Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Monday, 15 March 2010

Crazy cabaret


Yesterday I went with a girl from my singing group to see the woman who runs our singing group perform with her band. They were playing in a really cute little venue called Schoko Laden (which incidentally is a really old performing venue now sadly under threat of closure). There were three performers in total and let's just say - it was an experience!!

The first performer was an Israeli sex worker/poet/journalist who proceeded to strip naked, stick a fire cracker up her arse and then wiggle her bum around as the sparks flit up the room! Interesting! lol

The second performer was also a spoken word/poetry performer - a guy dressed in drag who strutted round the small room screaming at audience members and generally being quite scary. A couple of points during his performance he came close to where I was sitting and I started getting worried he might make me stand up and do a couple of cart wheels in front of the audience. As it happened he settled on a woman in front of me to whom he leaned in close and suddenly let out an ear piercing scream (with a terrifying look of pure evil) before stroking her hair and saying how lovely she looked... I wasn't convinced he meant it! ;)

After he finished, the Israeli woman came back to the stage wearing a big baggy skirt. Then she sat down, leaned back and spread her legs akimbo to reveal ALL (I thought we were going to get one of those infamous ping-pong ball shows!) as she read a poem about how she was far more than a sex worker - she was also a writer and a poet. After that she donned a jilbab (the Muslim woman's head cover) and stripped the rest of her body naked again to reveal drawings of the different Middle Eastern countries. Then she danced around to the song 'Do you want a piece of me?'

I have to say that despite the initial gasps of shock, it was a very though provoking performance! It's always nice to be challenged - and this performance certainly did that!

Well then our singing group girl and her band came on and were really good. They sang a great little song called Windows which my friend was a huge fan of (kind of a Chicks on Speed type song - I'll try to get a link up!)

After they finished the other guy came back again. He was also pretty good I think. I'm a sucker for poetry so I found it all really interesting! I think he must have been a leo because he just didn't want to get down off that stage! After being told time was up and the venue had to close, he started arguing with the venue's manager and eventually asked people to join him in the bar afterwards... so a group of us sat around as he went through his notebook and read all the poems he could find - even the ones he hadn't finished yet. Eventually his friends got up to leave and shouted at him that he was going to miss the last u-bahn (tube). He didn't seem to mind though...

I really enjoyed listening to his poetry and was really glad I'd gone to the show!












(This picture is from another night but it gives you an idea of how cute the venue is!)

Friday, 5 March 2010

Sing song

I've been going to a little community choir which has been a lot of fun. Actually it's an English language choir but I've still got to meet some very nice Germans there. We went out for drinks last night for the first time and everyone seems really nice. I guess community choirs are a big thing in England so this is the emergence of that in Berlin - and it's set to be huge! Every week more and more people turn up so I guess the idea is really taking off. What better way to get to know people than through a good sing song!? And not a classical 'let's get this Mozart piece absolutely perfect' sort of way but just a very related sing your heart out, haphazard sort of sing song. Great stuff!

Anyway, we went for drinks afterwards and I was talking to a girl there who said she does 'on the spot feminist poetry' which I thought sounded pretty cool! She said she was doing it in a group and apparently someone just points in your direction and you have a couple of minutes to just some up with whatever sort of empowering womanly poetry that comes into your head. She was also telling me about poetry evenings that they have in bars in Berlin - similar to the poetry live mic nights that they have all over London. I was getting super excited about the idea so will definitely try to check that out sometime!!

Anyway, I was thinking today about the powerful woman thing. Whenever I get down or my career isn't going the way I want it to go or things aren't working out in other areas of my life, the word that goes through my head to make myself feel better is just to try to be strong - ok I know how dorky that sounds right about now, but that's just what comes to mind! But anyway, I think the words 'powerful woman' sound so much more... well, powerful. (For some reason the word strong seems to conjure up images of just about hanging on in there for dear life - I guess it's just more of a passive word)

So I was thinking very generally about the powerful woman thing today and whooosh! I got sooo much work done I was pretty amazed - five freelance story proposals sent out, rang round a few magazines, worked on my German vocab, read some German magazines, sent off those emails I'd been putting off for a while... I guess they're only words but your inner dialogue can have a bit effect!