Music
More than a yard of tickets to the Proms!
Glorious evening of Miami Sound Machine’s crossover Cuban beats that enthralled us in the Eighties. Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine had to fight racial discrimination back then to get heard, but they were and had a successful world tour as a result. That was the era of classic music divas and the emergence from the ghettos of High Energy, Chicago House, Hip hop and many others. So many forgotten songs and beats.
Read more: On Your Feet! - the story of Emilio & Gloria Estefan
The medium of abstract dance communicates emotions and ideas but without words, along with the grace and power of the human body working to its maximum. There’s a parallel with idea-based art: as a non-verbal language, dance has the capacity to communicate with us directly at a lower level than our verbal skills. It sometimes takes time for the full realisation to sink in, and the language of dance is the more powerful and direct because of this.
ENO bringing Egyptian archaeology to life on stage with Philip Glass’ opera Akhnaten. ENO encourages photos of their theatre’s interior and the curtain-calls; my phone’s lens gives just a taster of this production’s sumptuous costumes and props. #enoakhnaten
Philip Glass - Akhnaten
Thirty-five years or so on from the premiere of Akhnaten, Philip Glass’ opera about the Egyptian sun god, we are much more practiced at reading symbolism and conceptualism on stage. This now seems like a period piece, rather grand and indulgent but still at first sight, also rather vacuous. The thrill is in seeing Egyptian archaeology come to life on stage with so much precision movement and synchronised juggling which reflects Philip Glass’ minimalist music composed of so many repetitive structures.
So Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake is not just mainstream, but striped across the schedule for up to two performances per day at Sadler’s Wells theatre as the main Christmas programme. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised, in its original version Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake was uncannily true to Tchaikovsky’s music and spookily accurate with its reading of the Prince as emotionally stunted, almost sociopathic and the swans as the voices in his head of good and evil.
Read more: Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake - New Adventures at Sadler’s Wells Theatre
Charlie Hides as Judy Garland performing “All I want for Christmas” the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Her Christmas set this year also includes items as Cher, Abba and (bizarrely) Delia Smith.
