Telegrams of the Soul

Cabaret Fledermaus

The Cabaret Fledermaus really goes all out to please. Following the appearance of the universally acclaimed and much heralded Wiesenthal Sisters, the Cabaret now brings us a young Moroccan dancer. And all this at a time of day, five in the afternoon, when “the idle world” is particularly prone to idling around. Well now you can wile away the time with the exceptional. The altogether new is preferable to the habitual, as pithy as the latter may be. It’s an energizing stimulant like tea, coffee, cigarettes. However skeptical and reserved you might be, something or other of the inertly traditional is rattled and disturbed. You start tallying up your carefully guarded capital of what was, sifting out the true worth; it spawns a change in you, a change for the better. For the stamp collector who suddenly sees that coins are also beautiful, it’s the beginning of a recognition that both may be beside the point, not an end to which to devote your life! But something must move forward in us, move forward, forward march! Morocco introduces a new rhythm in our limbs. Long live Morocco! We see before us an unaccustomed kind of light brown skin, muscles developed in an unaccustomed way. The sword dance is strangely astonishing, the belly dance is strangely stirring. How wondrous is woman’s body without the deception of drapery! It is so natural that one can no longer fathom that crime “tricot.” Goethe once admired for hours on end a young woman in her God-given perfection. He was happy not to touch even her fingertips. He considered himself sufficiently satisfied at the mere sight of her. He went away pleased as never before. Our sense of modesty focuses on imperfection. It gets caught up with that which is hidden, rightfully indignant that what we see does not bespeak the original concept of the Creator. But the orange-colored skin of Sulamit Rahu passes the test of perfection before the eye of the artist. The nobly grotesque dance of Gertrude Barrison in her green costume designed by Kolo Moser, in which she resembles a new unknown species of bird, carries us away to likewise exceptional worlds. In one of the dancer’s indescribably lovely and engaging spoken texts she declares before starting to dance that all women conform in a cowardly fashion to that to which they are spiritually or economically beholden. Beholden only to her own spirit, she, however, sought to ensnare no one, not even the public. What follows then is a grotesque dance infused with the friskiness and clowning of a child. On top of all that a hairdo that ought to catch on among others endowed with an equally lovable face! But only among them! The third exceptional act is Lina Loos. An uncommon personality, she delivers her extraordinary recitation accompanied by an oboe and in blue moonlight. The young lady expresses her pain and her despair that the man in question does not respond romantically. She dreams of Minnesänger* and an entanglement with Mr. So and So. A veritable Altenberg in a newfangled frame. We see before us a wonderfully attractive and frustrated woman, whose complaint we fathom directly, not merely through the byway of a sympathetic poet’s heart. And that oboe melody is so poetic! Band leader Scherber composed it. The whole thing is presented as an attack on the feeble reality of daily life. That’s why everyone is initially against it and almost offended by it. Even for carefree kids there’s only one Christmas a year, one birthday, one nameday. And with grownups, isn’t it all the more so? The holidays of the soul and the senses are all too scarce. Poets keep proclaiming them but they never come! So we resign ourselves and make do with the puff. What else can we do? In any case, we’d better not scorn the dreaming poets who point the way to that which we might actually need!

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*German troubadours