Our bodies are incredible: No matter what age or size, they can do astounding things, as this Italia’s Got Talent contestant proves.
When Tomoko was five years old, she saw Carmen on TV. She moved to Italy from Japan 43 years ago to study opera, and stayed in the country to work in theatre. Tomoko “was” a singer and actress, she says, but what is she now? “I’m 70,” she shrugs.
After enduring a series of racist insinuations from the judges (Luciana Littizzetto grills her about her Italian grammar and asks “Do you put painkillers in your sushi?”) Tomoko slips out of her kimono with a badass flourish and what’s hidden behind a screen in the background is revealed: A pole. She leaps on and begins an incredibly challenging two minute routine, set to Florence and the Machine’s “Leave My Body.”
“What are you? What about sciatica and osteoporosis?” asks Littizzetto, who cannot let the weirdly intrusive questions go. “But I still have trouble with Italian verbs,” Tomoko snarks back through tears of joy. Get ’em, Tomoko.
[h/t R29]