Dancing on Ashes is the title of a series of staged literature performances that is an important part of the Angel Meat project.
Its name comes from the fictional radical cabaret show (also called the Lumpenkabarett) that appears in all the story-lines of Angel Meat, and to which all the characters are related in a way or another.
Its name comes from the fictional radical cabaret show (also called the Lumpenkabarett) that appears in all the story-lines of Angel Meat, and to which all the characters are related in a way or another.
* * *
Dancing on Ashes (Welcome to)
Aika is a little bit from everywhere
She doesn’t want it, but she’s a little bit from everywhere
Aika is genetically cool
She can’t really do anything else, but this she does perfectly
In such a cool world, she even can make a living out of it
But then she can never leave
She can never leave the cool world
Tonight Aika is at the Lumpenkabarett
Because it’s the cool place to be
And of course, she’s a friend of one of the musicians
The one with the spooky make up
(And she is a friend of the sister of the PR of the place
Who sometimes subcontracts the cabaret program layout to her)
When Aika entered the cabaret,
She noticed right away this hip costume designer
She absolutely has to talk to him after the show
Boris first of all checks the outfits he made for the show
The chick with the flute is going to dance at some point
That’s why he put zippers on the sides of the leather mini
Quite sexy for a girl, Boris thinks absent-mindedly
Somehow he dumbly expected actual glowing cinder on the ground
I’d put her in a see-through black lace Victorian dress, he chuckles
Boris discretely takes a photo with his iPhone
It will be on his blog tonight
When does the show really start? he mutters
Boris looks around
And gets a glimpse of the girl with the tattoo on her face
Somewhere at a table in the back of the Lumpenkabarett
Fuck, Skullface looks as serene as ever
How does she do that? he wonders
Skullface appreciates the fact that people in the audience are so quiet
So far she enjoys the show – its slow unravelling
She likes this kind of focused work, it helps her to refocus
It’s easy to lose your point even when you have an imperious agenda
She’s so used to being looked at with her eerie face tattoo
That she herself became a very good watcher
But tonight Skullface worries that people will think
That she’s part of the show or something
And then she gets angry at herself
For having such insignificant thoughts
And tries to forget herself
And to open her soul to what happens on stage
Johanna is not at the Cabaret show tonight, of course
Later she will be on Das Erste again
Guest starring on Harald Schmidt’s new night-show
For the moment Johanna is still in her apartment in Cologne
She just sits still and concentrates
The people around her spontaneously became silent themselves
Like always
She just wears a long white cotton tunic
Like always
That she will drop when she enters the TV set
Like always
Because she is the naked truth
Because she is dressed with the sky
Dressed with the four cardinal points
Because when she comes naked into the spotlights and speaks
They listen to her
They let her preach about the malevolence in our consumerist society
They let her tell her story again, because that’s what the audience wants
Because she is the last TV guru
But they don’t get that she could really be the last TV guru
Still, she’s missing the Lumpenkabarett show tonight
And then the flute player puts the flute on the floor
And starts a slow dance
And Aika watches but she doesn’t see her
She sees Iggy Pop and she sees Akira Kasai
And she sees herself at the age of 10
And Boris feels drawn to the dance
He feels his thigh muscles contract in unison with her movements
And Skullface notes how the dancer’s movements create
A strange cluster of invisible lines in space
Lines and shapes that grow their own liveliness
And Johanna would have observed how the smoke slowly stirs on stage
And wraps the artists and the audience in an almost mystical fragrance
And Aika loves the transparent black Thunderbird bass
Everything on stage seems to revolve around it now
And Boris remembers the taste of his new lover last night
Then he observes himself remembering, then he dives into himself
And something in Skullface thinks of how the aspen leaves tremble
In the late spring breeze up north
And Johanna could have felt something about humility and casualness
That she will never reach again
And Aika marvels at the sight of a rotating wrist
And Boris hasn’t ever been so at peace for months
And Skullface feels like going home to work right now
And Johanna is told that the limo is waiting
And the dancer leaves the stage, the musician stops playing and it’s over.
premiered in Projectraum Römerstrasse, Stuttgart, December 2009
conception, direction, text and music: Ines Birkhan, Bertram Dhellemmes
choreography, dance, flute: Ines Birkhan
theremin, bass: Bertram Dhellemmes
Dancing on Ashes (North)
Just imagine a cold morning, a very cold one
After a wild party in the woods, a wild wild one
The cabin reeks of cold tobacco, sweat, spilled beer and kerosene
Skullface - who is not Skullface yet, but will be very soon -
Wakes up from pain, then cold, then more pain
The kerosene heater is far from enough, the wood fire is dead
She has to pick a few logs outside to start a new one
Or these drunken morons will freeze to death
Adrift in the vapors of their alcoholic sleep
Her face is burning like hell
She also feels frozen and nauseated, but this is more familiar
Wrapped in a rough blanket over the clothes she slept in
(For at least five days now)
She loosely puts on her army boots and drags her feet to the door
She stands shivering a couple of minutes in the doorway
Staring at what seems to her an almost petrified forest
Until she notices the liveliness of morning birds’ singing
Moving has reactivated her blood circulation
And revives the pain, and blood starts to drip on her face
She enjoys every bit of it
Because she wanted it so badly
And now she is the queen of her tribe
She reached the acme of her street credibility
And she’s lost forever to the Christian capitalist bourgeois society
She can’t smile because of the crusts on her lips
She puts three logs in the rusted cast iron stove
And adds a glass of kerosene to start a quick fire
They won’t call her Snow White anymore
Like these suckers used to
And they won’t call her the Austrian Virgin anymore
(She used to pretend to be a virgin
It aroused the guys
Who talked of sacrificing her to Satan, or Odin, or Hitler
But of course she hadn’t been a virgin for a while already
Wasn’t she raised in the Commune
Under the rule of free love?)
