Life Is …

Comments (0) By Sam Prestianni Wednesday, Jun 30 2010

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Picture this: Berlin, circa 1928. The Great War is a distant memory, and the Nazis a freak show simmering on the fringe. An uptick in easy money leads to lusty recklessness: sex, drugs, and cabaret. Marlene Dietrich is our darling on stage and screen. Dirty boy Friedrich Hollaender and deviant duo Brecht and Weill light up our fantasies. Boy or girl, straight or gay, right or wrong? These are silly questions: Let’s dance. Fast-forward to San Francisco, summer of 2010. Munich-born Andrea Fultz brings The German Projekt to the city by the bay: black-and-white celluloid in real time, the best kind of 3-D. “Show me the way to the next little girl,” she sings in raw English. “Heute Abend werde ich versuchen ... ein Mann, dessen Augen blitzen mit dem Feuer,” she intones in her native tongue. Some may not know the words, but the music makes us swing our hips until we swoon, nostalgic for a time when perversion seemed a pleasant pastime, ambiguity a welcome lure. Fultz snake-charms with breathy syllables, flitting in and out of strings, accordion, and drums. Old World Europe meets 21st-century U.S.A. Ja, let’s dance.
Fri., July 2, 9 p.m., 2010