Entrepreneurial is too tame a word for the Mariinsky Ballet (formerly the Kirov) under Valery Gergiev. This week, they have been in both the US and the UK - giving their cornerstone repertory in San Francisco, and showing London some of the more recent (ie 20th-century) material they've been exploring - from early Balanchine to post-modern William Forsythe. Performing everywhere at once is a good … [Read more...]
Archives for 2008
Found books 1: Dickens’ clown
This may seem an odd choice for the opening number in a series about theatre books. An unreliable memoir of a forgotten figure who performed in a genre we rarely see. It's not, I guess, an essential text. But Charles Dickens' Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi, reissued by the enterprising Pushkin Press in a chubby little volume, gets to the heart of the theatre-going experience. It's both about our need … [Read more...]
The late show
I haven't got appreciably wiser as I've aged - how about you? Wandering around Rothko: The Late Series at London's Tate Modern yesterday morning, I realised how tempting but misleading it is to view an artist's work as an index of their physical age - or to read it retrospectively, looking backwards from their deathday. You might call this the Prospero Fallacy: the sense that a late work (in this … [Read more...]
Welcome
In which Performance Monkey sets out his stall Welcome to Performance Monkey, a blog about theatre and dance. I enjoy watching productions, for work and pleasure, but like to think that a show doesn't end when the curtain falls. It's in talking with friends after a show that creative thinking begins, even if discussion often dissipates under pressure of hunger, gossip or public transport. This … [Read more...]
Blogs we like
Alison Croggan Andrew Haydon Chris Goode Critical Condition The Guardian theatre blog Matt Trueman Neandellus The Rest is Noise [ssba_hide] … [Read more...]
Performance Monkey
This is what theatre and dance audiences do: we sit in the dark, watching performances. And then, if it seems worth it, we think about what we've seen, and how it made us feel. The blog should be a conversation, so please comment on the posts and add your thoughts. … [Read more...]
David Jays
I am a writer and critic on performance, books and film and currently write for, among others, the Sunday Times and the Guardian. I edit Dance Gazette, the magazine of the Royal Academy of Dance. I'm also a lifelong Londoner: it's the perfect city for connecting to art forms that both look back and spring forward. … [Read more...]
Contact me
I'd love to hear from you, so click here to send me an email... … [Read more...]