She softly touches her swollen face with icy fingertips
It relieves the pain for a short while
She has a pocket mirror somewhere in her rucksack
But she wants to feel it from the inside before seeing it
And she knows that for a few days
Her face will be bruised and bleeding
Right now she probably looks as scary as the Krampus
The devil that hunts children on the 5th of December
Every year she expected and feared its celebration
When she visited her grand parents in the Berchtesgadener Alps
She also brought some healing cream and her favorite painkillers
But yesterday’s cheap and strong Estonian vodka
Still keeps her numb enough for the moment
A growl comes from one of the human shapes
Cocooned in sleeping bags on the cabin’s floor
It’s big Varulv, who spent half of the night
Drunkenly screaming to the trees
His hatred of humans and society and above all Christians
Varulv who sang of destruction and blood and fire
Imploring unresponsive Nordic Gods to assist him
In his desperate fight against Christian capitalist nihilism
That allows the weak to rule the powerful
In Norwegian police files
Varulv is recorded as the leader of this Black Metal gang
That gather today in the woods north of Lillehammer
Half celebrating loose spring rites
And actually half running from the police
After the last wooden church arson reactivated
The media’s hysteria against the rising Black Metal Satanism
And the gang’s latent and constitutive paranoia
She plays with the thought of Varulv’s reaction
When he sees her ravaged face
Despite his outrageously staged misanthropy
He’s a sensitive and ambiguous boy
Though struggling with his appetite for personal power
He will love her and hate her for what she did
She will be the living icon of this gang of wrecked kids
She who sacrificed her juvenile beauty to the Darkness
When most of them are mere turbulent teenagers
On vacation from dull parents, schools and futures
But where she’s from, standards are different
Otto will hate her, she can tell for sure
For the same reasons that Varulv will
Because she overpowered them
The old Viennese actionist
And the young Black Metal thug
She is both a living piece of art walking the earth
And a bloody spit at the face of society
And she did it alone, she’s only sixteen and already far ahead
Well she did it almost alone
The Russian guy who tattooed her claims to have learnt his art
In a Uralian gulag
Not a political prisoner though, but what they called a hooligan
A street kid re-educated in camps
Who learned to love the Soviet Union like the mother he never had
And still does, though it has collapsed a couple of years ago
He had plenty of tattoo practice on his fellow zeks
Including shocking face tattoos
Once relocated in the west (it’s not clear how this happened)
He realized that there, tattooing pays much better than thievery
The metalhead kids in Oslo love his genuine Mafiya tattoos
They line up in front of his tiny shop to get inked
And they invite him to their crazy parties
Sometimes they do quite scare him
These little spoiled brats have no principles and no limits
The girls are particularly scary
In Motherland they never had to display this level of machismo
The German one he’s tattooed last night
Seemed to have plotted for months
For this conjunction to happen
The group of kids gathering in the forest away from Oslo
Him invited to supposedly the wildest party ever
The presence of an unusual amount of fierce alcohol
Everybody collapsing a little bit to soon
Himself drunk enough to be convinced to do a face tattoo
On an under-aged runaway
(He would never have done this in his renowned tattoo parlor
In fear of loosing his license – wild days are behind!)
But still he was able to hold firmly the needle and draw the lines
Of a stylized skull
On this pretty face.
Dancing on Ashes (Amsterdam)
A few months before she flies to Java
To die on the land of her ancestors
(Well not exactly her ancestors but this is another story)
A land she never visited before
Or doesn’t know much about actually
Yu is in Amsterdam
She just had the confirmation that her Jonson syndrome
Has reached the lethal point she feared all her short life
Since her parents’ restaurant on Zeedijk closed
She hardly goes back to the Red Light District
And not at all since the dance studio on Koestraat closed as well
That was a couple years ago, and things changed a lot since
The new city council, under the pressure of EU
Started the gentrification process of the area
Now at least a third of the famous windows
Are rented to fashion designers
Who probably think they are so cool and daring
To share the district with prostitutes and drug dealers
Like on American TV series
Now the only guys dressed like pimps in the place
Are hyped young trendsetters and art students
Between their flea market phase and the minimalist one
Yu also used to wear layers of 1€ clothes from Waterlooplein
She wore hideous woollen skirts over Adidas pants cut knee-high
Over ragged jeans stuck in big flashy leg warmers
And AFC Ajax scarf and ski cap she was particularly fond of
Today for the very first time she wears heels and a miniskirt
(It’s springtime in A’dam)
Because on the list of what she has to do before dying
There are a few things related to sex
First Yu passes by Oudekerkplein
To see this renowned anonymous ground sculpture
Of a hand grabbing a tit
Today she takes the time to really look at it
And slowly she feels the bronze hand
Holding her own bronze breast
First she expects to sense nothing
Like usually
Dreadfulness and excitement cancelling each other
But today in this sluttish outfit
Yu catches something different
Something violent
Rising through her shielded perception
As she stands over the sculpture
A fat black woman in a white lace basque
Looks at her from her window, smiling
Strangely she reminds her of these Matongué mamas
Who board Euroline coaches at the Brussels bus stop
Then she remembers this trip a few years ago
When she first met this girl with the tattoo on her face
Who called her Buddhaface
Like Yu was the special one
By then the stone Buddha had already started growing in her
And had already taken control of her heart
And brain
And body
And face
Now, before the weight of the mineral Buddha
Drags her to the tomb
She must start her own quest
And experience… well, everything
Or at least something else
But there’s nothing she can share anymore
Neither with friend or lover
She was never deprived of either
She was always eager to bathe herself in warm feelings
But now she’s beyond that
Beyond the illusion of love and friendship
Now it’s time for the body to be crude and raw and free
Yu walks by the sex-shop windows along the Voorburgwal
As a teenager she used to come around with her gang
Pointing at giant dildos, crotchless panties and riding crops
Bursting into laughter and squeaky screams
Hissed away by half-irritated half-amused hookers
Alone she’d usually just look straight and walk slightly faster
Today she stops and looks for good
She looks to see and see beyond
The whole city revolves around merchandised sex
And later in school when amongst a group of foreign students
It’s understood that you talk casually and slightly blasé
About sex toys, porn, prostitution, group sex and stuff
But kids have a way here to develop selective blindness
About grown-up matters, and later on it’s simpler to go on like this
So today she really looks
For the first time
She tries to imagine manufactured objects loving her
How their technological indifference would be stimulating
She tries to imagine herself attired in fishnet and rubber
Warmth underlaid by cold and soft by hard
Being exposed in this ineptly inverted intimacy
Would somehow feel right again in our upside-down reality
Yu checks around if people noticed her staring at a window
But here it’s all very normal, and it looks mostly
