Glitter Box

The nine lives and times of NYC cabaret cat Meow Meow.

by A.D. Amorosi

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Published: May 22, 2007

MEOW MIX: Meow Meow's alter ego, Melissa Madden Gray, has enjoyed a prestigious career in theater, opera and dance. Photo By: Karl Giant (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

There are a dozen catty ways to start a story on the opera screamer/confrontational performance artist/social contrarian who calls herself Meow Meow.

There's the "cat's got claws" thing because of her bitchy wit. Or "pussy galore" since she goes the pasties-and-G-string route while contorting her body in not-so-sexy ways. Or "kitten with a whip," what with her tendency to make cabaret as kitsch as it is vicious, often annoying or offending her audiences into applause.

"Get with the project du jour, my darling, that's art," says Meow Meow between performances for David Bowie's Highline Festival in Manhattan and a Williamsburg showcase with mod-cabaret doyenne Ann Magnuson. "It's redemption and resurrection through tragedy, comedy and multifaceted music I aspire to." And to shake herself and her audience while giving them a rollicking, weepingly beautiful, thought-provoking silly night out. "I'll do anything to try to do that. Besides, [Maria] Callas was seen as perfection by some and reckless by others in her technique; recklessly perfect and perfectly reckless."

That description is a pretty good fit for Meow Meow. So much so that her alter ego, theater singer Melissa Madden Gray, gets treated as little more than doppleganging redheaded stepchild. "She is my stalker � and OK, sometime Australian manager � and I really prefer not to talk about her in public," says Meow Meow. "I don't want to encourage her Meow fanaticism."

That said, it's hard not to recognize Gray's prestigious career: a fellowship in Berlin with award-winning choreographer Robyn Orlin; a role in John Jesurun's Chang in the Void Moon at La MaMa; a multimedia piece with Japanese pianist Tomoko performed in theaters and supermarkets.

"I did have that career; still do," says Meow Meow, quietly, of Gray's artistry. That other woman sold out the Sydney Opera House, danced tango in a Wuppertal quarry, jumped out of cakes, recorded with Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini and worked with Jin Xing � a contemporary dancer and China's first officially acknowledged transsexual � on a two-woman show about love in prison.

"I left sequins and feathers in all my friends' hallways and frequently failed to do dishes and answer e-mails. I've also done a cat food commercial. Did things get predictable? Maybe."

She stops. "Look, I have no idea who this Melissa Madden Gray is � an American Idol pop star, no doubt. But I would hope she was unlike anyone else."

While Gray is flaxenly blonde and sonorous, Meow Meow doesn't just torch up her songs. She shreds with a last-chance power overdrive that rivals a racer punching the gas. And she looks like a randy BUtterfield 8-era Elizabeth Taylor in spike heels and a bustier singing Dolly Parton and Bowie tunes in a screeching, soaring swoop.

"I'm looking at doing 'Rock 'n' Roll Suicide' in German with a children's choir, I'm so in love with Bowie," says Meow Meow.

Her repertoire is a heaving, wild thing to begin with and she's insatiable when it comes to new music experiences. "And new experiences of old music, don't forget," says Meow Meow. "Much like rabies, the songs I sing have infected me and keep on pouring out � special songs that can be endlessly reinvented, endlessly relevant through so many situations, life phases � both personal and political, if there is a division."

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Callas, Brel and Brecht are constants. Nina Simone, Noel Coward, Abba, Fred Astaire ("Now there was a voice"), Gilbert and Sullivan, Lydia Lunch, John Zorn, Victor Borge and Diamanda Galas, too. "And 'Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini' is a song that should be heard more often," says Meow Meow, without her tongue resting too far into cheek. "It has resonance for most audiences � particularly in French and Cantonese � and certainly makes things on stage nice to look at, too."

Whether she's rolling around in sequins in stadiums or stage-diving in dive bars making people join in the ridiculousness of the human condition, Meow Meow creates art that incorporates the entirety of her body, voice and brain. And each moment she's onstage, she is dedicated to (in this order) joy, sex, art, politics, kitsch, cunning multilingualism, tragedy, torch, tango, punk, possibility, history, decrepitude, deconstruction, karaoke and high glamour.

"It's all so necessary," says Meow Meow of having to stuff each moment of song with such rich messiness. "Anything else would be dishonest. My candle burns at both ends."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

Meow Meow performs Wed., May 24, 9 p.m., $10, Cabaret L'Etage, 624 S. Sixth St., www.virtuous.com.

 

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