Features
Kieron Tyler
“Tonight, in the Faroe Islands, we’re going to find the greatest dancer.” It’s not an exhortation which often rings out. It could even be a first time The Faroes have been invited to demonstrate their disco prowess. Sister Sledge are on stage and about to launch into their 1979 Chic-produced world-wide smash “He’s the Greatest Dancer”.This, though, is 2014 and the Sledge sisters are playing G! Festival, the Faroes’ annual celebration of their own culture and popular music. The other Nordic countries are here too – bands from Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden are playing.But G! is about the Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The only bad thing about Latitude is a serious case of FOMO (fear of missing out). Some proper planning is advised - or a quick purchase of the Latitude App, if you're lucky enough to get reception over the weekend - to weigh up clashes and work out routes through the forest and up and down the undulating landscape of Henham Park, Suffolk.And yet the civilised chaos of who and what to see, where, is what makes up the Latitude experience. From the bewitching opening ceremony on the Waterfront Stage on Thursday evening, with a spellbinding vocal performance from The Irrepressibles and a Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Booker T Jones seduced, his delivery a river of molasses, his beaming smile so suave it was difficult to believe he was, actually, singing the blues. Damon Albarn coaxed, like a well-meaning dad who’s taken his kids on a rainy picnic (a thunderstorm engulfed the end of his set) and wants them, in spite of everything, to have a good time. Lily Allen flounced and stropped; Kelis shook her booty, looking, in a gleaming golden dress, like a queen bee instructing the drones. Rudimental bounced, like Tigger; Atomic Bomb, playing the music of William Onyeabor, had a massive party onstage; and Tuareg Read more ...
David Nice
Schubert played and sung through a long summer day by the water: what could be more enchanting? The prospect did not take into account the pain in that all too short-lived genius’s late work: when interpreted by a world-class trio, quartet and pianists at the 10th East Neuk Festival, it could be exhausting. So the hours in between were much needed balm on an afternoon and evening in the picture-postcard fishing village of Crail in the East Neuk (cf "nook") of Fife below St Andrews.Grey skies lifted by early afternoon, leaving the sun to bring out the honey colour of much of the local stone Read more ...
David Benedict
In what is undoubtedly one of the earlier recorded examples of the single entendre, the original ad campaign for Some Like It Hot yelled “Marilyn Monroe and her Bosom Companions”. Well, the posters may not have minced words, but there’s more than a little mincing on screen as Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon escape the mob and the St Valentine’s Day massacre and go on the lam by joining a band. An all-girl band. Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopaters, to be precise, who are to be holed up beneath the sheltering palms of a millionaire-strewn Florida hotel. That’s a whole lot better than being held Read more ...
David Benedict
My (very) small haul of autographs collected as a schoolboy ran the gamut from Peter Pears to Linda McCartney but even back then I knew the classiest signature I bagged was that of Elaine Stritch. Years later, she was described as someone who went from being a sensation to a legend without ever being a star, but “starring” is the only word to describe her performance in the title role of the shortlived London premiere of a less than good Neil Simon play The Gingerbread Lady in 1974. Her reviews were so explosive that my friend Michael and I ignored discussion of the play and booked tickets Read more ...
Sarah Kent
I’ve curated nearly 70 exhibitions in my time. The most challenging was Elizabeth Frink’s retrospective at the Royal Academy. Weighing in at several tons, the large bronzes are virtually impossible to shift, so I had no room for manoeuvre. To get the installation right, I placed cardboard miniatures inside a model of the main galleries and prayed they would look good full scale. By comparison, installing Shelagh Wakely’s work at the Camden Arts Centre has been a joy – and a revelation. I thought of her as an interesting and highly original artist, but placing the work in these beautiful Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Ballroom dancing, that most civilised of pastimes, may seem an unlikely target for controversy, but a proposed rule change by the British Dance Council (BDC) has thrust our nation’s waltzers into a heated debate. This weekend, the BDC will discuss whether or not to approve a suggested amendment declaring that a ballroom partnership be recognised as “one man and one lady in all adult amateur and professional competitions and championships unless otherwise stated”. That means no BDC-approved event would allow same-sex (male-male or female-female) dance couples to compete unless a competition Read more ...
David Nice
I met one of the 20th century’s most impressive, if not always sympathetic, conductors twice, on both occasions to talk Puccini before La Scala recordings of La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West) and Manon Lescaut.Maazel was then still in his grand mastery, and very excited about what he saw as a phenomenal score for the California-set opera. That lit him up. Puccini’s take on Abbé Prévost’s novel, it seems, did not, or maybe he was just in a bad mood. Certainly he wouldn’t be drawn – it was a simple work from the orchestral point of view, he declared, and that was more or less Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Television is all about borrowing. One clever new format – a mock doc, a makeover show, a clever-clever quiz – spawns a stack of near-identical clones. Most of them do their time until the format starts to tire, eventually to die a natural death. The only exception is the indestructible talent show. Say what you like about Simon Cowell, but in taking reality ever deeper into the realm of fabrication, he killed off the docusoap. There’s barely been a nosey workplace series stuffed with twats mugging for the camera since. But for some reason the docusoap seems to have risen again. It’s the Read more ...
Sarah Connolly
I felt so shocked by the events that took place during the premiere of Handel’s Ariodante on 3 July in the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence last week, and so disappointed that our painstaking work with director Richard Jones over the last six weeks had been so comprehensively ruined, that I felt I should document what happened.I am avoiding making any political comments. For a full explanation of the situation concerning the confederated unions of arts workers in France known as Les intermittents, read this article from 2012. Black sheets daubed in white painted slogans (banner pictured Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
“We are not politicians – we are artists.” It’s the familiar cry of creatives all around the world, but it came with an added, rather surprising accent when uttered by Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) president Nikita Mikhalkov at the event’s closing ceremony.Specifically, he was responding to similar optimism from Ukraine’s Sergei Trimbach: “Culture must resist political madness. Political lunacy should not dictate the rules of life; artists should be together.” Trimbach is the head of Ukraine’s Union of Cinematographers, while Mikhalkov has long been head of Russia’s analogous Read more ...