Food for thought

>> The Montreal Biennale’s opening show
boasts dancing vegetables, queer herstory
as rock opera and more

STALK RACK: Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

You heard right. The punk-tronic princess of prurience, Peaches, will be busting a move, and much else apparently, when she joins the circus that is the opening-weekend party of the Montreal Biennale 2007. But before sweet fruit for dessert, you gotta eat your vegetables—in this case, Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet, brought to you in part by local lunatics les Georges Leningrad.

“This is a project that was proposed by our friends from London, the Pil and Galia Kollectiv, a lovely couple of Israelites,” explains Poney P of the troubling trio. “We spent 10 days in February composing the music, with the choreography, for the six asparagus. I am really proud of this performance. It is an absurdist exercise of Communist Bauhaus.”

It’s also the penultimate performance from les Georges, whose swan song occurs at the Suoni fest in about a month. Can you feel Miss P’s Poney-pain?

“I don’t want to do any more music that makes cool t-shirts and pins. I want to do music for cruise boats and haunted houses. Vegetables should play rock and make it fun again. I heard they now sell rock stars at Dollarama. There is also an energy drink called Rockstar. All the musicians I know need to take drugs or be a straightedge to be on the music scene! What’s wrong?

“Believe me! Asparagus is like a brand new morning—a door opening on the future.”

It may well be. Fellow Montrealers Lesbians on Ecstasy have likewise cooked up a set with a theatrical bent (and a bent bent too, of course). Keyboardist Bernie Bankrupt explains The Amphitheatre of Homosexuality in an appropriately operatic manner. “It retaliates against the darkness that has flooded the land, destroying the once idyllic dreams of collectivity and sisterly love. The Lez-Be-Friend has been forced to evolve her own life pattern, often living much of her life in solitude, learning early on about the essential aloneness of life and the reality of illusions. This denies the lez-being her full humanity and for her to long for a better world seems the work of fools. The lezbo-tronic Amphitheatre of Homosexuality permits a momentary wish, a dream, a time to actually imagine a brighter future. Perhaps sickeningly self-righteous or maybe just desperately naive, LoXtC will rock, we’ll rock your body right, in this post-hope and dystopic time, aka Party-Time.”

Following which, Bankrupt and co. will no doubt be squealing like starstruck schoolgirls as the pioneering dynamite rock dyke Carole Pope hits the stage. And total bonus, East Coast American art jammers Paper Rad will have their work—an acid-flashback mash-up of crude, Atari-era arcade graphics and demented duo-tang doodles—on display.

Hope that whets your appetite. Now go eat your Peaches.

With DJs Prions en Église, Lynne T and
Why Alex Why? At the SAT on Saturday,
May 12, 8 p.m., $25