R.I.P. Summer & Warda

Donna Summer died on Thursday. I knew her songs but I never realized they were all by the same person. And did you know she lived in Germany for years before making it big? Here my top 3 Summer songs, including her most fabulous performances.

1. Bad Girls

"Toot toot, Ahh, Beep Beep!"

Donna looking ferosh in a sequin jumpsuit and crazy-fly sunnies. She moves like Posh Spice in the Wannabe clip, but she looks so disco Grace Jones it works.
(And who are the three gals in the background??)

Bad Girls 1979 - The Donna Summers Special

Appropriately misogynist ending.

2. On the Radio

You gotta love the little acting intro. And that wink at 0:21.

Donna Summer - On the Radio, 1983

3. Love to love you Baby

A tad repetitive, but so seventies sexed-up it could be the soundtrack for Deep Throat.  This performance on the Soul Train includes a meek interview with Donna - good girl gone bad.

Donna Summer - Love to Love you Baby (Soul Train) 1976

"Hot Stuff" and "She works hard for the money" are great songs too, but you already knew that.

More importantly, Warda Al-Jazairia died last week too. Warda was Franco-Algerian, but a massive star all over the Arab World who embodied President Nasser's Panarabic dream. 

Here my favourite clip of hers, with nature stills that are every hipster graphic designer's dream.

Warda: إسمعوني

And a live performance of Batwannes Beek ("I miss you"), including a full orchestra and mass hysteria from the co-ed audience.

Warda: Batwannes Beek



R.I.P. Habibis. 

William's World

Globe to Globe - the World Shakespeare Festival is on. Richard II in Palestinian Arabic? Troilus and Cressida in Maori? Each of William's 37 plays is performed by a different theatre group in their native language.

I went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream in Korean this week. Ferocious grimacing on painted elf faces, quirky wooden instruments, and many bum-rubbing jokes (is that a Korean thing?). I am not sure William would have dug it, but the culture combo was pretty magnificent.



Korean Theatre Company Yohangza, in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. (AFP/William West)



Here my top picks for the upcoming weeks:

- Antony and Cleopatra by pioneering Turkish group Oyun Atolyesi

- Romeo & Juliet by Grupo Galpão: Leo meets Brazilian Circus

- Coriolanus by famous minimalist company Chiten from Kyoto

- Macbeth in Polish, with influences from Almodovar and Lynch...

Polish Macbeth: Teatr Kochanowskiego.

Standing tickets 5 pounds. To be, or not to be there.

http://globetoglobe.shakespearesglobe.com/

Also, here an interesting article from the Guardian, on why the festival is cultural imperialism.

Parallel Scars

Interview Magazine: Model Jamie Bochert and fiancé Michael Pitt (remember him as Henry from Dawson's Creek?) trek to the Moroccan desert to shoot a short film and channel Philippe Garrel's 1972 feature La Cicatrice Interiéure (The Inner Scar). 

For Interview Magazine, photography by Jamie Bochert - full shoot here

The Inner Scar saw Nico, the depressed siren of Velvet Underground, crossing out-of-this-world landscapes as a female Petit Prince on crack. Nico's son also appears in a scene, leading her on a white horse through desert dusk while she sings All that is my own.

Nico: My only child & All that is my Own, from La cicatrice intérieure

At the time of shooting Nico was going out with the film's director, Philippe Garrel, whose son Louis later starred in Bertulucci's exquisite Dreamers (2003) alongside - Michael Pitt. Closed circuit? And à propos legendary Italian directors, Nico in Fellini's Dolce Vita? 

In any case Bochert's contemporary take on the film is less deranged nudist hippie, and more pseudo-goth fashionista. Which, thank you Jamie, reflects 2012 pretty accurately.

Here the source of inspiration in full.

