Manumission 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.