News

My Tina

By May-Britt Mobach | #!31Thu, 25 May 2023 11:15:34 +0200+02:003431#31Thu, 25 May 2023 11:15:34 +0200+02:00-11Europe/Amsterdam3131Europe/Amsterdam202331 25am31am-31Thu, 25 May 2023 11:15:34 +0200+02:0011Europe/Amsterdam3131Europe/Amsterdam2023312023Thu, 25 May 2023 11:15:34 +02001511155amThursday=9#!31Thu, 25 May 2023 11:15:34 +0200+02:00Europe/Amsterdam5#05-25-2023#!31Thu, 25 May 2023 11:15:34 +0200+02:003431#/31Thu, 25 May 2023 11:15:34 +0200+02:00-11Europe/Amsterdam3131Europe/Amsterdam202331#!31Thu, 25 May 2023 11:15:34 +0200+02:00Europe/Amsterdam5#

I must have been about twenty-four years old. Young, single, and with a long, unfilled summer ahead of me when the phone call came. Whether I wanted to join the tour of Tina Turner. Paid. And well too. My task? To ensure that the promotional girls from World Online (the company of Nina Brink that sponsored the show) spoke in two words and did not chew gum while distributing their flyers AND, and this is the part I was particularly looking forward to, arrange the meet and greet after the show with the big doors of World Online. Make sure the top boss came first, and so on. I could already see it: Tina and I would be able to talk without words after a week. I would see from her left eyelid that she was done with managing director international businesses blah blah blah and had found a fluid way to get everyone smoothly out of her dressing room.

The tour went on, but without me. World Online ran into heavy weather and cut everything they could save on, including the PR part of the big orange that was called the Tina Turner show. A missed opportunity, but because of this, Tina always felt close to me. When her musical was performed, I went four times. To the premiere with my love, then with my daughters because I thought they should know about this life, then with the editorial team, and then two more times to admire Gaia and Nurlaila alongside Nyassa. While watching the show, I suddenly realized that Tina's real name, Anna Mae, is the second name of our oldest daughter. My best friend is named Anna, so a merging of our names seemed perfect for our firstborn child. That our ‘Mae’ is a ‘May’ is just food for nitpickers.

My girls were just as Tina-tasks as I was. ‘Ike should have been called Aikel,’ my youngest said with a pinched mouth as we walked out of the Beatrix Theater. The racial struggle, her non-loving mother, the fight with Ike, her strength, her courage, and especially the legs, the steps, and the skirts she didn't wear to seduce men, but because she could dance better that way.

That is our Tina. The feminist who, after toiling and enduring, ultimately found love. The band in heaven that Henny Vrienten fantasized so beautifully about has a new singer, and how happy they must be with that.