by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Famed Montreal stripper and porn actress Tangerine Dream doesn’t like to talk about the show that got her arrested.

“I have to show it to you in person,” she says. “I can’t talk about it over the phone. You really have to see it for yourself.”

This reporter never did get to see it for himself, but got the general idea based on an interview with her and photos from her Web site (www.tangerinedreamxxx.com). Basically, it involves her on a stage, naked, getting covered in cream, masturbating with a dildo and inviting audience participation—a key part of the show involves putting the dildo in a customer’s pants and having sex with it. “It’s not a live sex show,” she says. “There’s no exchange of bodily fluids.”

But it was considered hardcore enough to warrant police attention. Twice. The first was at the O-Caresses, a strip bar on Notre Dame W., in February 2004. The second was at Bubbles Gentlemen’s Club, a club in St. John’s, Newfoundland, last April 21. In both cases, she’s been charged with conducting an “immoral theatrical performance,” under Section 167 of the Criminal Code. While she can face up to two years in prison, it’s unlikely she’ll get more than a fine. But conditions on any judgement may prohibit her from performing her show in the future, and deprive her of her livelihood (it also happens to be illegal to take part in such a performance, but no audience members were charged).

Threatening performance

“I was at the bar talking to the barmaids, when all of a sudden the police came in from all sides,” says Sonia Delisle, the 30-year-old Bubbles manager and former Montreal stripper. “There were undercover police in the crowd. We were both arrested.” Delisle, who says about 30 police officers were involved in the raid, was released the same night, but Tangerine Dream—real name Marie-Andrée Lauriault, 28—spent the night in prison.

It was Tangerine’s second appearance at Bubbles. Her initial performance was so well received, says Delisle, that she had customers asking her when Tangerine would be coming back. “If the show was immoral, why were people paying the $5 cover to see her?” asks Delisle. “After her show, people—men and women—were applauding and wanted to see more. Does that make my customers immoral?”

The wording of Section 167 is sufficiently vague—“Every one commits an offence who…presents or gives…an immoral, indecent or obscene performance, entertainment or representation”—to allow for some leeway regarding what constitutes immoral, indecent or obscene. But, says Claire Thiboutot, the executive director of Stella, a Montreal sex-workers’ rights group, our city’s reputation for tolerance may be over-rated, especially lately.

“At the street level, there were 38 [prostitution] arrests in 2001,” she says. “In 2004, there were 825. In the past four years the Montreal vice squad’s been going crazy. They’re using solicitation laws now to arrest the girls, giving them bigger fines, putting them in jail for the night, giving them tougher sentences and imposing perimetres on where they can go—from [the traditional red light in South-central Montreal] to the entire island.”

Thiboutot blames a general increase in intolerance towards all things sexual worldwide, spurred by the Bush administration in the U.S. But even she is surprised that it’s spread to Montreal.

“Honestly, it’s Canada, it’s 2005,” she says, clearly exasperated. “It makes absolutely no sense. What’s the danger? You have 30 policemen armed to the teeth raiding a strip club, and there’s a naked woman on stage with a dildo in her hand. What kind of image does that make?”

My art, your morals

“I think a large part of this case has to do with freedom of expression and artistic expression,” says Tangerine’s Montreal lawyer, Claude Dussault. “It also has to do with our tolerance as a society. What we see on the Internet and what’s going on everywhere else, we have to think, is the timing for this kind of charge right?”

Tangerine Dream concurs. “I’ve been doing this show for seven years, performing across Canada, and nobody’s ever raised an eyebrow,” she says. “I’m an artist. My show doesn’t represent myself as a person, it represents an act I do. I’ve been working six days a week, doing three to five shows a day, to packed clubs. Is what they’re saying that all the customers coming to see my show are immoral? That’s crazy.”