India
Darbar Festival, Southbank CentreWednesday, 25 September 2013
Darbar Festival, now in its eighth year, encompasses four days of talks, yoga, food, and music – swathes of it, morning, afternoon, and night, with each concert featuring two main sets.This year’s focus was on female musicians, and included a talk... Read more... |
Darbar Festival: The ancient art of DhrupadFriday, 20 September 2013
This is a key weekend for lovers of Indian classical music or the merely sonically adventurous – the Darbar Festival in the Southbank has some of the most extraordinary practioners of the art from both the Carnatic (South Indian) and Hindustani (... Read more... |
Prom 52: Batiashvili, BBC Symphony Orchestra, OramoThursday, 22 August 2013
Concert programmes are designed to make the mind flexible with constant contrasts. More often, though, the great is the enemy of the good-ish. Last night an Elgar masterpiece was always going to overshadow its second-half predecessor, a hazily... Read more... |
Prom 39: Khan, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, AthertonTuesday, 13 August 2013
The fascination of the East has been a constant in classical music’s history, from the jangling sounds of the Janissary bands to Mozart’s Seraglio, Sheherazade’s dreamy tales to Britten’s seductive gamelan. Last night’s Prom gave the East a chance... Read more... |
La Bayadère, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseSunday, 04 August 2013
It’s unspeakably bad for so many reasons that the injured Bolshoi Ballet director Sergei Filin cannot be in London to see his company perform, and one is that he can’t see his protegée Olga Smirnova revealing herself to us as destined to be one of... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bradford: Bollywood Carmen LiveSaturday, 08 June 2013
“My generation all were steeped in Bollywood.” Meera Syal, Wolverhampton born and bred, is recalling the cinematic influences of her youth. “It was our major link to India and was much more current than trying to make a phone call. You did feel that... Read more... |
Ayahs, lascars and munshis: staging The EmpressWednesday, 17 April 2013
It was over four years ago that I was commissioned by Michael Boyd, then artistic director of the RSC, to write a play which I had vaguely pitched to him as “a costume drama set in the nineteenth century with Asians running around in it”. And... Read more... |
theartsdesk in India: Endangered classical music, and aerialist dancersSaturday, 13 April 2013
I hadn’t been through Mumbai (although lots of people there still call it Bombay) for a while – I once Iived in a beach house here for several months in Juhu while working on a fairly insane project with, among others, Boy George, Bollywood playback... Read more... |
Interview: HariharanFriday, 12 April 2013
Hariharan gives the appearance at least of being fabulously laid-back when I meet him in the lobby of one of Mumbai’s top five star hotels. Wearing a jaunty hat, he is recognised by a lot of passers-by, and when he orders a cappuccino HH is... Read more... |
Victoria Wood's Nice Cup of Tea, BBC OneFriday, 12 April 2013
The cup of tea is a national institution that brings comfort and good cheer to millions. So is Victoria Wood. Blend them in a pot and you’ve got a pleasing brew called Victoria Wood's Nice Cup of Tea. It might not have been so. When Wood last... Read more... |
La Bayadère, The Royal BalletSunday, 07 April 2013
Jane Austen would approve, I think, of the plot of La Bayadère, which is about class and wealth getting in the way of love. She might have difficulty with the setting. It is a grand, exotically located ballet offering us an fantastical India of... Read more... |
DVD: The JourneyTuesday, 29 January 2013
Poetic restraint dominates Ligy J. Pullapally’s 2004 Kerala-set lesbian drama The Journey (Sancharram). Based on a true story of a relationship between two young women that ended in one's suicide (a conclusion that’s left open in the film), its... Read more... |
