Memoirs of a DJ by Vernetta Lopez

Author:Vernetta Lopez
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789814408813
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish

madonna... not!

Mermaid ambitions aside, I’ve always dreamed of doing a huge stage number. Think Madonna at the Superbowl halftime show! I don’t sing, or have albums or a music video (yet), but I can dream right? I WANT TO BE LIKE MADONNA!!! So when I had to perform a Madonna song on stage for the millenium countdown show in the middle of Orchard Road, I figured, this is it! I can make my dream come true! I chose her hit “Frozen”. They gave me the dance version instead. This should’ve been the first sign of things to come. (WARNING: if you don’t take artistic control of a performance, it’s not yours in the end. It’s like what Forrest Gump’s momma said, “You never know what you’re gonna get.”)

OK, people, this is going to be a bit of a bitching session and the folks who were involved in this particular production might be pissed off at me for telling this story, but hey, no one and no situation is perfect. And it takes two hands to clap.

Since I had a vision for this song and how it could be performed on stage, I asked if I could have backup dancers. “Maybe” was the answer. Would I at least have an outfit that I could design? “Sure!” was the ready reply. So I came up with an outfit comprising a pair of hot pants, billowing sleeves with cuffs, a huge sharp collar and a sexy cape to finish it off. All in black and purple. They were as accommodating as possible and we had a meeting to try to get that going.

It was a disaster. They tried to make it nice but the material was hard and the shorts made my ass look like it was being pulled apart by an invisible force. But that was probably also because my legs were too short for shorts. The boots were too short as well but they were my own and there was no budget to give me better boots. I tried to overlook this since we all tried our best.

Then came the actual performance. There was a choreographer who handled every single item that night and he was probably already stressed out when I asked for a fan to be placed in the hole at the front of the stage, and that it be covered by a grating. The idea was for the cape to fly in the wind. If you’ve ever seen the music video for “Frozen”, you’d understand. Madonna reminds me of a bat in her flowing black dress and she transforms into a whole flock of them in the video. OK, so they’re not bats but black ravens, but in my mind, they are and I LOVE bats.

A few heads nodded when I asked for the fan. A few heads nodded when I asked for backup dancers. I had yet to meet these dancers. It didn’t occur to me to push for a rehearsal with the dancers, or with the technicians to verify that the fans would work.

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