Down Ponce de Leon,and across the street from Green’s, there’s an antiques place called Paris on Ponce, which by itself is a spectacle of weird and wonderful antiques arranged into bric-a-brac sculptures.
If you follow a walkway painted red through the entrance of Paris on Ponce, you’ll find a door which says “Life is not measured by the breaths you take but by the moments that take your breath away,” and when you open the door, you’ll see an entire room filled with crimson furnishings.
This room is only the entryway to the real venue, which is known as Le Maison Rouge, a swanky parlor lined with red velvet curtains with a stage and a bar.The effect is truly breathtaking.
It was fortuitous that my girlfriend and I happened upon this amazing location by chance. Walking along the beltline one hot summer day, we stopped in Paris on Ponce for a spot of their complimentary lemonades. Upon finding the red door, I asked a guy working there what it was used for? He responded that they had burlesque shows every Valentines Day and Bastille day.
It wasn’t until the following Valentines Day that we had the privilege of going to one of these burlesque shows.
We attended a show called “Luscious Love,” and it was performed by the Imperial OPA circus. It wasn’t only a performance, but an entire event, which I believe was catered by Le Maison Rouge itself.
Seeing the crimson room alive and bustling was quite a sight. Nearly every cocktail table was full, with couples bouncing cherry-pitted chocolates into each other’s mouths, and waitresses wearing corsets ferrying serving trays of various red alcoholic drinks.
The most charming touch of the pre-show proceedings came as a surprise. When my girlfriend and I sat down at our table, a pug dog ran up to us excitedly and asked to be petted; apparently the event doubled as a charity event for an animal shelter.
The show started and was incredible. Imperial OPA did a wonderful job recreating the burlesque sensibility, which is a mix of bad jokes, sarcasm, gallows humor, and a little bit of eroticism–that is, people got naked, just not all the way. The theme of the show was the big general, “LOVE” and all its forms.
The way they expressed this was to perform songs, both popular and obscure, about love, while extremely deft acrobats performed on tricycles, stilts and Spanish webs on a very small stage. Intercut between these songs were humorous interruptions and short dramas to make the audience laugh.
In all, it was a short, one-hour spectacle that was very satisfying. But for how short it was, the price of admission was a quite steep $50 per ticket. If it’s something within your ability to attend, I would recommend it.
If not, Le Maison Rouge can be visited for free, and Imperial OPA has performances all over Atlanta.
