Kylie Minogue Week: KylieFever

To kick off my Kylie Minogue week I chose to [re]watch Kylie's first big live concert: the 2002 tour KylieFever. Her shows, despite being exquisite and exciting live performances never were much of a big production. Why? Well, Kylie was never an overrated Pop singer with a huge label behind her ideas; still she was always able to deliver amazing show concepts despite the little budget. Until of course the advent of Can't Get You Out Of My Head and the Fever album.
On this self-indulgent [in a good way] one she revisited her many reinventions aided by William Baker & Alan McDonald's designs and marvelous Dolce & Gabbana's costumes. However, believe it or not, Kylie goes political here as well!
The tour's main plot consists in a futuristic world divided in ghettos driven by mainly hedonism, which is an artistic projection from the 21st century society. Like she sings on the first song of the Fever album, More More More [unfortunately not on the tour's setlist], "make me sigh with sheer delight" is all what human beings seem to be about in this new world, forgetting how heartbreaking and tiresome this life must be sometimes. It reminds me a bit of the planet SoGo from Barbarella. The best part of it all is that Minogue never implodes the world she created by judging it, which makes us look through it with the best of lenses: the fun one.
Supporting all of this there's a collection of pop culture/cinematic references enough to deliver chills on anyone's spine, especially those who dumbly took Minogue as a third age cheer leader. On the first, set, Silvanemesis, we receive a Metropolis morphed Kylie. We all know that the Fritz Lang's classic is about a cold and robotic human race. Rafael Bonachela's choreography is then perfect, with robotic and sexy moves, outlining the glamourous droid-leader that Kylie became.
Later we get to see my favorite reference. On the Droogie Nights [DN] set Kylie incarnates the mischievous and marvelous, my beloved, Alexander DeLarge. Kubrick's [also] futuristic masterpiece is also about careless often cruel human beings ruled by their carnal desires. It's a marvel to see D&G's reinvention of the droogs' costumes; the funny burlesque tables from the bar Alex and his droogs take their vellocets come to life as sensual pale dolls. It's pure pleasure with the rest of the sets, also filled with references from the UK TV series Doctor Who to 1992's cult classic The Crying Game.
At this set, Kylie takes a classical and romantic turn right after the unruly Spinning Around [in the DN]. The pleasure goddess shows signs of the humanity we often romanticize, by revealing her true [but dark] colors. As the lights dim, we hear Minogue's voice-over recitation from her 1994 song Where Is The Feeling?; the mood is set for an introspective moment when the main-prostitute is to question her own life style. "I know all there is to know about the crying game", she declares as soon as she emerges from the shadows. The queen is heartbroken and not even the wild night of Sex In Venice that she takes two sets after will remove from our memories [and hers] the melancholic state she/we get after a disappointment. Everything sounds corny, maybe it is how it's supposed to be within this campy festival; whenever she says "I hear that you're love now, baby I don't know what to say. I can't believe that I still feel this way"... you feel these are some of the most heartbreaking lines one can ever utter at such moment. Okay, she wonders more: "what is love without the finer feelings? It's just sex without the sexual healing." And when she gets to the conclusion that "the feeling still remains, and the ember feeds the flame" we can only be in chorus with her that we "don't want no more of the crying game."
As the jorney approaches an end we find Kylie questioning herself again ["caught up in a crossfire, nobody gets it, I'm finding it hard to contain myself... lost in limbo"] and wishing to escape from such mad world ["I'll take you in my capsule out of here"]. To enter into this delightful Pandora's box Kylie created to promote her 2001 dance tour-de-force album is to surely get her fever of changing and moving. The queen of such world unashamedly shows her desire to throw her own invention into a vulcan [the VoodooInferno set] in order to create it again with, maybe new foundations. It's not hard to feel compelled to wish for the same, as if we get Kylie's reinvention fever. "Oh fever sure has got me good... don't you feel the fever like I do?"