Phoneyisland Cabaret

Berlin is well known for its cabaret scene. But for those of you who don’t know, a cabaret (not cabernet- that’s wine) is a show consisting of singing, dancing, comedy, or other random acts. Of course, being in Berlin, I had to perform at a cabaret at least a few times. My first performance was at the Phoneyisland Cabaret at the So Wei So Bar. They had quite the crazy puppet show that night. We’re talking goblin in a tutu, or something to that affect. It got even better when the puppeteer made out with the goblin. I don’t even know what kind of fetish you’d classify that under.
There was also a guy doing spoken word- in German- so I didn’t understand any of it except for the one English sentence he belted out in the middle of his reading: “You can suck my dick and lick my ass!”. It made me want to learn German just so I could find out what the rest of the story was about!
Wilson Gil played a couple of tunes, along with the Phoneyisland Orchestra, and a cover band. I performed my “belly dance jazz” set, which is belly dancing to vintage jazz music (including a cane dance to "Now or Never" by Billy Holiday). Usually, that set gets some “oohs” and “aahs” and appreciative looks from the crowd, but at the Cabaret they thought it was comical. Oh yeah, it turns out that they thought I was the comical act for the night! Everyone appreciated the dancing in and of itself, of course, but it was still odd to be seen as comical when that was the furthest thing from my intent.
We had such a great time at the Phoneyisland Cabaret that we performed there again at a couple nights ago. Not so many acts this time, just Wilson’s band and a gypsy punk band from New Zealand called “The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band”. Quite the mouthful! My shtick for the evening was to perform with both bands. However, I really thought that the lead singer Ben, from The Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band, could have held his own as a belly dancer. That guy can pop and shimmy and wriggle around like he’s been belly dancing all his life! I do have to say that the moves look a lot sexier on me, though, considering Ben is a tall, skinny, orange-haired guy with a beard and a mustache. I’m just saying.

Smoking Hookahs at Sandfuersten

There’s something about smoking a hookah that becomes increasingly addictive. All those anti-tobacco activists may get mad at me for promoting this, but hookah smoking is becoming one of my favourite pastimes. Especially when it involves hot belly dancers.
Last night, Wilson Gil and I went down to our favorite hookah bar- or shisha bar as they call it here- with our two new friends, Olga and Karim. Wilson has this brilliant idea for a travel show and Karim has offered to shoot the pilot.
What better place to showcase the unique glimpses that traveling gives you than in a hookah bar in a Turkish neighborhood in a German city? Sandfuersten is particularly interesting, too, as the entire floor is made up of sand. I’m not sure where they got the sand from, but I like to think that it was imported from some faraway desert. The belly dancer, however, was definitely not an import. Laura and I dance together in the same company, Zadiraks, and she is German born and raised. And is a Turkish cabaret belly dancer. Don’t you just love how the cultural boundaries cross?
Karim shot some great footage of Laura dancing in her red velvet and sequined costume, shimmying up a sand storm and eliciting smiles from all the happy, shisha-smoking customers. Wilson had talked me into dancing a set with her, too, but I felt that it was a little awkward. I’m a tribal belly dancer and this whole Oriental/Cabaret style is new to me. I kept getting distracted by the way Laura was moving her arms. I know that may sounds silly, but arms are an important part of belly dance (but I guess “arm dance” just didn’t have as nice a ring to it), and tribal style arms are much different than Turkish cabaret style arms. So, I ended up feeling a bit like a chicken, with my arms sticking out awkwardly as I tried to mimic Laura’s. My friends told me I looked great, but that’s just because they were focusing on the belly part of the dance.
We also got some cool footage of Wilson having a bad “shisha” trip. You can’t actually get high from smoking shisha, but it’s fun to make people think that you can. And we learned something last night. It’s poor etiquette to not use your own cap for your hookah. Of course, this brought up some rather phallic images. So, remember, practice safe hookah smoking and be sure to come prepared. It never hurts to keep an extra cap in your wallet- who knows, you might need the extra protection.

