Deaf Karaoke with David Armand

Direct link to YouTube video here. This is a live performance of the song "Torn" by comedian David Armand of The Hollow Men with singer Natalie Imbruglia at the 2006 Secret Policemen's Ball for Amnesty International.

Visual description: Armand is on-stage at a live event acting out the lyrics to the pop song "Torn" (lyrics here). The performance looks like sign language but has been described as "mime style interpretive dance". I don't know sign, so I don't know if any of the performance uses actual sign language, but much of it is puns and it's cleverly easy to follow for a hearing person: Armand holds up four fingers for the word "for", mimes reeling in a fish for the word "real", and mimes a magic act for the word "illusion". Halfway through this performance, Imbruglia appears on-stage singing and eventually joins him in the gestures. There's a wordless slide guitar part toward the end of the song where Armand and Imbruglia mime playing the guitar.

Is this cultural appropriation? A comedy act that has nothing to do with deafness and Deaf culture? Or is it cultural cross-over that might be useful to the Deaf, Deaf theater, and communication with Deaf folks?

Here's a different mime performance by Armand, to Paul Young's 1980s hit "Wherever I Lay My Hat, That's My Home"

h/t to Group News Blog