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ATLANTIC CITY WEEKLY |  |
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TO MARGARET CHO |
Margaret
Cho Gets Co-Dependent After her controversial stint on ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ Cho gets back to her stand-up roots at Caesars as part of the OUT IN AC Halloween weekend festivities. By Michael Pritchard Add Comment
Along the way, she’s offered a brutally honest take on politics, her Korean ancestry and her sexual orientation. But lately, even as she brings her latest tour, “Cho Dependant,” to Caesars this Saturday, Oct, 30, (appearing with Sandra Bernhard) there’s something different about Cho. She’s gotten so, well, musical. Not only is the tour titled after an album of songs she’s released, she’s spent much of the tour jamming in practices and appearances on Dancing with the Stars. So has Cho gone over to the musical arts? “It is branching out, but at the same time it’s still, well, I am what I am,” she tells Atlantic City Weekly. “I still do what I do. I’m still touring. I mean I’ll do a couple of songs in my show, but mostly it’s stand-up comedy. I still feel very rooted in comedy.” The timing of her appearance, which is part of the Harrah’s Entertainment’s OUT in AC weekend, also seems perfect. Cho exited Dancing with the Stars after a controversial dance she performed wearing a rainbow-colored outfit. Many saw it as a statement of gay pride, and even her dancing partner, Louis van Amstel, questioned if that led to their being voted off the show. Cho says she wore the outfit to make a statement in the wake of several recently reported suicides by young gay teens after they were bullied for their sexual orientation. “The costume and the dance was representative of a kind of pride that we feel within ourselves and feeling good about ourselves,” she says. “You know, feeling good about yourself for the first time in your life. That was the story of the dance. And I wanted to make a point of wearing a gay pride flag. “That’s so important to me,” she says. “Because of all these teens that are feeling bullied and feeling left out and feeling that the world is against them because they’re gay. I wanted to reach out to them and do a dance that was really about gay pride and really about self-acceptance.” But she acknowledges that the statement may have cost her a chance to continue on the show. “I don’t want to think that, but it’s probably why ... but I don’t know,” she says. “To me, I live in such a gay world. And the way that I communicate and the way I talk about myself and the way that I am is very gay. And everything around me is gay. So I don’t know what it’s like to be in a world where that’s somehow a bad thing.” Cho says the experience of the show was worth it. “It was just an exciting thought that I could do something like that,” she says. “It was very hard, really hard physically because I had never danced like that — with a partner — before. It’s physically intense, but I loved it. It was an incredible experience.” And even though van Amstel has expressed some regret over the rainbow outfit, Cho says she was thrilled to dance with him. “I love my partner,” she says. “I think he’s a genius and I think we should have gone further because we danced great, but unfortunately we didn’t.” Cho will incorporate some of her Dancing experiences into her act at
Caesars, but there will be a familiar ring to it. “It’s kind of about impressions of my family because they were there the whole time,” she says. “My mother was there and I couldn’t even look at her while I was dancing. She was sitting there with this expression on her face of terror. Like if I did poorly we were going to get deported. It was just a really scary time for them. “So this is all new material,” she adds. “It’s very political but it’s also very much about my family and my family history. I’m really proud of it. I really love this show. And I really am having a good time with it.” Oh, and there’s a couple of songs in there. The songs come from Cho Dependent, an album released in August that had Cho playing guitar, and banjo and working with names like Fiona Apple. But, with song titles like “Eat Shit and Die,” well ... “The songs are funny and that was important to me — to maintain my own point of view throughout,” she says. “I wanted it to be a funny album, but at the same time, I wanted the songs to have lasting value. The last three shows that I’ve done I’ve done songs. So I think people kind of know that I’m doing it, but remember, to me the songs are jokes as well.” Considering that they come
from Margaret Cho, how could they not be? |
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