Like a cheap souvenir shop window
For loudmouth Russian businessmen who couldn’t come home
Without a penis-shaped crystal bong and a few salacious stories
And aroused French couples on extended weekend trips
Yu wants to get inside one of these shops
But not a cheap one with plastic day-glow gadgets and pink lace
So she walks around to find a more attractive place
Until she remembers
That the only shops that are not targeted at philistines
Sell fetish clothes and bondage accessories
Then she knows where to go
Yu contemplates a wall-display covered with leather masks
Surgical steel butt-plugs, handcuffs, anal hooks, ball-gags, whips
Corsets, slave collars, hoods, chain harnesses, chastity belts,
Cock rings and cages, nipple clamps, leg-spreaders, straps, ropes
Strap-on dildos, spanking skirts, love balls and designer sex toys
Slightly high with the heady smell of rubber
A part of her feels overwhelmed
But mostly she feels distant and a little bit sad
As if all this belongs to a past that never occurred
She can’t be burdened with objects
She can’t be hidden or disguised
She’s standing there for a long while in front of this love weaponry
As if entranced
The shop hostess leaves her alone
A pretty, sexy and seemingly crazy Asian girl
Staring at the complete paraphernalia
Meant to turn her into the ultimate sex slave
This is good for business
Yu knows now what she was looking for in the Red Light District
She wants to be looked at
With nothing between her and the viewer
No clothes, no dance, no love, no feelings
She wants to be freed from saṃsāra
She doesn’t want to think too much because she will be scared
She has to do it right now
She remembers this club on Warmoesstraat
A kind of underground place mixing sex shows and cabaret
One or two girls from school have been dancing there
For the thrills, quick money and street credibility
It is open 24/7, but you have to know how to find it
They pretend to be illegal, that’s the best advertisement
This strong stench of beer yeast and sweat
People have to get used to since smoking is forbidden
Rises from the descending staircase
In the hall there are big photos of live sex acts from the 80s
And black and white posters announcing the current show
“Dancing on Ashes” aka “the Lumpenkabarett”
The room is very dark but the stage is brightly lit
A half-naked girl in kabuki make-up just stepped in the spotlights
Yu sits at the table closest to the entrance door
And waits for the end of the sketch to try to get noticed by the crew.
After a wild party in the woods, a wild wild one
The cabin reeks of cold tobacco, sweat, spilled beer and kerosene
Skullface - who is not Skullface yet, but will be very soon -
Wakes up from pain, then cold, then more pain
The kerosene heater is far from enough, the wood fire is dead
She has to pick a few logs outside to start a new one
Or these drunken morons will freeze to death
Adrift in the vapors of their alcoholic sleep
Her face is burning like hell
She also feels frozen and nauseated, but this is more familiar
Wrapped in a rough blanket over the clothes she slept in
(For at least five days now)
She loosely puts on her army boots and drags her feet to the door
She stands shivering a couple of minutes in the doorway
Staring at what seems to her an almost petrified forest
Until she notices the liveliness of morning birds’ singing
Moving has reactivated her blood circulation
And revives the pain, and blood starts to drip on her face
She enjoys every bit of it
Because she wanted it so badly
And now she is the queen of her tribe
She reached the acme of her street credibility
And she’s lost forever to the Christian capitalist bourgeois society
She can’t smile because of the crusts on her lips
She puts three logs in the rusted cast iron stove
And adds a glass of kerosene to start a quick fire
They won’t call her Snow White anymore
Like these suckers used to
And they won’t call her the Austrian Virgin anymore
(She used to pretend to be a virgin
It aroused the guys
Who talked of sacrificing her to Satan, or Odin, or Hitler
But of course she hadn’t been a virgin for a while already
Wasn’t she raised in the Commune
Under the rule of free love?)
She softly touches her swollen face with icy fingertips
It relieves the pain for a short while
She has a pocket mirror somewhere in her rucksack
But she wants to feel it from the inside before seeing it
And she knows that for a few days
Her face will be bruised and bleeding
Right now she probably looks as scary as the Krampus
The devil that hunts children on the 5th of December
Every year she expected and feared its celebration
When she visited her grand parents in the Berchtesgadener Alps
She also brought some healing cream and her favorite painkillers
But yesterday’s cheap and strong Estonian vodka
Still keeps her numb enough for the moment
A growl comes from one of the human shapes
Cocooned in sleeping bags on the cabin’s floor
It’s big Varulv, who spent half of the night
Drunkenly screaming to the trees
His hatred of humans and society and above all Christians
Varulv who sang of destruction and blood and fire
Imploring unresponsive Nordic Gods to assist him
In his desperate fight against Christian capitalist nihilism
That allows the weak to rule the powerful
In Norwegian police files
Varulv is recorded as the leader of this Black Metal gang
That gather today in the woods north of Lillehammer
Half celebrating loose spring rites
And actually half running from the police
After the last wooden church arson reactivated
The media’s hysteria against the rising Black Metal Satanism
And the gang’s latent and constitutive paranoia
She plays with the thought of Varulv’s reaction
When he sees her ravaged face
Despite his outrageously staged misanthropy
He’s a sensitive and ambiguous boy
Though struggling with his appetite for personal power
He will love her and hate her for what she did
She will be the living icon of this gang of wrecked kids
She who sacrificed her juvenile beauty to the Darkness
When most of them are mere turbulent teenagers
On vacation from dull parents, schools and futures
But where she’s from, standards are different
Otto will hate her, she can tell for sure
For the same reasons that Varulv will
Because she overpowered them
The old Viennese actionist
And the young Black Metal thug
She is both a living piece of art walking the earth
And a bloody spit at the face of society
And she did it alone, she’s only sixteen and already far ahead
Well she did it almost alone
The Russian guy who tattooed her claims to have learnt his art
In a Uralian gulag
Not a political prisoner though, but what they called a hooligan
A street kid re-educated in camps
Who learned to love the Soviet Union like the mother he never had
And still does, though it has collapsed a couple of years ago
He had plenty of tattoo practice on his fellow zeks
Including shocking face tattoos
Once relocated in the west (it’s not clear how this happened)
He realized that there, tattooing pays much better than thievery
The metalhead kids in Oslo love his genuine Mafiya tattoos
They line up in front of his tiny shop to get inked
And they invite him to their crazy parties
Sometimes they do quite scare him
These little spoiled brats have no principles and no limits
The girls are particularly scary
In Motherland they never had to display this level of machismo
The German one he’s tattooed last night
Seemed to have plotted for months
For this conjunction to happen
The group of kids gathering in the forest away from Oslo
Him invited to supposedly the wildest party ever
The presence of an unusual amount of fierce alcohol
Everybody collapsing a little bit to soon
Himself drunk enough to be convinced to do a face tattoo
On an under-aged runaway
(He would never have done this in his renowned tattoo parlor
In fear of loosing his license – wild days are behind!)