On My Dirty Mattress

My fiance, Wilson Gil, has this song called “Dirty Mattress”. He was inspired one day when he saw a dirty mattress on the street while walking through the Lower Haight in San Francisco. The lyrics go something like, “That stain is from you. This stain is from me. Who could t hat other stain be? On my dirty mattress!”
The first time I saw Wilson’s band, the Willful Sinners, perform the song was at the Lusty Ladies Peepshow Holiday Party. In addition to live bands, the party also featured burlesque, numerous women clad in fetish gear (some wearing only a thong), a room for lap dancing

, and lube wrestling. I had just moved from a little village in the Canadian countryside to the grand city of San Francisco, so it goes without saying that I was a bit out of my element.
Well, talk about breaking me out of my shell. For “Dirty Mattress”, Wilson had a real dirty mattress up on stage with him and he had solicited about fifteen of the Lusty Ladies to dance and have a pillow fight on the mattress while the Willful Sinners played the song. And I was right up there with them, in a Catholic school girl outfit, shaking my ass and whacking various Lusty Ladies with a pillow. The best part was when Wilson crashed down on the mattress at the end of the song and we all dog piled on top of him. There were boobs and asses all over the place!
Okay, now flash forward to present day Berlin. Wilson and I are walking in Prenzlauerberg, and what do we see? The nastiest of dirty mattresses lying on the sidewalk next to a wall covered in graffiti. Wilson just so happened to have his guitar with him, so he busted out with a rendition of “Dirty Mattress” all the while jumping up and down and dancing on the dirtiest mattress I have ever seen. I couldn’t even imagine where those stains must have come from!
Wilson finished the song by shouting, “Wilson Gil! Berlin!” and was greeted by a huge round of applause. A whole crowd had gathered to watch the antics. So, I guess it’s the same in cities everywhere, whether you’re in Germany or California. There’s always a dirty mattress lying on a sidewalk somewhere, just waiting for someone to pass by and wonder, “Eeew, who could that stain be?”

To see the video of the Lusty Ladies Peepshow performance of “Dirty Mattress”, go to www.wilsongil.com

Belly Dancers and Bears

What do belly dancers and hairy gay men have in common? The Salz Club in Berlin, it turns out. Zadiel Sasmaz, my company director, was throwing a big show called “Orientalhane” for our sister company, Velvet Snake. I had to be at the show early because our dance company, Zadiraks, was doing a photo shoot at the club before the show.
Now, anyone that knows me knows that I am notoriously early for everything. It’s a habit I can’t seem to break, even though I always end up waiting around for everyone else to show up. Of course, I arrived early at the Salz Club, too. It wouldn’t have been such a problem, except that the location was very isolated. And I couldn’t find the sign for “Orientalhane”. And the only building that looked like it could be the Salz Club was crawling with big, hairy men. Big, hairy men in leather chaps and bondage and thongs. Oh my.
Gathering my nerves, I entered the gates and was very relieved to see a dancer from Velvet Snake sitting on a bench. She explained that the Salz Club has two rooms. Orientalhane would be in one, and “Bearopolis” would be in the other. Yeah, you heard me, Bearopolis. My god.
Orientalhane was great. Awesome performances by Velvet Snake and some guest stars, including Rachid- a gay belly dancer from the Netherlands. I thought Zadiel and Rachid would be excited about Bearopolis but it turns out that big, hairy men aren’t really their type.
The two rooms at the Salz Club didn’t overlap, but the outdoor area was shared. All these beautiful belly dancers in their exotic costumes mingling with men clad in leather. Somehow it worked okay. At the very least, no one seemed to mind. And the whole scene was representative of how modern a city Berlin can be- a city that is multicultural, in which old churches stand beside flashy new buildings, where taking the subway is more convenient than taking a car, and a city that embraces both its belly dancers and its bears.