23 woman this month | November 2011 | it, so she started competing and attracting attention for her special talent. Within a few short years, Kiwi had turned judo from a hobby into a future. She won the Prime Minister’s scholarship to Auckland University in New Zealand, a year and a half earlier than many of her peers, on the grounds of her judo skills. In her last year, she went on to win a Commonwealth gold medal — a coveted and highly prestigious accolade for any athlete — and soon she found herself travelling all over the world to train and compete. Kiwi was living many an athlete’s dream. At just 21 years old, she was touring the globe, gaining recognition and facing competitors many years her senior. All too soon, though, this particular dream was to come crashing down around her. She was in Paris, preparing for the World Team Championships, having been chosen to represent the Oceana Region in her weight class. All eyes were on her, as selections for this event were presumed to be a precursor for the Olympics. “I think that, as many athletes do, I had reached a point where I was just taking in information and my body was responding to it instinctually. You realise, when you are at that level, that your main competition is yourself. You confront yourself and each fight is about discovering and learning from your own flaws”, Kiwi remembers. “I had my eye firmly on the Olympics and I definitely saw a bright future ahead of me”. She was unlucky. In the draw, she found she was to face the seventh best judo athlete in the world in her category. “I nearly beat her and at 21 that was a major achievement, but something happened and I didn’t quite manage it. A few days later I was told that I had ruptured a disc in my spine and that my career was effectively over”, she says, more nonchalantly than you might expect. But this isn’t the story of someone whose life was over at 21. It is what she did next that is really testament to her strength of character. “At first, I was in denial, but then, as I watched the Beijing Olympics on television, it really hit me. I was devastated. The thing is, though, that I had great friends around me”, she recalls. Kiwi’s friends helped her to realise that the world hadn’t ended with her judo career. The collapse of one dream signalled the beginning of another. With remarkable resilience, she picked herself up, dusted herself off and set about conquering a different world arena. Kiwi learnt that the best cure for disappointment was to throw herself wholeheartedly into other projects. “I was living in Paris at the time and I began taking every opportunity to go out to events and to meet people. This is how I came across Hovannes K., the producer from the world famous Buddha Bar. I began writing the lyrics for some of his songs and then doing the vocals. I ended up doing a stint as a trend-forecaster for Tally Weil but, before that, I took up a PR position within the Coste group and started to help them to throw these big parties once a week”. With a finger in every pie, it was easy for Kiwi to uncover her hidden talents. Her parties became a resounding success and she discovered she had a real flair for giving the people on the Parisian social scene exactly what they wanted. “Michael Jackson’s ex-choreographer once said to me: “ Baby, of all the best parties I have been to in Paris, yours is my favourite!”. Quite a compliment, coming from him. Finding that the club scene was her new calling, she soon began training as a DJ and playing at some of the best and most exclusive clubs in Paris. “My first residency was in a restaurant bar, but I soon began doing sets at Montana and then at Black Calvados” — the club owned by sultry rocker Chris Cornell. In a relatively short space of time she found herself partying and playing alongside musical luminaries, such as Mr. Hudson and Pharell. Luckily for us, DJette Kiwi is now resident in Bahrain, helping us to develop our own clubbing scene. She’s played at 338 and is regularly called upon by Ground Zero to lend them her musical expertise for their venue soundtracks. “Paris is a place of such vibrancy and decadence, but it has been great to make the change. Bahrain has a lot going on, but the excitement, for me, lies in what it has yet to discover. New York house music, for example! When I first put on a NYH track, I found that no one else was really playing it, but everyone loved it! It’s a young market and it’s so much fun to explore the gaps and to introduce people to new things”, says Kiwi. There’s no doubt that hitting the big time as a DJ is the realisation of another popular dream. It seems, then, that the key to life in a world that can have you reaching for the stars and falling back down to earth with a thud from one minute to the next is resilience. DJette Kiwi seems to understand, more than most, that the world is a fickle place. To keep people entertained, you have to be willing to change it up with regular frequency. In her own words: “Life isn’t about having one shot at greatness. It is about taking every shot and hoping one or two of them hit the mark. You learn more when you fail, than when you succeed, as long as you just keep getting back up again. My life has had its ups and downs, but I have loved every minute of it”. Paris is a place of such vibrancy and decadence, but it has been great to make the change. Bahrain has a lot going on, but the excitement, for me, lies in what it has yet to discover.
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