But still he was able to hold firmly the needle and draw the lines
Of a stylized skull
On this pretty face.
premiered in Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, January 2010
conception, direction, text and music: Ines Birkhan, Bertram Dhellemmes
choreography, dance, flute: Ines Birkhan
guitar, bass: Bertram Dhellemmes
Dancing on Ashes (Amsterdam)
To die on the land of her ancestors
(Well not exactly her ancestors but this is another story)
A land she never visited before
Or doesn’t know much about actually
Yu is in Amsterdam
She just had the confirmation that her Jonson syndrome
Has reached the lethal point she feared all her short life
Since her parents’ restaurant on Zeedijk closed
She hardly goes back to the Red Light District
And not at all since the dance studio on Koestraat closed as well
That was a couple years ago, and things changed a lot since
The new city council, under the pressure of EU
Started the gentrification process of the area
Now at least a third of the famous windows
Are rented to fashion designers
Who probably think they are so cool and daring
To share the district with prostitutes and drug dealers
Like on American TV series
Now the only guys dressed like pimps in the place
Are hyped young trendsetters and art students
Between their flea market phase and the minimalist one
Yu also used to wear layers of 1€ clothes from Waterlooplein
She wore hideous woollen skirts over Adidas pants cut knee-high
Over ragged jeans stuck in big flashy leg warmers
And AFC Ajax scarf and ski cap she was particularly fond of
Today for the very first time she wears heels and a miniskirt
(It’s springtime in A’dam)
Because on the list of what she has to do before dying
There are a few things related to sex
First Yu passes by Oudekerkplein
To see this renowned anonymous ground sculpture
Of a hand grabbing a tit
Today she takes the time to really look at it
And slowly she feels the bronze hand
Holding her own bronze breast
First she expects to sense nothing
Like usually
Dreadfulness and excitement cancelling each other
But today in this sluttish outfit
Yu catches something different
Something violent
Rising through her shielded perception
As she stands over the sculpture
A fat black woman in a white lace basque
Looks at her from her window, smiling
Strangely she reminds her of these Matongué mamas
Who board Euroline coaches at the Brussels bus stop
Then she remembers this trip a few years ago
When she first met this girl with the tattoo on her face
Who called her Buddhaface
Like Yu was the special one
By then the stone Buddha had already started growing in her
And had already taken control of her heart
And brain
And body
And face
Now, before the weight of the mineral Buddha
Drags her to the tomb
She must start her own quest
And experience… well, everything
Or at least something else
But there’s nothing she can share anymore
Neither with friend or lover
She was never deprived of either
She was always eager to bathe herself in warm feelings
But now she’s beyond that
Beyond the illusion of love and friendship
Now it’s time for the body to be crude and raw and free
Yu walks by the sex-shop windows along the Voorburgwal
As a teenager she used to come around with her gang
Pointing at giant dildos, crotchless panties and riding crops
Bursting into laughter and squeaky screams
Hissed away by half-irritated half-amused hookers
Alone she’d usually just look straight and walk slightly faster
Today she stops and looks for good
She looks to see and see beyond
The whole city revolves around merchandised sex
And later in school when amongst a group of foreign students
It’s understood that you talk casually and slightly blasé
About sex toys, porn, prostitution, group sex and stuff
But kids have a way here to develop selective blindness
About grown-up matters, and later on it’s simpler to go on like this
So today she really looks
For the first time
She tries to imagine manufactured objects loving her
How their technological indifference would be stimulating
She tries to imagine herself attired in fishnet and rubber
Warmth underlaid by cold and soft by hard
Being exposed in this ineptly inverted intimacy
Would somehow feel right again in our upside-down reality
Yu checks around if people noticed her staring at a window
But here it’s all very normal, and it looks mostly
Like a cheap souvenir shop window
For loudmouth Russian businessmen who couldn’t come home
Without a penis-shaped crystal bong and a few salacious stories
And aroused French couples on extended weekend trips
Yu wants to get inside one of these shops
But not a cheap one with plastic day-glow gadgets and pink lace
So she walks around to find a more attractive place
Until she remembers
That the only shops that are not targeted at philistines
Sell fetish clothes and bondage accessories
Then she knows where to go
Yu contemplates a wall-display covered with leather masks
Surgical steel butt-plugs, handcuffs, anal hooks, ball-gags, whips
Corsets, slave collars, hoods, chain harnesses, chastity belts,
Cock rings and cages, nipple clamps, leg-spreaders, straps, ropes
Strap-on dildos, spanking skirts, love balls and designer sex toys
Slightly high with the heady smell of rubber
A part of her feels overwhelmed
But mostly she feels distant and a little bit sad
As if all this belongs to a past that never occurred
She can’t be burdened with objects
She can’t be hidden or disguised
She’s standing there for a long while in front of this love weaponry
As if entranced
The shop hostess leaves her alone
A pretty, sexy and seemingly crazy Asian girl
Staring at the complete paraphernalia
Meant to turn her into the ultimate sex slave
This is good for business
Yu knows now what she was looking for in the Red Light District
She wants to be looked at
With nothing between her and the viewer
No clothes, no dance, no love, no feelings
She wants to be freed from saṃsāra
She doesn’t want to think too much because she will be scared
She has to do it right now
She remembers this club on Warmoesstraat
A kind of underground place mixing sex shows and cabaret
One or two girls from school have been dancing there
For the thrills, quick money and street credibility
It is open 24/7, but you have to know how to find it
They pretend to be illegal, that’s the best advertisement
This strong stench of beer yeast and sweat
People have to get used to since smoking is forbidden
Rises from the descending staircase
In the hall there are big photos of live sex acts from the 80s
And black and white posters announcing the current show
“Dancing on Ashes” aka “the Lumpenkabarett”
The room is very dark but the stage is brightly lit
A half-naked girl in kabuki make-up just stepped in the spotlights
Yu sits at the table closest to the entrance door
And waits for the end of the sketch to try to get noticed by the crew.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Lumpenkabarett, thank you for paying us a visit – thank you for paying anyway! After all, that’s what you do: you’ve been working like morons all day long to pay your boss’s sex tour in Bangkok next month, and to pay your taxes so Lumpenproletarien and artists can survive on public subsidies.
