New York City after the last terrorist attack and before the next: is it like Berlin between the wars? A group of actors and muscians in lower Manhattan think so, and they have constructed a Berlin cabaret in the Spiegeltent by the South Street Seaport. Inside the Spiegeltent they labor to (re)create the atmosphere of desperate sexual euphoria of Weimar Berlin:
"Late tonight, in a makeshift theater in a deserted neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, a male burlesque artist will doff his pants, a group of androgynous go-go dancers will twirl around the stage, and an African-American artist will perform in blackface. This weekend, in a dark club a few neighborhoods to the north, a taut, shirtless M.C. will prowl around — and on — his audience, recommending sexual adventures in song. And in the fall a traveling troupe of two dozen baroquely dressed stars will do vaudeville-era numbers as an acrobat spins overhead.
These performances share a certain louche look and feel: smudged eyeliner and torn fishnets, bared flesh and innuendo, a vaguely antique setting and a winking — or smirking — nod to the politics of today.
They are all part of an emerging downtown trend, as cabaret acts superimpose a risqué German style onto the performance art and theater scene below 14th Street."
New Yorkers do indeed have a similar sense of doom and foreboding that Berliners had as the Weimar Republic was collapsing around them. Still, in a way it's too bad that these New York artists turn to the past to find expressions of "creative resistance" rather than creating something new. On the other hand, this darker form of entertainment is a relief from the Disney-like atsmosphere of sanatized TImes Square.
Coming on the heels of the Glitter and Doom exhibit of Weimar paintings, Neo Rauch at the Met, and Frank Wedekind on Broadway, the German domination of the Manhattan cultural scene appears complete.
so unterschiedlich sind die vorstellungen von den "goldenen zwanzigern" ...
Posted by: erphschwester | July 22, 2007 at 06:29 AM