We sat down with Hersh Dagmarr, the legendary French queer singer/songwriter and visual artist to chat about his show Minogueus Sanctus.
Centering around iconic pop princess Kylie Minogue’s repertoire rearranged in the piano-vocal cabaret style, the show explores the very concept of pop royalty and fandom itself – asking the essential question of what makes and who is (or more precisely who isn’t) a ‘gay icon’.
Get your tickets here.
Minogueus Sanctus reimagines Kylie’s pop hits through a piano-vocal cabaret lens—what inspired you to turn the dancefloor diva into a liturgical muse?
First of all, because I love Kylie and always did – and I love the idea of paying tribute to her music. Her catalogue is so extensive that it feels like it covers our entire lives. I can’t remember a time where she wasn’t here. Her resilience, staying power and consistency is quite extraordinary.
Through her, I wanted to explore the theme of the extreme power of nostalgia. Especially pop songs, how they accompany our entire life and become our own personal landmarks. They touch us in such a personal and deep way. No other form of art seems to have this kind of power. Most of all when it’s from one artist like Kylie with such a dedicated fan base, who literally gets to evolve and grow up with their audience. This almost gives them a status of untouchability.
We talk about pop stars using words such as “icons” and “idols”. The semantics belong to religious and liturgical lingo for a reason.
You’ve said your music comes from both a ‘faraway past and a distant future’—how does that temporal tension manifest in your interpretations of Kylie?
My own original material and music I have been releasing as a singer and music producer has been quite experimental electronic pop music, compared to songs I interpret in my shows which are, for the most part, very classic tunes.
I have these two parallel areas of interest in my artistry, the deep past and the distant future, and they both feed off each other equally. I always draw and paint characters with finger wave hair, pencil eyebrows and polka dot ties! The stylistic codes of cabaret are ingrained in my brain and I always want to go back to them somehow.
In my cabaret shows I like to unearth tunes from that deep past, way back to the early 20th century – whether it’s French chanson, American classic songbook or German sprechgesang – or turn more modern pop songs into that expressionist style of cabaret.
The common thread in my shows is an alter ego which could be a ghost, a vampire or just the walking memory of an artist from the grand Weimar Berlin era. I guess the tension manifests though this alter ego’s past experiences and stories told in the context of now.
What does it mean to you to ‘deconstruct’ a gay icon—and how do you distinguish homage from hagiography?
My aim is less to deconstruct a gay icon than to re-interpret a familiar song; give it a new habit, a new meaning. Focus the light on a different angle and give it another dimension – another story. You should hear what we did with “I Should be So Lucky” or “I Believe in You”!
I guess an homage has more to do with the music and work itself, whereas hagiography would concern the artist and the actual cult of their personality. There’s quite a distinct line to me. This is one of the themes explored in Minogueus Sanctus.
Cabaret has long been a space for subversion and reinvention—what role does camp or theatricality play in the way you reinterpret pop?
Camp, if it means a humorous exaggeration, is a vital ingredient in cabaret – an ingredient which has to be used sparingly, however, and shouldn’t overshadow the overall performance. Cabaret is no panto.
Theatricality is another thing, I suppose. I do love to give my shows a theatrical arch. I like a narrative, I like a story and I like dramatic entrances. I actually think it applies to every kind of show – rock, pop, opera, piano-vocal cabaret etc – that an entrance has to be polished. I can’t stand an artist just walking onstage, for example. There’s never a good reason for that. It seems lazy to me. Staging is essential if you are going to get up onstage. At least that’s how I see things.
But if we are going to specifically talk about reinterpreting pop, theatricality and perhaps camp are particularly essential because it’s about stripping the song of all its sophisticated and very produced arrangements and just keeping the very core of it; the melody and the lyrics. And then, in order to make the song live, you have to amp up the drama and expressionism. You have to reenact the emotions and amplify the themes evoked. It’s quite a lot of weight on the performer’s shoulders in such a minimal context but I live for it!
In a world that increasingly favors polish and perfection, what draws you to the raw, moody, and intimate language of Weimar-inspired cabaret?
Precisely the fact that the world seems to increasingly favour polish and perfection makes me long for dissonance and a bit of a dent and a slap…! But what also draws me to this particular brand of cabaret is that under all the subversion, outrageousness and histrionics, it has an elegance to it, and it comes from a context of pure artistry and creativity through harsh times. Face up with glitter, (middle) finger wave hair and the right song!
Ultimately, the elegance of it comes from its profound humanity and compassion, in spite of all the bravado and harshness on the surface.