Lorna Irvine reviews the 'excellent' new production currently touring.
A generation before the vacuous spectacle of Lady Gaga, there were the true outsiders- performers of charismatic individuality: Leigh Bowery; Sylvester, Grace Jones and misfit amid the misfits: one Klaus Nomi.
German artist Klaus Nomi arrived fully-formed on the avant-garde disco/club scene in the 80s with his S & M Pierrot style and astonishing operatic voice. He was truly unique, belting out bizarre disco covers of Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead and Just One Look.
Yet his star faded as soon as it appeared.
Choreographer/dancer Alain Greig and performer Grant Smeaton's excellent Do You Nomi focuses on his all-too-brief life and career, straddling performance, dance and narrative. Dancers 'Saucy' Jack Webb, Laurie Brown and Darren Anderson flank a touchingly pixie-ish Drew Taylor in the title role. Nomi is portrayed as sweet, naive and fragile, a man very much out of step with the times.
We are first introduced to Nomi by a compere satirising Reaganomics and Thatcherism in a cabaret setting. He is the very epitome of oddness in his black body stocking and plastic cape, wearing heavy clown make up and accentuating his widow's peak hairstyle.
Veronica Rennie's set is sparse, flooded by evocative neon lights by Hans Peter Jenssen, suggestive of futurism.
All four dance a heady mixture of ballet, contemporary and electric boogaloo, throwing semi-ironic stripper poses, to a fantastic electro score by Tom Murray, a little Nomi himself and a pinch of Bowie.
Laurie Brown deserves particular credit as the knowing compere and exasperated interviewer trying to ascribe greater meaning to Nomi's work, to Nomi's annoyance.
The hedonism of the gay club scene is explored, culminating in a 'tongue in anyone's cheek' orgy dance which is playful and hilarious.
But of course the party has to end and the new AIDS virus looms large over the horizon. Upon learning he is HIV positive, Nomi sits alone in his blue room (blue of course, being the final colour the late Derek Jarman saw before going blind through the illness) his club friends and lovers having long since deserted him, afraid and vulnerable.
Do You Nomi? is a low-key poignant tribute to the one-off talent, sadly dead at 39, but moreover it is true to the restless, shape-shifting spirit of the 1980s underground scene.
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