Short Takes: Paradise Restrained

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Friday, Mar. 2, 2001 | The promotional posters were a tease: naked from the waist up, gazing enticingly over one shoulder, the complete Karen Mok come-on. And her legions lap it up.

Aloof means allure and together they make fantasy in the she-male-epidermis of La Mok. And she knows it. Trouble is, the Hong Kong music industry with its battery-hen mentality understands not the notion of exclusivity but would rather spread its talent around like margarine, chewing up and spitting out young talent in the stampede for quantity over quality. Which all puts Mok in a dilemma. She wants to bring her own stamp to the fore and in this concert a whole lot more, but can't bite the hand that feeds by upsetting her management company, Rock Records.

That much is evident at the show in Hong Kong's Coliseum venue. Karen Mok looks exquisite when the lights unravel her to the naked eye. Bare legs painted gold from the groin down and a body corrupted only by the merest rumor of cloth. She is Milla Jovovich's Fifth Element bandage-wrap silhouette, but in black. The shadow dance of desire that starts all James Bond movies made flesh. A glorification of body that inspires yearnings both gastronomic and erotic in the crowd.

She belts out some new material and quickly settles into fast pop -- as ever her lyrics a mix between Chinese and English – and it works. She is more magnetic than Minogue ever was, or still hopes to be, with more range than the overwrought Alanis Morissette (to whom she tips a hat). Mok's got moves and doesn't need to strike a pose -- her elegant frame with its alert balletic scaffolding makes Madonna's 'voguing' just her natural walking.

In a first for Hong Kong's audiences, she takes a bath on stage mid-song. She remains still, as four scantily clad female coryphées lovingly sponge her down. Reluctant water droplets glisten on her thighs in the beam of light before making their way down the rest of her golden curves. She lifts her feet in the air for them to airbrush with sponges, and to admire. Same-sex kink, fetish worship, abundant and exuberant naughtiness? Whatever Mok makes of such matters, she certainly knows how to make them work.

Barefoot and wet, she returns to the stage with dancer/choreographer Chris Choi, who is not exactly skin-shy, either. A huge white sheet descends from the ceiling behind them, lit lush blue, and the shadows of their cavorting, charged bodies play against it. I thought it was the air panting but instead it was the men and women around me as their tongues rolled out like red carpets on the floor.

And that's where the foreplay stops. At that point, the concert takes on a more sedate pace both aesthetically, as Mok changes into something with a bit more fabric, and musically as she hits the ballad trail. The throbbing energy subsides but Mok belts out the songs; the crowd echoes them back and everyone's coasting.

She takes the final applause and thanks the record company for letting her be experimental. I'm sorry Karen, but shouldn't that be the other way around? She spent four months on the look (with close friend designer Johanna Ho) and choreography of the show. Nothing sells like sex and nobody knows that more than Mok. It's the Hong Kong music industry's crime and the audiences' loss that such a rare, stunning bird as Karen Mok should be kept in a cage bound in golden chains.