Anyway, this is one of the few happy times you’ll have this year, so, let’s have fun…
This is the Lumpenkabarett, here we have sharp Kunst, good music and hot ladies, such as I. And I tell you, people, it’s good to be a lady. I say, I feel sorry for the men here but really it’s so good to be a woman. Only a woman can look beautiful and dignified in heels and stockings, on all four, gagged and chained in the basement with a ponytail butt-plug stuck in the ass. I can tell you, I was there 10 minutes ago!
Much joy in being a woman, indeed, and again, I feel sorry for men! The problem with guys is that they only have one dick, this is far from enough! We know it, they know it, that’s where all the trouble starts. So the smart ones comfort each other, and we girls are left with the dumb ones! Oh, what a misery.
Dumb for dumb, that is why many ladies choose to have a special friend that comes without any annoying side effects. So do I, so let me introduce you, not with but to my best friend here… I always carry him around, not in my pocket though, he doesn’t fit in my pocket, of course – otherwise he wouldn’t be my best friend! You know, size matters… So hey, this is G., say hello to G! He is always on the spot, dear little darling! He’s so cute, he’s like a liquorice popsicle.
G. is a little bit fat and needs to exercise, so we train together everyday, but not too much because I want him to stay a little bit fat… Well yes, men take pride in having a long cock, but of course ladies, we know, it is the width that matters. It has to be a bit difficult to be enjoyable, doesn’t it? Ladies, tell this to your partners, it’s time the truth comes into daylight! Anyway, I do try not to use it too much because I want to stay tight like a politician’s grip on power.
What? What do you say, G.? I talk too much? But little darling, that’s what I’m here for! No, the live sex show is later, sorry… What, you think you know how to make me shut up? But you’re too big to fit in my mouth, naughty boy, aren’t you? But if you think (mumble)… well that’s all right with me. Oh lala, anyway, let’s go on now.
I can see you all marvel at this beauty, who would not? Yes I will share it; I already have a date tonight actually. Yes, with you lady, you with the white blouse! You can come backstage after the show, like we agreed, G. will happily service you while you lick my pussy; I just had it waxed and it’s smooth like George Bush’s brainwave. I’ve always been very anti-bush… And if you’re not vigilant, it can come back without you noticing! What, your husband wants to come too? No problem, I just wanted to try a new trick with gaffer-tape that I learned yesterday from Herr Bürgermeister… Well, OK, where was I?
And now, ladies and gentlemen! It is high time to introduce my other best friend. For G. would be a lonely little boy and I would be of course a frustrated little girl without our dear friend Hans-Heinrich - better threesome than lonesome. Hello Hans-Heinrich, say hello to our lovely audience. Don’t be upset with the spotlights, I know that you’re more used to darker places, but this is the Lumpenkabarett, everything must go into the light!
As you can see Hans-Heinrich is a sophisticated fellow, a beautiful synthesis of technology, anatomy and fantasy and – sorry G., I need my two hands so I must stick you there for a while… - he can serve a variety of purposes that are all highly enjoyable. He’s an honorable whip and a fantastic butt-plug for pony play. He’s also slightly oversized for an honorable lady such as I, but everything is in the process, very slow and lubricated. But it’s getting too intimate, isn’t it?
You know, you often hear that in love, I mean in sex… actually, no, in love, the foreplay is very important. Well, this is not true, the foreplay is actually everything! And for people like me, the foreplay is happening all the time. Night and day, everything I do, whatever I wear, it’s always a part of the foreplay. That’s also why I’m here in front of you in the Lumpenkabarett, ladies and gentlemen, when I’m on stage I’m making love to you… That doesn’t mean that you make love to me, but hey, one has to choose her side!
But it’s getting late, people, it’s time to get a good resting night because you start working at dawn tomorrow. So a light dinner, a little honeyfuck and hop into bed! And me? I must now satisfy my little friends, for we have a rule, they can never go back to their scabbards without being used… So, duty calls, bye-bye!”
premiered in Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, March 2010
conception, direction, text: Ines Birkhan, Bertram Dhellemmes
acting: Ines Birkhan
scenography, music, video: Bertram Dhellemmes
Dancing on Ashes (Lovers)
‘Should someone ask me about my occupation,
I would say that I’m a lover’ she indulges in saying
‘Love is always what draws the course of my life’
Devyani looks at the sweating bodies around her
Senses the mix of excitement and exhaustion
After two hours of exhilarating dance
Precise stepping, grounded feet, nimble legs
Intricate and expressive waving arms
Hands and fingers telling tales of desire
Swinging hips and bouncing breasts
Serpentine spines and floating heads
Lascivious eyes and fluttering eyelashes…
‘Some women have to sweat more than others
to get a grip on their desires’ she often tells her students
Now Devyani asks them with a soft and smiling voice
To sit in the cross legged position - or the lotus for those who can
In order to close the session with a breathing exercise
‘Close your eyes and, as in the beginning of the class
Focus on your base chakra - the muladhara
Located between your anus and vagina
The root of Kundalini energy’
Her voice lowers and becomes monotonous, almost chanting
She allows herself a little bit of Hindi accent she otherwise doesn’t have
‘Breathe in through this center underneath the coccyx
The seat of the subconscious, the undiscovered
Where human and animal energies merge
And let your breath - prana - travel all the way up to...’