IN FULL: La cicatrice intérieure (1972) by Phillippe Garrel

Happy Easter, Cry Baby

As is appropriate for a lapsed-catholic slavic-melancholic family, we spent the evening of Easter Monday at the ballet. Four hours of Bach's Saint Matthew Passion is enough to make you feel like you've caught up on a year of mass going. In the case of the Hamburg Ballet, directed by ueber-choreographer John Neumeier, it is also enough to make you feel like neither faith nor words are needed to have a celestial experience.

This was the second time I saw a ballet directed by Neumeier, and the second time I produced tears from watching movement. But in the crucial moment the solution prepares to roll down my face, I think of the opening scene of Almodovar's Talk to Her and self-consciousness becomes a dam.

Don't let that stop you.

                                                   

 Opening Scene of Pedro Almodovar's Hable con ella (Talk to Her); with dancing by the Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal

John Neumeier, Saint Matthew Passion - Blute nur, du liebes Herz

John Neumeier, Saint Matthew Passion - The Last Supper scene

An Orthodox Riot

The last day of my trip to Jerusalem was a Saturday. Shops were shut, public transport stopped, and deserted streets whispered “Shabbat”.

On an aimless walk I felt like a pagan in Ghostville, and then I sensed trouble. Wailing, distressed and heavy like elephant lamentation, resounded through the air. I walked up a hill and came upon Israeli soldiers in a brawl with Orthodox Jews. Men and boys in black scurried along the pavement, screaming in hypnotic unison. As cars passed, the noise grew more passionate and soldiers pushed kippa-clad boys away from the street.

"What the devil is going on", I asked a bystander.

“They are enforcing the day of rest, shouting ‘purity’ in Hebrew. Driving your car is forbidden."






I looked on in disbelief. A black SUV stopped in the middle of the scene and a sturdy Arab got out, brandishing a fist. Commotion ensued. Trembling with adrenaline, I took this picure when a boy pointed at me and shrieked, making heads turn.

This chaos is a regular occurence on the fringes of Mea Shearim, the city's Hassidic district. State authorities dispatch soldiers to protect its citizens, including less traditionalistic Jews, from the orthodox zealotry. Software engineer Neta S. from Tel Aviv told me: "On a weekend trip to Jerusalem we got lost with our car, and our GPS directed us past Mea Shearim. Groups of men shouted at us and we got scared they would attack. It felt surreal."

The ultra-orthodox make up a tenth of Israel's population. Exempt from military service, 60% of male Hassids live off state subsidies for full-time Torah study. Maybe this helps to explain excess energy on a Saturday, or the wrath against the feeding hand of a secular military state. And with a birth rate of 7.9 children per family, the Hassids' political influence is growing just as their upkeep is becoming increasingly unsustainable for Israel's economy. A situation heading for escalation.

After more screams and scuffling, I watch the Arab man get back into his car and drive off. Slowly the sun withdraws from the city as the groups disperse. Silence returns to the streets. For now.

Mastery en masse

Last night I went to see The Master and Margarita, staged by theatre group Complicite. I'd heard whispers about the group's genius and reliably sold out shows, but having read the novel - erratic and insane - I was sceptical about a successful adaptation.

I cannot remember I ever saw more compelling theatre. It felt like a circus full of mad enthusiasm, as surreal and gripping as Michael Bulgakow's 1930s novel.



Russian edition of The Master and Margarita by Michael Bulgakow


The Devil comes to Moscow and wreaks havoc. Heads come off, a cat swears in Cockney, and Jesus meets Pontius Pilate. A love story threads through the chaos.

A complex plot requires courage, and Complicite has it en masse. Stunning video and light projections, contemporary music (Rolling Stones, anyone?), and set changes which defy counting - this is 21st century theatre with balls.

How do you show Margarita flying naked through the skies of Moscow? How do you make three hours feel like a short dance with the Devil?

Margarita clutching Master - and his novel
Copyright Tristram Kenton

Start queueing for return tickets.

At the Barbican, until 7 April.

Disposable again

Amanda, 25th birthday drinks.