After three weeks of living in Rome, having already become bored with the monotony of the club scene that entices many world students, my pals and i decided to take in a fashion event presented by AltaRoma. We stayed in an appartement rome centrum. It was to be held at the historic Tempio di Adriano in Piazza di Pietra, an environment that contrasted sharply with the hi-tech feel of the event.
AltaRoma, a company that provides opportunities and fosters relations among well known Italian designers, inspires the cultivation of young, talent through training,’intended not only as a technique of safeguarding the artisan quality but also as the driving force of innovation, creativity and technology,’ according to the AltaRoma website. Needless to say, walking into a room crammed with some of the most fashionable young folks in Rome, while brandishing only my shabby beige messenger bag was quite menacing. we didn’t let that get in the way of occupying best seats and grabbing as much promo material as we could get our hands on.

the first act was called’Wit Open Shooting Roger Weiss,’ which consisted of folk dressed in colourful card shapes, a lot of them phallic, dancing around a still model as photographers shot round the stage. The music was set to techno remixes of favored American hip-hop songs, and the lighting beat to the beats of the music. This composition led one to a type of hypnotic trance, which came as a welcome distraction after enduring more than forty-five mins - about forty mins too long to my mind - of a similar thing. The bored and out-of-sorts expression worn by the model was the mirror image of those worn by the bunch, whose faces and outfits became increasingly more fascinating to watch than what was happening on stage. after the performance was over, I began to wonder if the anomaly of the act was exactly the point of it. Either way, it was something I’d never before, and might never again, experience.

The second act was a performance art piece by Chicks on Speed. I braced myself for something so foreign and creatively different I wouldn’t understand it, as the set started with what only can be depicted as two screaming banshees. 2 girls, dressed in matching jumpsuit, used video pictures, as well as straightforward, each day and often female, objects like stilettos, scissors and cloth to form afascinating and dynamic performance. The set was an eclectic mixture of a rhythmic montage of derriere slapping to a cover of the Beach Boys song’Surfer Girl’, whose words were changed to create the ultimate female anthem [*CO]’super surfer girl in the death defying curl.’ The act culminated in a dance party during which fashonistas and common students alike could get up on stage and dance to celebrate fashion, self-expression and life.

I strode out of the show re-energized and prepared for the next new and out-of-the- ordinary experience Rome had to throw my way. We returned to appartement centrum rome.

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