While the world is on fire, we sang along to Stayin' Alive – an evening with Pearle Harbour on Bora-Bora

There are performances that entertain. There are performances that move. And then there are those rare evenings where something completely different happens. Where you laugh so hard it hurts, and yet go home with a lump in your throat and a feeling that you have been part of something that meant something.

On Thursday, April 16, The Genderhouse Queer Arts Festival opened its doors on Bora-Bora for the fourth year in a row. Three days of performances, all rooted in drag as an art form. We went to the opening night, where award-winning Canadian drag performer Pearle Harbour presented her doomsday cabaret Agit-Pop! to a Danish audience for the first time. 75 minutes of pop songs, audience interaction and black humor, tackling everything from the climate crisis to nuclear war. It was an evening I won't soon forget.

A presentation that touched the heart

I didn't really have any expectations when I took my seat in the small, intimate theater room at Bora-Bora. I've seen drag in Denmark before, but something told me this was something different. What exactly, I didn't quite know.

The hall was full. The atmosphere was good from the first second, a wonderful mix of the queer environment and a regular Aarhus audience who had come out of curiosity. Everyone could join in.

Andreas Constantinou, the festival's artistic director, took the stage. He welcomed the fourth edition of The Genderhouse Queer Arts Festival and I could clearly feel that he was very moved. He spoke about how the tone in society has become harsher. About increasing hatred, about rights being taken away, about why in 2026 it is more important than ever to make room for the queer, the queer, the authentic.

"Drag has persevered through the hardest of times and still succeeded," he said. "Drag is fluid, drag is political, drag is poetry, drag is transformation."

His pride that the festival is now in its fourth year was palpable. And when he concluded by asking the audience to drop theater etiquette and just make noise – “Fuck that. Make noise.” – the entire hall was with him.

Pearle Harbour is someone you love from the first second

Pearle Harbour entered the stage wearing a black and white hypnotic striped jumpsuit that wrapped around her body like an optical illusion. With gloves in the same striped pattern, so that the whole figure merged into one hypnotic whole, almost like an elegant cat that had crept onto the stage. The dramatic makeup with golden tears painted on her face and a voice that could carry both Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill and the Beatles' satirical Piggies, without losing breath.

I don't quite know how to describe the feeling. But it was the kind of night where from the first second you just love the person on stage. Pearle – Justin Miller's theatrical alter ego – is Canada's self-proclaimed "tragic comedienne", and it's not hard to see why. Sharp, acidic, empathetic and insistently present. An entertainer who doesn't just perform for you, she performs with you.

A musician in four roles

Next to Pearle stood the other star of the evening, musical director Stella Conway. With her face painted white, she looked like a mute character from a dreamy clown show, but she was anything but silent. Stella played both keyboard and guitar. And she played drums. And at one point, in the middle of a song, she started hitting the body of the guitar as if it were a drum kit, the rhythm carried by the instrument itself, while the chords continued on top.

Old shadows on the wall

Behind the stage, films were running along the way. Not nice, colorful cartoons, but black-and-white, old animations from another time. Distorted figures, eerie shadows, faces that didn't quite look like faces. They ran like a quiet, understated narrator behind Pearle and Stella, and they gave the evening that extra apocalyptic setting. As if the past itself was looking down on us and whispering that we've been here before.

75 minutes between apocalypse and pop songs

Agit-Pop! is not a traditional concert, nor is it a revue. It is a doomsday cabaret, where pop songs from the 20th century are reinterpreted as weapons against the collective anxiety of the 21st century. Kate Bush, The Beatles, Bee Gees, The Beach Boys, Judy Garland and more. All transformed into something you've never heard before.
Both within and between the songs, Pearle tells stories. About the year 2016, when Bowie died, and the world, according to her, began to fall apart. About the Doomsday Clock, which now stands at a few seconds to midnight. About nuclear war. About “the American dream”. About the climate crisis. About how Denmark is supposedly the world's third happiest nation (with a clear look at the audience: “Must be nice.”).

And this is where the magic happens. The darkness is distanced, without losing its seriousness. We were allowed to laugh at what hurts. And in that way we were allowed to really look it in the eye.

When the audience becomes part of the show

You don't just sit and watch Agit-Pop!. You're in it. Pearle gets the audience to practice a round of applause. She gets us to say “You look so gorgeous, Pearl” in unison. Three men from the audience are called up to move “heavy chairs.” And then become part of the next performance. We're asked about our guilty pleasure and it makes the whole room burst out laughing when people answer.

I sat there and sang along. I don't have a note in my life, but that was secondary. The energy in the room carried it all. Everyone sang, everyone laughed and everyone was involved.

The light against the darkness

Towards the end, it got quiet. Pearle sat down and told a long, poetic creation story. About God creating the light, and about the two little creatures of darkness who looked up and thought: “That's what we are too. Bright shining stars.”

And finally, after 75 minutes in the company of the apocalypse, she gave us a bright spot. A good omen she had caught in a shop window the day before. A little reminder that it's worth keeping going.

As I walked out of Bora-Bora and back through the city, the message still stuck with me. Not as a political punch to the gut, but as something more gentle. A sense that art can still do something. That authenticity is everything. That even when the world feels apocalyptic, we can gather in a small, intimate space and sing along to Stayin' Alive.

It's the kind of night we'll keep remembering.