The audience attending the Dsquared2 show at Milan’s Teatro Lirico was in for a surprise, served up by the Caten twins in top showman form. Once the plush red velvet curtains opened, red-lit glass cages descended from the ceiling, with (scantily clad) male dancers engaging in a rather hot performance—at least by fashion show standards. The Catens were probably after the history books.
Called #D2HEAT, the co-ed show delivered on its promises. The theater, a Milanese landmark where in its heydays Italian operas and Bertolt Brecht political cabarets were staged, was bathed in red light and transformed into the set for a “soft sado parade of delicate bondage,” as the Catens said at a preview. Being the kings of mashups, they turned up the kink, going muscular and spectacular. Sheer chiffon and latex in every possible shade of nude were juxtaposed with the “harder sexual tones” of black leather and sharp metallic shimmers; an unrestrained variety of skin-tight harnesses, chains coiling up legs, slashes revealing bare skin, S&M strappings and bracings and wrestlers’ regalia made the case for “a nod at Tom of Finland, but a delicate, soft Tom,” they said.
The feel was redolent of the gay underground culture of the ’80s, when the Catens were club kids eager for excitement and cool. The characters of that milieu—poets, artists, misfits—were the inspiration for tonight’s extravaganza, which had Prince’s “Cream” and “Erotic City” on the soundtrack. Things have changed, everything seems so much safer and bland now. “We try to stick to that sense of excitement though, or at least we try to dream,” they said. “It’s about theater more than sexuality. Theater is inside us. And if we had no courage, if we didn’t dare, it wouldn’t be us.”
