Archive 08/19/11 - (1)

 

   

Le Moulin Rouge

                                                                  

Both of us bring distinct predilections

To this Tuesday evening's "Soirée Dîner — Spectacle,"

High atop Montmartre, on Boulevard de Clichy,

At the Belle Epoch cabaret, fabled by Toulouse-Lautrec's danseurs

(Yvette Guilbert, La Goulue, May Milton, Mlle. Eglantine, Jane Avril),

 

That yet retains the famous name Le Moulin Rouge,

Which has been integral to your imagination's working vocabulary

Since your earliest years of lessons, in your mother's studio,

To your perfecting classical ballet techniques, at Carnegie Hall,

Which you translated into a career as a dance-academy owner.

 

I, a collector of Art Nouveau posters depicting seductive women —

Lithographs by French, Belgian, and Czech artists —

Have spent many nights, in my high-rise apartment,

Dreaming, fantasizing about Parisian nightlife in the bohemian 1890s,

Seeing Henri himself, sitting at a stage-side table, sketching, painting.

 

When dinner for the full house of 850 patrons is finished,

The lights dim; the room goes silent; the invisible band awakens;

The purple- and red-velvet curtains lift like castle portcullises,

And a troupe of half a hundred men, dressed in silver suits,

Sixty Doriss Girls, clad in rhinestones, sequins, feathers, materializes.

 

And for a 120 years packed into an hour and a half of Féerie,

We witness a dazzling revue of variations on the cancan,

Flamboyantly staged and labanotated walking dances,

And strategically timed sideshows, including a near-nude lady

Diving into an aquarium swarming with snakes, romancing them.

 

By 10:30, a taxi is winding us down, down, down choked streets

Leading back to our fifth-floor hotel suite,

Where, in a swoon of arousal, we prepare for our own cabaret revue,

Featuring a spectacle of ecstasy only we lovers perform, nightly,

The music we score, the dance we choreograph, fantastique.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08/19/11 - (1)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
       

 

 

 
   
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