The Durban Designer Emporium’s first exhibition installation was a facelift for fashion and performance art, writes Suzy Bell
`Durban’s sub-culture needs to be tickled, then scratched,” hissed the chick with a live goldfish swishing about her liquid handbag. The blood still hasn’t quite drained from the flush of it all, but the gouges, at least, remain. But then what do you expect when watching a helluva seductive tango with stylish white-trash-like dan- cer/choreographer, David Gouldie sucking the neck belonging to Ms Legs-Longer-than-the- Mississippi, dancer Dina De Vine.
The balls behind the glamorous event belong to the freshly retrenched artistic director, Mark Hawkins, of the now defunct Playhouse Dance Company. Together with one of Durban’s top restaurateurs, Bean Bag Bohemia’s trend- setting Guy Woods and dynamo Peter Taylor (ex- Playhouse Dance Company manager), they’ve formed Very, Very Big Productions and their first smasher of an event was The Living Room concept.
It was very, very different – an installation fashion exhibition plus a fashion show to showcase 10 of Durbans hottest designers. It happened in an atmospheric, Gothic church hall next door to swinging Bean Bag Bohemia in the suburbs of Durban.
So instead of the usual Durban Designer Emporium “just feel the fabric dahling”-type lunch-time launches over lemony, lightly grilled baby chicken, Very Very Big Productions decided to spunk things up by not only dressing the dancers in the designer kit, but making them move and groove with imagination, creating a fabulous house-full of performance art. Each room became a separate trip of “everday situation” trilled an enthusiastic Hawkins. Yeah, sure, I always do the tango in sheer red and black net while the gramophone plays old Latin American hits on 75rpm records, before I nip into the kitchen to neatly slice the brinjals of my desires.
I wafted past the TV lounge that blared pulp fiction fantasies as dancers chewed gum, swigged vodka and looked deliciously trashy. A female harpist, in black, added a classical touch to the nice bit of rough.
Slinking past the next room and peeking inside, I saw a gorgeous Modiglianiesque model-dancer, Catherine Moore, reclining on a Charles Kerr (Colonial Trading Company) chaise-longue and fingering a fashion magazine while a silver chrome fan whirred in approval of her oriental frock by Amanda Laird-Cherry.
The bath had an upbeat view with dancer Deborah de la Harpe, reading Huisgenoot, bathing in milk with a Barberton daisy casually tucked behind her ear. She drew more attention from us voyeurs with her seductive sidelong glances than the dream bubbles she blew to her man on the loo, dancer Manie Irving (dressed by Laurie Holmes), who was far more interested in what was in the Mail & Guardian.
In the kitchen, yummy dancer Itumeleng Mokgope peeled potatoes in style. He wore die rerige old colonial South African “garden-boy”- look starched khaki shirt and shorts with the thin red trim. Dancer Mary-Ann de Wet, with fag, curlers and silk gown by Colleen Eitzen, ironed flat the faces of the Playhouse board, or so I’d like to imagine. “It was all about confusing people,” explains Hawkins “and pushing people’s limits. It was really more of a performance arts piece that included a fashion show. But we wanted to confuse people, to make them think: `Is this a fashion show?'”
A smiling, young girl in plaits held a mini- video camera to her face, filming any passing dudes, stopping the interesting ones to ask in a casual, friendly tone: “Hey, what’s your favourite drink?” One guy, charmed she cared, answered: “I like whisky very much. But I’ll have the odd beer, that’s if I’m watching a game of rugby.”
A trail of fairy-lights led us to the entrance of the church hall, where we were greeted by Dixieland jazz from a cute trumpeter, and beefy sounds from the double bass. The place was bristling with nonsensical natter and straw was strewn across the catwalk which said a flamboyant F-you to the L-shaped ramp. Instead, plop, at the end of their runway was a pool. Woods apparently chopped down a tree and made the pool because Hawkins wanted the dancers all wet and sensuous, dripping from limbs and creating a refreshingly different sense of movement.
The dancers vamped beautifully, but we still had to contend with the slinky “I-take-myself- fucking-seriously” models who sashayed about in Janene Dixon-Smith’s long, hooded burgundy dresses. I’ve seen far more inspiring stuff at London’s Chelsea car boot sale, but then I’m just another trashy bar tart who has tired of classics and clothes that match. What would I know?
