A crew of humanoid aliens from the future came to demonstrate Shaking the Habitual from the bridge of their spaceship and lucky for us, we were able to bear witness to the event.
The queer-tastic brigade warmed up the crowd with some DEEP aerobics- that's Death/Electro/Emo/Protest aerobics for you, stirring up participation from the crowd. The Absurdist Aerobics class [was] taught by a master-teacher-guru-shaman-dictator-aerobics instructor- new age workshop leader, Tarek Halaby (1) who introduced himself as being queer, Palestinian, American and "I like to get shit done." After a couple of movement warmups, Halaby had the crowd warm up their vocals chanting "yes!Yes!Yes!" and "no! No! No!"- only to remind us that life wasn't so absolute all the time and we practiced chanting "maybe! Maybe! Maybe!"
When The Knife took to the stage their bridge was revealed, complete with customized maracas of irregular polyhedra forms, as well as a stringed tabletop instrument where some bowing and percussion action took place. Although The Knife in studio is composed of siblings Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer, for this outing a group of eleven crew members interchanged places, roles and aerobicized dance moves to lead the audience through a twelve song set. Most of which was less about flexing musical muscles (although there was plenty to love) and more about concepts and performance art that featured plenty of pre-recordings and choreography.
This recalled to mind an early 00's show of Fischerspooner's tour for their album #1. With their art school roots, the show highlighted the tropes and stereotypes of fame and entertainment with a tongue firmly planted in cheek. One moment had vocalist Casey Spooner in the balcony on a small rotating platform singing into his microphone. He paused to take a swig of beer as the vocals kept going deliberately unveiling the lipsync and the artifice of the pop machine.
Now The Knife, Fischerspooner and many others in the pop realm ain't no Marina Abramovic, nor should it be seen as an attempt to create a "fine art" piece, but the allegiance lies in performance art, using their medium to deliver a message and even a smidgen of that self-awareness injected into the popular culture minefield is very welcome by me.