As she says so, she hears a deep and disdainful sigh
Ending in a little tongue click
‘All the way up to the sahasrara chakra at the crown of your head.’
A strong wave of bad vibes comes from Zsófia on the right
The girls sitting next to her seem slightly distressed
Though they try to remain concentrated and keep enjoying
The endorphin rush that brings fullness to the dance class
Devyani feels rising anger but continues talking with a toneless voice
‘Inhale and exhale deeply through your nose
Slow, deep inhalation
Slow and deep exhalation…’
Zsófia is not a dancer, but a trained yoga practitioner
Since she joined the class a few weeks ago
She’s been displaying righteous indignation at Devyani’s loose use
Of yogic concepts and terminology
Two weeks ago she started to argue in front of the other students
About mulabhanda, the perineal lock
How it totally didn’t make sense to introduce
Such an advanced Yogic practice to beginners
How dangerous it could become
And that she should know what kind of energies
She’s messing with, blah blah blah…
‘Zsófia you little fucker who do you think you are?
You think that you can teach me about the body!’ Devyani broods
Fuck me! I never meant to be a dance teacher
Any professional or just serious dancer could call me a fraud
But what I can teach to these white ass chicks makes them happy
It makes them feel alive and sexy
They will never be good dancers
Not the kind that can perform for an audience
But I can feel their sexuality and liveliness bloom through dance
It’s just beautiful’
Devyani loves women
She loves their hips, their breasts, their shoulders, their smiles
She finds vaginas the most complex yet beautiful thing ever
And the clitoris is an endless field of exploration – for her and others
With women she knows exactly what to share and when to surrender
She loves strong and sensual women, happy to be women
Women with jewels and tattoos (she’s a Suicide Girls early fan)
All the jobs she does for a living are about making women beautiful:
Nail paint, African style hair braiding, make-up for cabaret shows
This Bollywood dance class for Prinzlauerberg bachelorettes…
‘Thank you, Miladies, see you next week’
She lashes a significant stare at Zsófia with her kohl-laded eyes
And with a headshake invites her to stay in the studio
Zsófia starts folding her silken scarves on her thighs
Not looking at her until she comes near and starts to talk
‘Listen Zsófia, honestly I don’t give a shit about Yoga’
Devyani continues the conversation from the previous week
‘Indian people don’t practice Yoga anyway
Yoga is for white people, because yoga sells good
To me it is just another of these obscurantist burdens
That holds India back; it drains people from their desire
Inhibits sexuality, suppresses love and promotes submission
Who wants that but people like you, who have everything
And are not happy with it yet?’
Devyani surprises herself with the fierceness of her attack
She doesn’t really believe in what she says
But just wants to hurt the bitch and shut her up
‘But then why do you use pranayama and chakras?
And why wrongly, most of all?’ Zsófia laughs at her face
‘I just use these words to open up pathways
And it works; the hyper-oxygenation makes them high
And they have their dose of exotic mysticism!’
Zsófia shakes her head pityingly and inhales deeply
Obviously she prepares for a long principled speech
In the dressing room, the girls are giggling and trampling
They are now naked and like usual half wrestling, half tickling
Devyani lays her right hand on her thigh, loosening her arm
She lets her wide plain copper bangle slide over her wrist
And grips it tightly around her knuckles as an improvised cestus
A mean trick she made up in her street-fight years
And gave up for more than a decade
'Fuck Ahimsa' she snarls, and strikes Zsófia in the face.
Zsófia falls backwards on the floor, screeching with pain and shock
A bunch of startled naked girls rushes into the studio
Devyani stands there, surrounded by flustered nymphs
Her victim sobbing at her feet, her face in her hands
An ardent feeling of love and peace arising from deep inside
She closes her eyes and breathes deeply.
premiered in Sowieso Neukölln, Berlin, May 2010
conception, direction, text: Ines Birkhan, Bertram Dhellemmes
dance, music: Ines Birkhan
dramaturgy: Bertram Dhellemmes
Dancing on Ashes (Fascinus)
Had Skullface googled Alicja’s name
She would have put things together much sooner
But would that have changed anything?
