Kylie Minogue's 'Body Language'

Kylie's new album, 'Body Language', was finally released here in the U.S. boondocks in February. The DVD featuring her album launch concert, apparently held last November at London's 'Apollo' Theater, was released in July in Europe, but in the backwards U.S., it was released apparently only just last week (I cancelled my order with Euromusicworld.com out of sheer frustration just a week ago, but on the weekend I saw the DVD on sale at Tower, and last night, after an impatient and angry eternity, I finally got to see it).

Once again I'm in love! As I walked Sparky through the darkened streets of Sacramento, dodging blundering possums, I was in a daze as I tried to interpret her Brigitte Bardot revamp. I was mesmerized by the whole DVD, of course, but particularly her sweet reworking of 'Breathe/Je T'Aime'.

Unlike most popular musical stars, Kylie these days seems captivated by the idea of perfection: the perfect look, the best dancers, the most solid musicians. Visual aesthetics dominate. There is a word for this, of course: classicism. Kylie seems to be reaching out for a kind of sensual classicism, or classical sensualism, in her performance. There is a sense of perfect, almost yogic, stillness. Indeed, the pace is a bit slower, more metronomic, more hypnotic, than in past efforts.

I suppose it shouldn't be surprising to the classical impulse in music, but it's a bit strange to see it in pop music. Several months ago, flipping channels, I saw 'Xanadu' on television, and I was thunderstruck at how this musical's style (Gene Kelly's last full-length movie) seemed so akin to Kylie's style. She would have been about 11 or 12 years old when it came out - just the right age to make a tremendous impression. I wonder if she was influenced by 'Xanadu'? The plot description is very suggestive:

The Greek muses incarnate themselves on Earth to inspire men to achieve. One of them, incarnated as a girl named Kira, encounters a musician/artist named Sonny Malone. With the help of Danny McGuire, a man Kira had inspired forty years earlier, Sonny builds a huge disco roller rink.

Fellow Australian Olivia Newton-John played Kira, of course. And Kylie's (aka Kira's) disco roller rink encircles the entire Earth.

One reflection of the classical urge in both 'Body Language' and 'Fever' is the anomie of the dancing corps. On 2000's 'Light Years' DVD, a few men in the dancing corps had remarkable impish personalities that they were able to express on stage. The effacing women, however, had sensed Kylie's true direction. On 2002's 'Fever' DVD, the dancing corps had nearly been stripped of personality foibles, and that effort continues with 2004's 'Body Language'. Not that the dancers are metronomes, but the demands of perfection necessarily squelch individual expression.

On the older CD's, sometimes you heard a different Kylie, a more rebellious, troubled, even lazy Kylie. That Kylie is gone now - years of discipline have exiled that bad girl. But now there is a danger that, having climbed Mt. Olympus, she won't be able to get back down. Perhaps she'll have to change direction yet again.

Kylie needs her own Romantic revolt. Say, Kylie as an inmate of an asylum for the criminally insane, or as a bargirl, or as a soldier - a Kylie willing to experiment with ugliness and pain (but in a different way than bad-girl Madonna, who often wallowed in ugliness, and never really got her own clear view from Olympus). Kylie would have been a better 'Satine' than Nicole Kidman in Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge (and not just as The Green Fairy). For the dancing corps (their many successes notwithstanding) I yearn for the imps of 'Light Years', and a greater equality with 'Venus de Melbourne'. So unusual, and so refreshing!