Darkness falls. In the near distance, a Super 8 video flickers to life, thrusting forth mind altering visual messages. As your eyes struggle to adjust, a band begins to play. A dance enters from stage left, contorting his body into wicked new shapes as he seemingly floats towards the microphone.
In a heartbeat, his words fill your ears; soulful, poetic and prophetic, they’re at once both pleasingly alluring and grippingly personal. These are lyrics – poems, even – inspired by a life less ordinary. Some touch on a childhood spent learning on the streets of Paris, rather than in the education system, while others channel experiences of touring the world as a dancer for global megastars. If you listen hard enough, you may also pick up on references to years spent working with his band of musical collaborators, 19.
The band pauses, allowing the focus to return to our star’s graceful movements, and the films being projected onto the bare brick walls of this most urban of venues...