Because of the tattoo on her face
Skullface is used to provoking strong reactions in people
Rejection or fascination, both actualizing in quite different ways
Over time, she built a complex combination of indifference –
Carefully dosed to not become cold, blasé or distant –
Vigilance – danger is never very far when you’re different –
And a slight taste of vanity that she prefers to acknowledge
Better than to be in denial
She has spotted Alicja for a while
The tall woman is around a little bit too much
As if she suddenly became the friend of all her friends
While obviously avoiding to get in direct contact with her
Skullface knows it will happen, but cannot figure out yet
What form it will take
She is not upset nor obsessed, just aware
It’s not the first time this happens
Then at some point Alicja is a good friend of Devyani
They share a taste for gossip, dirty talk and salacious innuendos
They hang together in straight bars and play flamboyant femmes
Devyani adopts Alicja’s trait of smoking cigars in an affected way
And her deep loose décolletés allowing occasional nipple slips
(Though with just slightly bigger breasts, Devyani lacks the chic of it)
Now when Alicja walks by the atelier – a few times a week! –
She casually waves hello through the window
But her face loses its mobility, like she tries to control herself
Skullface is used to Devyani’s posse of vivid lesbians
More the partying kind than LGTB rights militants
She likes most of them but doesn’t join often
After all, when she has a boyfriend
She doesn’t hang with people for the sake of their heterosexuality
So Alicja’s flirtatious ways with Devyani are quite familiar
Even if she’s a little overage for Girl Power plays
Then comes the opening of a craft arts exhibition
Where Skullface shows a few things she makes
In addition to her successful silver jewels line
On her spare time she fashions these ambiguous objects
Between evocative sculptures and one-off designer sex toys
Made of exotic woods and polished aluminium
She claims it’s not art, not sex toys either
They are not for use, though fully functional
And they are not for sale (but she keeps them
In a little display in her atelier, for occasional amateurs)
Alicja is there with Devyani and Boris and a few other friends
She wears a light grey pantsuit over a wide-open white blouse
A big chiseled bronze medallion rests between her breasts
And she has the gaze of a panther
She browses sneeringly through everything else in the show
Blowing the smoke of her thin cigarillo to the ceiling
Whispering comments to her friends who burst into laughter
Her trajectory is obviously calculated to reach Skullface’s window
After thirty minutes of display of her social skills
Skullface waits for her, chatting with a friend of her mother
Who comes to see everything she shows, buys her jewels
And even shows up regularly at the Cabaret
She usually feels a little bit embarrassed to talk about sexual topics
With elders, or anybody related to her family
But she likes the intensity of this woman
Who was an early member of the Commune
And an ardent advocate of its free sexuality rules
Of course Alicja cunningly manages to join the conversation
And almost without noticing
In spite of her awareness that it would happen
Skullface has her first conversation with her
Well not exactly a conversation actually
Alicja has a special way to inconspicuously control discussions
And have her interlocutor voice either a variation or her own opinion
Or a point that would allow her a brilliant contradiction
Her words are like chiseling blades reorganizing mental matter
And each of them comes with sharp hands and head movements
She shapes meanings with wide-open hands and tense fingers
Until they turn into objects that one could see and feel
But Skullface is somehow disappointed
In a way, she enjoyed Alicja’s slow and convoluted approach
She took it as a one of these gratuitous seduction games
She would never initiate herself but enjoys being the object of
And suddenly Alicja is all over and takes all the room
Skullface feels like she’s just another pretext
For the woman’s endless self-indulgence and inflated ego
Even though Alicja emphatically praises her sexual artifacts
Calling them ‘sacred objects devoted to a love cult’
‘Ultimate intermediates between organic and inorganic’
‘Timeless epitomes of human craftsmanship’
And even ‘cosmic communion prosthesis’
(But Skullface is not sure, she lost track at some point)
A circle of marveled listeners formed around them
Shaking heads and grinning in approval
As if Skullface should be proud and delighted to be the object
Of such brilliant understanding and appreciation
When she actually feels dispossessed and almost fooled
Sensing that beyond enthusiasm and flattery lays a hidden agenda
Then Alicja lets other people talk – mostly commenting on her words
She goes to the display and looks again carefully
At the shining curves of the stylized organic shapes
Thoughtfully tapping with a fingernail on the window
Seemingly struck by an unexpected aspect of Skullface’s work
She talks now to Devyani
But her voice is clearly understandable over the other conversations
As if carried on overhead by the smoke of her cigarillo
'You know, however beautiful these are, they lack something
Actually, they lack dangerousness
They can for sure fulfill aesthetic and physical high pleasures’
(As Alicja leans over the window, her blouse opens wider
And one can see the reflection of nipple piercing shields)
‘But for those who expect more from being alive
Willing to embrace life totally and reach the ultimate thrill
Hazard is what brings you to the heroic dimension
Out of which living is not really living
The one who could make such an object
Equally pleasurable and dangerous would be a great creator!’
By the time Alicja finishes her speech
Skullface managed to be in the courtyard
Smoking her cigarette-of-the-month and chatting with Boris
And clearly visible through the window – her back at least
After that episode, Devyani is away for a few weeks
Touring Western Europe with the Cabaret show
In charge of make-up, hairdressing, wardrobe and high spirits
Alicja manages to not have completely disappeared
She goes to a gym in the neighborhood or something
She sits at a café terrace near by with a pile of books and her laptop
Once she’s at the local flea market on Sundays
With an old lady that might well be her mother
(What seems to be a heroic demonstration of normality)
She waves casually, like she’s too busy to stop by but will soon
Then one day she materializes in Skullface’s workshop
Kisses her hello Belgian style as if it’s understood
And skipping the usual social talk, says straightforwardly:
‘I need you to help me with something’
‘Here we are’ Skullface thinks
‘You know my work at the Brandenburger Schlossmuseum
It’s not very sexy but still so inspiring for me
I’ve been busy for years with recreating ancient rites
And I’m tired of waiting until I find an institutional frame
To make an important project of mine happen’
She reaches to her designer bag and digs out a grey Muji notebook
Opens it to show a roughly scribbled sketch
‘I need to visualize an idea I have, and I can’t do it on my own
I need someone to make a model of an archeological excavation
Showing the extraction of an antique bigger than life bull statue’
Now Skullface is dumbfounded, she expected something dodgy
Some twisted scheme fitting to this bizarre woman
She often attracts morbid people tripping on her tattoo
Trying to involve her in some lame and macabre games
But Alicja seems too self-centered to credit her as special
And just needs her handicraft skills
That feels good, she has no reasons not to do it
A few hours work, reasonable money, quite an unusual project
Alicja talks about blank spots in European mythology
Three horned bulls Gaulish statuettes
Hermaphrodite white bulls dedicated to the moon
Zeus turning into a bull to ravish Europa across the sea
Only a couple of weeks later Devyani will tell Skullface
About Alicja’s personal understanding and practice of hierogamy
Her fantasy about having a sacred bull statue
Ridden by young lascivious bacchantes in full moon
Also how Alicja is absolutely dedicated to have
Her fantasies actualize, and how this attracts people to her
But by that time Skullface and Alicja were already tied.
