Features
Dangerous Acts: filming Belarus Free TheatreThursday, 27 March 2014
For the members of the Belarus Free Theatre, there are many risks to doing something that we might all take for granted: telling stories about our lives. These risks include censorship, blacklisting, imprisonment, and worse. But when the authorities... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Sydney: Beyond the CringeSunday, 23 March 2014
I hadn’t heard the term “cultural cringe” until I went to live in Australia. Holiday encounters had been so full of sunshine, art, water and music that it hadn’t occurred to me to doubt the cultural confidence and energy of the nation that gave us... Read more... |
Preview: Martin Amis's EnglandWednesday, 19 March 2014
On Sunday night, you can hear Martin Amis sound off about Englishness. An advance selection of extracts from the interview were published in the Radio Times on Tuesday. The reaction from the press was instantaneous: Amis is always good copy. The... Read more... |
10 Questions for musician Burnt Friedman - with video exclusiveMonday, 17 March 2014
Bernd “Burnt” Friedman is one of the most relentlessly questing of experimental musicians. In over 30 years of making music and 25 years of releasing it, he has specialised in researching ancient, hypermodern and as-yet-undiscovered methods of... Read more... |
I Found My Horn: Afterlife of a BookMonday, 17 March 2014
When a book is published, there are broadly speaking three alternative fates which lie in wait. It goes global, it sinks without trace, or it sells modestly and steadily to the readership for whom it was intended. There is, however, another... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bilbao: Yoko Ono at the Guggenheim MuseumSunday, 16 March 2014
Addressing a crowd of journalists gathered at the press launch of her major retrospective at the Guggenheim Bilbao, Yoko Ono begins by telling us how cynical she is. It’s quite a claim considering it’s just about the last thing you’d ever think to... Read more... |
Remembering Derek JarmanSunday, 16 March 2014
It was very odd, in January this year, to see that Super-8 camera of Derek’s in a glass case and a few open notebooks in his beautiful italic handwriting in some other glass cases in the same room. There were five or six small-scale projections from... Read more... |
A silver rose for Glyndebourne's 80thMonday, 10 March 2014
Der Rosenkavalier, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s 1911 “comedy for music” about love, money and masquerading in a putative 18th-century Vienna, is a repertoire staple around the world. Continental houses throw it together without a... Read more... |
Kiri at 70Friday, 07 March 2014
Even more deserving of the sobriquet “the beautiful voice” than Renée Fleming, the natural successor who virtually copyrighted it, Kiri te Kanawa was one of the great sopranos of the 20th century. With those big, candid brown eyes and bone structure... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Marrakech Biennale: "Where Are We Now?"Wednesday, 05 March 2014
Whether fingerprint or labyrinth, the swirly logo for Marrakech Biennale 5 feels apt. The festival has left its mark upon the city. It questions Moroccan notions of identity. And, going by the tagline, “Where are we now?” it reflects the ease with... Read more... |
Listed: The Vikings - Life and LegendTuesday, 04 March 2014
The British Museum's exhibition The Vikings: Life and Legend promises to redefine the Viking age for a new generation. First seen at the National Mueum in Copenhagen, it has now travelled - much as the show's subjects once did - across the North Sea... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bordeaux: Bottoms up for RameauSunday, 02 March 2014
Jean-Philippe Rameau, the most radical and inventive of French composers before Berlioz, died in Paris 250 years ago this September. 16 years later a gem among theatres opened its doors for the first time with a long evening’s entertainment... Read more... |
