Performance Monkey

Ballet biography is a difficult genre, dependent so much on fading memories, partial accounts and the fitful mapping of filmed record on theatrical immediacy. It works when it illuminates an artist and unlocks a world, and few do this as impressively as Julie Kavanagh's Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton. Ashton is one of the great British choreographers. An undeniably touchy artist, he … [Read more...]

What does a president look like, a friend asks. It's a good question, especially as my wise ArtsJournal colleague Apollinaire Scherr has already drawn attention to Obama's 'loping physical grace', adding: 'I've spent so much of my life reflecting on the meaning of movement, I can't help feeling that our President-Elect's liquid ease bodes well: it's such a rare quality among politicians, who … [Read more...]

Listening to Obama's magnificent, noble acceptance speech on the radio at five in the morning, sobbing my eyes out in the London darkness, I was forced to admit that, yes, happy endings are sometimes possible. In art, we often dismiss them as wish-fulfilment, soothing evasions of life's harsh truths. It's wonderful to recognise that reclaiming optimism can be the harder, more honest thing to do. A … [Read more...]

In these days of turmoil and world change, the British media stopped thinking about war, recession and the future of the free world last week to consider a prank call broadcast by two high-profile BBC presenters. Louche comic Russell Brand (notorious here for shagadelic excesses, though the wider world may know him as the star of Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and chat-show host Jonathan Ross (cheeky … [Read more...]

I don't believe in ghosts, but I do believe in ghost stories. They are hopes and fears flickering in shadow form - a culture's anxieties can probably be identified by the spectres it wants to believe in. Theatres - where so many phantom lives are lived out, night after night, should be perfect ghost-spotting material. When I worked at English National Opera in the London Coliseum, a friend who had … [Read more...]

Recent speculation in the comments section about Sarah Palin's future career reminded me about vaudeville, and Trav SD's exuberant celebration No Applause, Just Throw Money. It doesn't only have what may be the best book title ever (though a forthcoming history of dance in Disney movies called Hippo in a Tutu comes very close). It's also a reminder that popular entertainment defines a nation and … [Read more...]

Okay, last week we used our critical specs to peer at the poor saps on Wall Street and in the City of London. Did it make us feel better about the financial crisis? Did it heck. But if it's tragedy tomorrow, it's comedy tonight. Yup, it's time to think about Sarah Palin. Alone among the leading figures from the presidential campaign, Palin cuts an unequivocally comic figure. The wink, the … [Read more...]

So, what's the story? We're getting used to asking this question, to thinking in terms of digestible narrative. It seems that life's not only a pitch nowadays, but a plausible story. Politicians have stopped fighting the media, but now embrace the demand for constructing a clearly defined sequence. Across the Atlantic, election punditry has repeatedly looked at which candidate has shaped the … [Read more...]

If we can all put to one side the dread making itself at home in the hollows of our stomachs, it's time to begin looking at world events like a critic. Not a critic of economics or politics, mercy no. But a drama critic. Yes, my friends, we're looking (nervously, through our fingers) at images from the world's stock exchanges and banks, and using our experience as theatregoers to read the crisis. … [Read more...]

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...]