conception, direction, text: Ines Birkhan, Bertram Dhellemmes
music: Marco Barotti (drums), Ines Birkhan (guitar, voice), Bertram Dhellemmes (bass)
Dancing on Ashes (Circle)
Johanna has always hated being named Johanna
She’d find it humiliating to be reminded
Of the lack of imagination of her parents
Each time someone would call her
(She would later benefit from this lack of imagination
Because no expectations meant no disappointment
They would be positively indifferent about her life choices)
So in her tomboy phase she called herself Jo
And she was still Jo when she evolved from tomboy to butch
And still Jo when she moved to Berlin to study at
The Dietrich Deich Institute for Optic Research
(Leading in laser engineering and one of its kind in Germany
The best way to leave Lower Saxony at eighteen)
But when she met Heike, she became Sheena
She feels grateful to Heike for this and many other things
Her love, her confidence, her passionate spirit
Her generosity, her sense of cool, her accuracy
Even her stubbornness and her lack of limits
When her sexual urges shift from kinky to twisted
With Heike, Sheena learned to let go
She could give up the hardcore dyke look she sported so far
And become half Punk-Rocker, half Queen-of-the-Jungle
Or whoever else she likes or just fancies for a while
She stopped defying the world and started enjoying herself
She was the one who introduced Roller Derby to the Circle
She even had a couple of affairs
That caused terrible rows with Heike
Followed by wholehearted reconciliations
The girls from the Circle were actually quite pissed at her
Because Heike has the status of a quasi-fairy godmother
She’s been there since the very beginning
And took part in the choice of their name
Runder Winkel –
The Rounded Triangle or Triangle Circle –
And amongst other things provides the Circle’s current HQ
A vacated storage in her building’s courtyard in Neukölln
Worth probably thrice the rent she pays for it
Since the area rose as hip Kreuzkölln
The reaction of the Circlettes unexpectedly upset Sheena
Until she figured out that these girls – however unlikely –
Had become her family, whose judgment she minds
At least her Sheena-self’s family
But Sheena is the one that matters now
Sheena is even happier about being Sheena
Since Johanna – the Johanna –
Took over the headlines
First with the Augean Stables big clean-up
When she exposed in a suicidal move
All the dirty secrets of the company she headed
And of the governments and corporates dealing with it
And made the whole system quake
Then there’ve been the lawsuits and the many side scandals
Then the shooting
And now Johanna is in her media guru phase
Appearing in all the TV talk-shows as the Naked Truth
Literally naked
Splitting the crowds into two irreconcilable blocs
Either fervent supporters, if not worshipers
Hoping she will pull down the whole system
Or just thinking that she’s so cool
Or those who despise her for being a fraud, a show-off
A traitor, an exhibitionist, a mythomaniac, a troublemonger
The Triangle Circle’s girls are quite equally split over Johanna
With as many supporters than opposers
But as usually within the group
There are as many positions as members
At the exception of Véronique
Who would always agree with Rosi
But with subs you never know when it is game
And when it is real
Tonight is the Triangle Circle’s weekly meeting –
Sheena is in charge of tidying and airing the den
The last issue of what they call a meeting was boosted
With alcohol, tobacco, MJ and generated much sweat –
And Johanna will be – again – the main topic
Because there is this gathering in a few weeks
There’ve been more and more of these over the last months
All over Germany, and a few in other European countries
But this one will be huge
There is a call to converge on Berlin this time
It’s one of these Facebook things without real organizers
That panic the authorities and the police
As always when they lack people to threaten and punish
It is acknowledged that the core of Johanna’s followers
Is composed of housewives, young pensioners
Unemployed graduates and teenage girls
And her later persona lost her all political credibility
But the social phenomena attracts more and more activists
And since the Berlin gathering is officially denounced
As illegal, seditious and dangerous for its participants
And drastic repression by the police is inevitable
The word propagates in the underground
That Black Blocs will get involved to righteously protect
The amateur protesters from the riot cops
The association of Johanna and Black Blocs
Will definitely stir the group tonight
It is obvious that Sabina will come up again
With her thing about starting an all-female Black Bloc
To not let all the fun and action go to the lads
And she will try again to talk some of the girls –
Mostly the Roller Derby players such as Sheena –
Into joining her project
Though the main agenda of the Circle
Is to sip beers and gossip in fine company
Give a hand to the Anti-Christopher Street Day Parade –
The alternative gay pride demonstration in Kreuzberg –
Or lately loudly cheerlead and celebrate the victories
Of the Berliner Arbeiterin Sportverein –
Sheena and Britta’s Roller Derby team for which
The Triangle Circle became an unofficial supporters’ club
Heike and Devyani being the most fervent
Heike because Sheena is the jammer of the team
And Devyani at first because she has an acknowledged fetish
For tattooed and pierced girls
(Though she herself never indulged in body modifications –
She considers that this belongs to white folks)
And she particularly loves neo-classic white trash Americana
En vogue amongst 21st century German Roller Derby players
Sheena will decline again Sabina’s proposition
There are enough bruises to heal (with kisses or arnica)
After a match to seek more from the police truncheons
And she can’t believe in mass action even if she understands
People’s need to imagine that they have a say in public affairs
And that they can make things better
She thinks that many different avant-gardes are needed
Some have to confront directly the Powers-that-Be
To make clear that the status quo is not acceptable
Some have to explore new paths
And create new ways for the common good
She hopes that she doesn’t abuse herself
That promoting sisterhood is a valuable personal duty
That celebrating joy, liveliness, beauty, freedom
Is not just a selfish agenda but can benefit everybody
That freeing people from bitterness, frustration, ignorance
Narrow-mindedness, inhibition, anhedonism or malice
Matters as much – if not more –
As redistributing the means of production
Of whatever else is supposed to give people
Control over their destinies
That’s what gives Sheena wings
As she whirls around the Roller Derby elliptical track
Slaloming between her Amazonian adversaries
Dressed in a vinyl miniskirt and fishnet tights
Wearing wheeled knee-high boots
A DDR-khaki T-shirt with rainbow strips along the arms
And a black leather peaked cap toping her pink dyed hair
Fueled by the wild cheers of her exhilarated gang
Flying to the victory with style and gusto.
premiered in NK, Berlin, June 2011
conception, direction, text, music (theremin): Bertram Dhellemmes
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