America
judith.flanders
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre is making one of its regular stops in Europe (the company tours commitedly: not only in the USA, but more than two months of each year are spent bringing their bravura dance style to the world). It is to their enduring credit, then, that their performances look as fresh and as spontaneous as they do.In Hymn, artistic director Judith Jamison’s tribute to Ailey, her mentor and the company’s founder, she tells, in voice-over, of loving "spectacle, yes", but also "social statements, yes", wanting to transmit not only Ailey’s own "blood memories", his lines Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Alvin Ailey dancers have been dancing about survival, grit, positivity and joy in the Lord for half a century now, and even though the parents of last night’s dancers may not have been born when Ailey did the unthinkable and launched a black dance company in the dark days of 1958 America, the company still evidently has an urge to rejoice running in its veins.The regular returns of AAADC to Britain - and there’s a big nationwide tour this time - are constant wake-up calls to the spirit. How can you sit down-in-the-mouth about anything at all when you’re watching a girl haughtily unfolding her Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The Ozarks, situated mostly in Missouri, are not on most tourists’ itineraries when they visit the United States. The area is not as pretty or dramatic as the Appalachians or the Rockies, and the mining and backwoods country is considered different, remote even, by many Americans. And while it has a distinct dialect and a rich oral and musical culture from its pioneer heritage of Irish, Scots and German immigrants who settled on the vast plateau in the early 19th century, the only representation many know of Ozark people is The Beverly Hillbillies. It’s in this self-contained world that Read more ...
sue.steward
Edward Weston was once obsessed with photographing "toilets" (his word) and did it repeatedly in pursuit of the perfect image. "That gloss enamelled receptacle of extraordinary beauty" is how he described the scuzzy lav at the Gold Circle Mine in Death Valley, and seemingly near-orgasmic with excitement, said it was "an absolute, aesthetic response to form". That statement wasn’t about toilets alone, of course; this legend of American photography was, understandably, a perfectionist in every thing he photographed. But he was also, during the early years of this collection of 37 prints (1920s Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It takes a brave company to revive a notorious Broadway flop. It takes an even braver one to supplement a small cast with an amateur, community chorus of over 60 people, onstage for almost the entire duration. The Young Vic can rarely be accused of lacking ambition, and their latest production – sprawling American musical The Human Comedy by Hair’s Galt MacDermot – is as ambitious as it gets. Reinventing a flawed fantasy-parable about community as genuine community theatre, they have tapped into a sincerity that no amount of slick Broadway effects could hope to match – a sincerity that, if it Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Melody Moore is well named. Her parents must have had a sixth sense that she would be "melodious". This exciting young American soprano has been making waves on both sides of the Atlantic. She has established footholds at both San Francisco and Los Angeles Opera and in the 2008/9 season made her English National Opera debut in Jonathan Miller's new production of La bohème. She returns to the ENO this season as Marguerite in Des McAnuff's new staging of Gounod's Faust, a role which seems to define the direction in which her voice and career are taking her.
Hers is a lyric voice with Read more ...
sue.steward
Multiple images of silhouetted horses cantering against blank backgrounds in grids of movement are what most people associate with Eadward Muybridge. Made in the late 1880s, they have contributed to his lasting reputation as a pioneer of photography and the moving image. So it is astonishing to discover through Tate Britain’s magnificent exhibition of his life’s work, that horses were only part of a story packed with surprises.The show’s chronological arrangement is designed to build curiosity: you enter a horse-free zone and have to wait for the horses. But you become immediately immersed Read more ...
Nick Hasted
For 15 years after the death of his demon muse Klaus Kinski, Werner Herzog made documentaries about equally obsessive visionaries, climaxing five years ago with Grizzly Man’s tale of Timothy Treadwell, who loved and was eaten by bears. Though the documentaries continue, Herzog is now finally re-engaging with feature films. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done was made back-to-back with Bad Lieutenant and shares some of its cast. But where the latter berserk Nick Cage cop film saw Herzog consciously attempt to reach new, young audiences, My Son, My Son is a more gnomic, matricidal mystery, Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Shea Seger is a woman with a story. A story of a career interrupted. At the age of 20, the fragile and slightly dangerous-looking blonde from Texas came over here and made a record which sent ripples across the pond of the Americana scene. Shortly after, her father became crippled after a botched operation on an old Vietnam injury and she returned to Texas to care for him. During those 10 years she also brought up a little girl, Luna, and lived in a trailer. Now she’s back in the UK; and she’s pumped all the frustration, disappointments and anger from that decade into a new record, simply Read more ...
howard.male
Last night was the third and probably last time this 21-year-old Nashville songstress will grace the humble Windmill pub in Brixton with her charismatic yet down-to-earth presence. Not because the gig wasn’t a sell-out and an unqualified success, but because of the radio airplay and unanimous critical praise she has received for her debut album Own Side Now from everyone from the Daily Mail to the Independent. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if by this time next year she’s performing at the Union Chapel or even the Barbican.I’ve never seen a Windmill crowd so attentive to an act before. Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Coming on stage in a gangsta bandana, wrap-around shades, and what looked like Saddam Hussein’s beard, Mr E was giving little away. There was no opening gambit, nor any indication of what direction the evening was going. Some had said the Scotland concerts hadn’t been so great. I heard one girl say that if Eels concerts had personalities they’d be as capricious as the fragile moods of the man simply known as E. But E stood there saying nothing.Of course, on record it’s been a different story: cathartic, contrary and finally redemptive, Eels year-long concept trilogy came to its conclusion Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Step aside Prince Charming – there’s a new fairy tale in town, and your only substantive contribution fits into a small plastic sample pot. At some point in the last few years the Shangri-La, the unattainable dream of romantic comedies, shifted from man to baby. Hollywood started asking itself what happened after Happily Ever After, and the answer – they started trying for a baby, went through several painful, unsuccessful courses of IVF before he cheated with a work colleague – wasn’t pretty. With Jennifer Lopez’s The Back-up Plan and lesbian artificial insemination drama The Kids are Read more ...