Anyhow, the Durban Designer Emporium fashion show was targeted to sell “wearable fashion” .No wonder one or two ranges smacked of Ooh-La-La boutique on a bad day. For those also bitching about: “Where is super designer-babe Gideon?” – who deservedly enjoyed a splash all over Elle last month – and “Where is Francois Vedemme?”, Hawkins confirmed that they pulled out at the last minute. It transpired they were seen schmoozing in Cape Town at some Walt Disney fashion show.
Stunning audio-visuals by Neil Roake and Mark Addy of International Concept Organisation swept us away while the catwalk fashion was an elegant blur from burgundy to berry to grape and aubergine with Amanda Laird-Cherry’s range playing with textures, oriental-inspired, leaf on chiffon, feminine, but simple. “There is so much shine and beading mixing these days. Day pieces can be interpreted as night pieces so we now have a mix of the day and night-time feel,” assures sussed Durban designer, Laird- Cherry. Her men’s winter wear range were very dramatic black pin-stripe suits and shirts in net and other “see-my-fantastic-abs-and- scrumptious-nipples through my net shirt”-type fabrics, which us bar tarts just lurve.
Inspired by the shades of berries, designer Colleen Eitzen aspires to the dogma that: “A woman should be dressed as a woman, even if she wears a plastic dress.” So Eitzen offered us yet another range of long, floaty, feminine, wispier-than-thou numbers. The Absolut Flavour’s winning designer was Terrence Bray with his indigo “working wardrobe” which was very striking, very velvety and very regal.
The range with mock-Chinese prints in mink shocked a snooty babe swathed in nothing but black: “Do none of these fashion-conscious victims know anything about the human rights violations happening in Tibet?” I blushed through my powdery-white made-up face and battled to swallow my conscience in my tight bondage-up-to-the-neck midnight blue Chinese dress.
The Interitmo Drummers lifted the moment with their popular, pacy percussion. The men were dressed in loud Hawaiian shirts and dancing shoulders to match, while the gals looked ever-so-groovy in tight red shiny tops and thick black-rimmed glasses – that spank-me-if- you-dare schoolmarm look.
Being the first happening of Very, Very Big Productions in Durban, I can now believe that they’re not being arrogant when they boast they can do “anything”. They proudly cluck that if you want a dinner for two on a floating crane in the harbour “we can do”. Or if you need to arrange an international conference for 7 000 people they will source a venue, decorate it, provide food and creative entertainment and source those articulate and interesting guest speakers.
The entertainment at your conference or corporate launch will have an edge too, as Hawkins is to open an artists’ agency to seek out the finest musicians, actors, bellydancers, fire-eaters, dancers and trapeze artists. Hawkins has already begun recruiting dancers for his Fantastic Flying Fish dance company. It will tour nationally and internationally with eight full-time professional dancers.
The company is currently seeking sponsors and already has international contracts in the pipeline with the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan and Sweden. “We’ll do state-of- the-art 20th century dance productions and commercial crowd-pleasing work, but with an edge. But certainly no girls dancing in G-strings and nipple caps.”
If you missed the fashion installation exhibition, don’t despair. The raunchy tango and other wet dance moves will be showcased at the launch of Red Eye at the Durban Art Gallery on May 8 at 6pm.
It’s a kick in the pants arts initiative and Mark Hawkins’s Very, Very Big Productions and the Fantastic Flying Fish Dance Company can be seen live.
For more information contact Hawkins on (031) 332-8770 or 083 788-8770
You can’t go wrong here as Very Very Big Productions melts together some of the hottest creative minds in this tropical village called Durban. Catering will be posh and delicious with Woods of Bean Bag Bohemia (not known for his love of the sausage rolls and samoosa circuit) who will seduce you with Bohemian meze platters, crostinis with smoked salmon, caviar to suck from your sexy belly-button . “
Even if you want crocodile and fruit kebabs or Malaysian-inspired meze platters, and of course the best South African wines, we’ll get it for you. We’ll bend over backwards and forwards for our clients,” chides an irrepressible Woods.