A soothing and evocative balm for your Monday. FKA Twigs has released a short film, 'We Are The Womxn' via YouTube. Shot in late 2019 before the world went to trash, 'We Are The Womxn' sees Twigs travel to Atlanta for Afropunk Festival, and visit Blue Flame - Atlanta's first Black strip club where she performs and holds a scared moon dance in celebration and solidarity for womxn with spiritual healer Queen Afua.
Twigs has demonstrated via Instagram her talent on the pole within the past year, sharing videos of the signer spinning mesmerizingly on steel to soulful music and training with experts in their craft worldwide. She makes the strength and flexibility intensive sport look as easy as downward dog.
The four-minute film was directed by Ivar Wigan, and features a few scenes from her Afropunk performance, but is predominantly documentation of her time at Blue Flame with Queen Afua and other dancers. We see Queen Afua speaking and dancing as she holds the Moon Dance, intercepted by Twigs and friends on the pole, dancing, and looking like they are having an extremely good time in each other's presence. In a press release for 'We Are The Womxn', Twigs explains, “I decided to hold the second part of the all-female and femme sacred moon dance at Blue Flame, firstly to honour the heritage of pole dancing, but also to create a matriarchal dominance in a space that’s usually filled with, and run by, male energy... my experience at the Blue Flame solidified that, although historically womxn are often pitched against each other for their looks or their assets by the patriarchy, when left to our own devices we are incredibly nurturing and healing for each other.”
After an extremely successful year with the release of her album 'Magdalene' and debut screen appearance in Shia LeBoeuf's 'Honey Boy', we can hardly wait to see what's in store for Twigs next. For now, we'll continue to endlessly stare at her pole videos and sway to the sweet sounds of 'Magdalene'.
Image Credit: @_ohshat via @FKAtwigs.
