Kylie Minogue: Body Language Live

The downside to humanizing Kylie Minogue is that she's a lot more appealing as a robot. Fans of her lithe electro albums Fever and Body Language know it, and so, it would seem, does she: In her last few videos, Minogue plays the icy-hot cosmopolitan future queen, zipping through computer cityscapes and dancing at angles that make her 5'1" frame extend to the candy-blue skies. The sets in Body Language Live are similarly sharp and kinetic, but it's remarkable how little bits of stage banter deflate an aesthetic otherwise set on air-lock.

Covering a concert at the London Apollo, the DVD shows Minogue traipsing through four different setpieces: "Paris By Night," "Bardello," "Electro," and "On Yer Bike." The first two find her leaning her songs against riffs from "Singin' In The Rain" (in a wild disco number accompanied by dancers spinning iridescent red umbrellas against LCD displays of digital drizzle) and Serge Gainsbourg (whose "Je T'Aime… Moi Non Plus" leads into Minogue's own "Breathe").

Kicking off the prime "Electro" segment, "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" takes hold before a visual flurry of quasi-Japanese symbols floating on deep-focus digital screens hung all over the stage, while dancers do robotic push-ups in bondage gear. Hand-claps from the audience could serve as the beat, but it's even better when machines sit in as sidemen.