Open your Heart to the The Hungry Hearts, Glossy Queer Megastar Ladies from Norway (2013 Article)

I have a dream. I dream of perfection.

In a perfect society, Art, among many other things, will be obsolete.

We can measure the distance that separates us from perfection by the strong need we feel to bath, to be cleansed and to discover hope again in the great  warm swimming pool of Art.

I had such a cleansing experience assisting twice at the performances

of THE HUNGRY HEARTS in Paris during Cineffable International Lesbian Film festival, the first back in 1997 and the recent one, few days ago, in October 2013.

The Parisian public, as much as me, seemed to be too far from perfection as it screamed and danced and repeated the lyrics, full of energy and enthusiasm.

The rest was forgotten.

Magic moments.

The magic of THE HUNGRY HEARTS.

But what is it that moves audiences so much, even with the added obstacle of translation?

In my opinion, the strong point of this all-female group is putting together different cultural codes and different forms of expression (theatre, performance, song) to create a performance that has a dream-like quality, while at the same time managing to activate basic, raw emotions in the audience.

The sophisticated and the impulsive come together.

Also, the relative cruelty of some lyrics combined to the absolute coolness of their delivery seems to instantly unburden our tired hearts of excessive drama. And we need this calm, we need it badly!

Balance and dramatic tension are basic elements of any artistic expression and in the THE HUNGRY HEART’s case we have a successful cocktail.

Visually, we have codes that come from the absurd theatre tradition, tiny Beckett, Ionesco, Pirandello or even Kafka dramas that do not degenerate in despair but come up like a balloon in the air looking and believing in the sky.

Anachronistic elements, like fifty fashion-style dresses, are combined with cow-boy boots and soft music to create this mysterious seduction we feel coming from them but also the desire to move towards a closed door that suddenly becomes visible inside us while we observe those strange Norwegian girls whispering words of love, hope, anger and pain.

The visual element is quite aggressive, the voices and music are soft and the lyrics oscillate between the two, anger and love.

The female bodies of THE HUNGRY HEARTS move in synchronicity, enhancing each movement and in their absolute freedom they protest against the absent captive female bodies that society continues to produce in series, constantly, non- stop, century after century and up to our days.

THE HUNGRY HEARTS are an all-female universe, a dancing and singing female utopia dreaming dreams of hope, friendship, communication and love.

By opening up boundaries and putting together cultural elements and codes forever separated.

In nostalgic feminine dresses, electric cow-boy boots, Amazon hair styles and the whispering voices of sirens that seem to have emigrated from Greece to Norway in our days...

“La citta delle donne” is not Pasolini nor Fellini that created it.

There is a group of Norwegian sirens that live in it and you have to make an effort to discover them for yourself.

Their song they sing in our mesmerised ears is that of subversive humanism and we all know how much we need it…

Signore e signori, open your hearts to THE HUNGRY HEARTS!

(c) Haris Metaxa, Paris 2013

Links to THH site: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVpPzaoiRaEG-jnad14SgzQ

Cineffable International Lesbian Film Festival: 
http://www.cineffable.fr/festivals/25efestival/archProgEn25.html