RAMPENLICHT

Met Daniel Hendrickson, the Skandinavian Muslim at WAU Cafe for coffee before venturing upstairs to HAU 2 to see Antonia Baehr’s Abecedarium Bestiarium-Affinitaeten in Tiermetaphern her sculptural masterclass meditation consisting of dahliac scores for extinct animals. The brilliantine Miss Baehr and her alter ego Werner Hirsch were in fine form radiating in the sublime glow of manima/womina affinities. The audience was rapt in this evenings lush spring night of orchestral movement and sonorities with churning energy aided by a superb soundcape and La Baehr’s mystical vocal conjuring. The hexen spirit was in apt supply. There were so many lovely moments of pure geniustrata, but my favourite being the Patriarchal Poetry of Gertrude Stein featuring music by Pauline Boudry. Antononia Baehr has an endless reservoir of stage presence, timing and allure that comes together in high Garlandish blatancy. The celebutants in the audience included Baehr collaborators: Stefan Pente, Isabell Spengler, Pauline Boudry, and the marvelous starina Dodo Heidenreich accompanied by the entire Heidenreich clan of love sexy Mamma Theresa, the retired conductor and music teacher,Nanna and big brother Andreas (the true cineaste of the family. he has his fingers in pretty much every festival in the Frankfurt area-Go East, Nippon Connection, Exground etc, programs the Caligari and Weiterstadt Kinos, and also works for the German Film Institute, Brazilian film director Karim Ainouz, Mario Brandao, Uli Ziemons, Nicholas Bussmann (musician and husband to filmmaker Lucile Desamory, Arsenal Prinzessin Birgit Kohler, Antonia Baehr's father, the painter Ulrich Baehr, Maja Figge (film scholar who does amazing research on Fritz Lang)Sabine Marte, Austrian filmmaker/artist, and Silvia Casalina the significant other of Pauline Boudry, who is a rocket engineer working for the French version of NASA.
Didn’t find this out till recently that 40s youth starina Deanna Durbin died age 91. Miss Durbin wisely gave up her career when she was 28 in 1950 and retired to a private life in the south of France with her third husband Charles David. If only the great Judy who started her film career with Miss Durbin with the MGM short Every Sunday in 1935 had done the same, probably she would still have been around to see the new century. It also saddens me to report that the legendary downtown New York figure and great poet Taylor Mead died age 88. Mead was a brilliant star on every possible current and was way ahead of his time. Its tragic that it was an evil Manhattan landowner and carpetbagger who hastened Mr.Mead's death. The USA doesn’t take care of its legends and should be ashamed.
***Piero Bellomo of La Collezione fame turned it out with his yearly Spargel Dinner Party which is the hottest ticket in Schoeneberg’s Lutzoplatz Plaza. Among the dinner guests film ingénue Dree Hemingway,photogs Inez Van Lamsweerde, Vinoodh Matadin and Tom of Wilmersdorft the legendary choreographer and former Boylesque star of the Follies Bergere who now divides his time between Berlina and South Florida.