www.dancesofvice.com
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