Manumission,
Amnesia Nightclub,
San Antonio Road, Ibiza Town, Ibiza
One of the most controversial and infamous
clubs in Ibiza is Manumission. It is held weekly at Privilege
(formerly Que Club), where Fantazia also performed a massive
night in 1998. Manumission's legendary status is founded on
its live sex shows and weird performers. The nights are also
famed for their lavish decoration and themed performances.
Each night costs over £200k to stage and have a production
crew that runs into the hundreds, all leading to a consistent
huge crowd every week of up to 10,000. Guiness Book of Records
has the venue recorded as the biggest nightclub in the world.
Few if any other promoters have ever attracted such a large
weekly audience needed to fill Privilege in Ibiza.
The Live sex shows that made the club a legend, are now no
more, but the sexy theme continues to draw the crowds. G-strings,
stockings, peep hole bras are the costumes of choice for the
Manumission entertainers as they perform and dance their stuff
throughout the night. You can find the dominatrix in the music
box, naked dancers on stage and erotic dancers on podiums.
The Manumission audience also dress up and the club night
pulls many fetish fans, so keep your eye on the crowd as much
as on the performers. Just keep an open mind.........
In 2003, Manumission, took a large step forward and introduced
a murder mystery theme into each night. Stories lines like
"The Phantasmagorical Manumission Mystery" unfolded
on each weekly show. Acrobats, clowns and dancers complementing
the film footage that is shown on huge screens of characters
performing the plot in the style of a 30's silent movie.
Guest stars on various nights were the likes of Har Mar Superstar
(Harold Martin), a bigger name in the US than in the UK where
he started his career in the porn movies before breaking into
Hip Hop.
This has to mean we've been gagging for it. The ‘Mish's
mixture of unashamed mass market entertainment, bleeding edge
sexuality and genre jumping music policy has a little something
for most everybody and nothing for some. This reviewer's opinion
is the show was better but the night in general less cohesive.
The new stage is amazing. It tops even last year's film noir-ish
black and white effort and reassures punters in the same way
that smash-bang special effects do in block buster movies
paying customers want to see where their money has gone.
About three stories' worth of interior decorating must have
accounted for a decent percentage of the entrance fee, as
one end of the massive Privilege has been turned into the
haunted house of the hunchback with a hard on. Hmmm. Parading
all over it are girls naked to various degrees, many in s&m
poses, as is naturally unnatural for Manumission.
The bondage and discipline theme is continued throughout
the evening girls on leads are led about by the dwarf Guru
(Johnny Golden to his mates) and he shares stage space with
a giant doll who has a gash big enough to swallow little Johnny
whole.
In the increasingly famous Music Box new ressie band the
Ju Ju Babies ripped through their synth-based trash core set,
much to the bemusement of kids from San An who stumbled in
looking for the big room trance anthems. However the back
room didn't really get over-excited till the emergence of
Goldie Looking Chain, a group of Welsh rappers who bore more
than a passing resemblance to the eponymous anti-heroes of
the classic 80s flick, Gremlins.
Like the friendly Mogwai who transmogrified into dastardly
alien bastards, GLS got wet, and then some dumb bastard fed
them after midnight. Raucously they swore and tore the whole
place up accompanied by bevies of the usual strippers and
island personalities who thrive on such mayhem, because you
can't get it anywhere else.
Which, in the nuttiest nut shell you're ever likely to find,
is the essence of Manumission. You might not dig it, you might
even hate it, but you won't find anything like it anywhere
else.
