Commemorating Greg and Gary

September 7th: an Amsterdam street party to commemorate the Christmas Twins

Five years ago Gary Christmas joined his twin brother Greg on the other side. I can't make it to the Amsterdam street party to commemorate the legendary Twins. So for those who missed my blog about them in March, here it is again:

The dancing crocheted garments of the Christmas twins.

The twin brothers Greg and Gary Christmas were born in Boston in 1931/2 (just before and after New Year's Eve), a striking mixture of Afro and Native American origins. They toured the world in show business, dancing with The Supremes, Tina Turner, Diana Ross and many more, then finally settled in Amsterdam, where they served coffee and snacks in their highly colourful Backstage Boutique, dishing out bawdy humor, gems of personal wisdom, uncanny spiritual insights or surprising kindness to all comers. "Yeah, yeah, our mother's name really was Mary Christmas". "You want my coffee or my body?"  For a while, my studio was situated near their café, so we became good friends. Inevitably, I dashed off a watercolour, as they gazed out of the window, commenting on the passers-by. "Oh, not her again! Hey, he's hot!" They liked my painting. "Not bad for a white man!"

Gary (left) only had three and a half fingers on the hand that crocheted the most snazzy dresses, skirts, tops, hats, even flowers. "It's show-time, honey - what's your sign?  Okay try this one on!" Greg (photo below) would supervise critically.

Their garments looked great on skins of all colour and one of their black friends modelled these fanciful creations as she danced for me at the studio. I used watercolour and oil crayons to make the garments unravel, jive or move across the page to various jazz classics, taking lots of liberties with the lyrics as they became more or less integrated into the picture.

         

Sophisticated Lady - and "You can have what you want if you handle what you got". 

"Ain't got no rest in ma slumbers, ain't got no feelings to bruise; ain't got no telephone numbers, ain't got nothing but the blues. Ain't got no coffee that's perkin', ain't got no winnings to lose, ain't got a dream that is workin', ain't got nothin' but the blues". As she stares hopelessly out of the window, I've turned her "dress" into a veil of sorrows. A real blues painting.

"Gimme a rhythm, gimme a beat, Gimme a rhythm, turn on the heat. I wanna be hot, I wanna be bad, I wanna be someone you wish you had". She's "wearing" a crocheted skirt that has got carried away with the jumping, barely legible lyrics. My oil crayons were really hoppin' with that rhythm.

I thoroughly enjoyed pushing my limits with this series - very saucy indeed for a shy English country boy whose headiest youthful experience was Worcestershire Sauce. This work might seem a far cry from the ethereal emotions of Kylián's modern dance with classical and contemporary music. But I'm having fun with lines and marks, tapping a different gut-level rhythmic energy, possibly long-hidden, laced with humorous mischief.

There were many more paintings in this 1989 series. But in those days I was also hopping between Amsterdam and The Hague for other creative work with the Netherlands Dance Theater, and across to Birmingham for the first discussions with Simon Rattle for a performance and with the BBC for the television documentary about my life with music: Concerto for Paintbrush and Orchestra (1993). 

Gary and Greg are now undoubtedly in major show business on other planets, but they became a legend in Amsterdam's multi-cultural society and for tourists looking for quirky entertainment or spirituality, between the seventies and 2009. They left an indelible impression on this artist too. I really miss them.