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Walking into Club Ascend in Bonifacio High Street on
a late weekend evening, you wouldn’t think we were in the middle
of a crisis brought on by the escalating gas and food prices. The
place was packed with revelers in their Saturday night best; girls
in their short skirts or body-hugging tank tops and boys trying
their darnest to look dapper and dashing to get the opposite sex to
notice. And many were boys and girls (as opposed to men and women);
either people going out to party were getting younger and younger,
or I, sadly, am hurtling toward old age faster than I anticipated.
In any case, Manila’s
partygoers made a beeline for Ascend this past Saturday night for
two reasons: One, because the Fort’s other hot nightspot, Embassy,
was still closed on the orders of the Taguig City government.
(Something about a commotion, or an altercation, or was it somebody
doing the Locomotion?) Two, because a pair of sizzling hot female
European deejays flew in for a one-night-only gig. Smirk all you
want at the name, but the DJanes meant business when they made a
stopover over in our little corner of the world from Hong Kong to
let us hear their version of the soundtrack to dance heaven.
The DJanes were Martina Kaiser of
Sweden and Jennifer from Austria. Their long, silky blond hair
instantly made them standout when I walked into the club’s
exclusive VIP lounge upon the invitation of Ascend’s main man
Oliver Mendez.
Both DJ’s are part of
Europe’s hottest female DJ Club Tour, God is a DJane, and made
Manila a pit stop in their first ever tour around Asia. In a brief
chat before their set, Martina told me she was taking up Music
Journalism in Stockholm when she was recruited to a collective of
female club spinners in 2003 despite not knowing anything about
being a deejay. It didn’t take long for her to learn the ropes
though, and pretty soon, after getting together with fellow hottie
Jennifer to form the DJanes act, she was spinning for all the
coolest clubs around Europe.
At past midnight, the DJanes took
to the stage and spun tracks consisting of House classics, club
anthems and Electro-house music. In a dark club filled with slightly
intoxicated partygoers, the pulsing beats of a killer bass line
throbbing in your ear and in your veins, it’s next to impossible
to just stand around and not move a muscle, even if you think you
have the dancing skills of a septuagenarian on his deathbed.
For a couple of hours, the DJanes
really did play God and lorded it over us helpless folk as we almost
involuntarily moved in tune with the sounds blasting from the
speakers. People who live for the spectacle of being in the middle
of a mass of DJ worshippers will tell you it’s an exhilarating
experience unlike anything else in the world, but for a casual
clubgoer like myself, it’s just nice to lose yourself in the music
for an hour or two and not have to worry about how far P500 of gas
will get you this time after the latest round of oil price increase.
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