21 May 2014. Serenade, Sweet Violets and DGV at ROH

A very good value triple bill, capped off in my view by DGV. Serenade is a Balanchine, apparently non-narrative piece, for which I could not help wanting to find the narrative; then Sweet Violets is most definitely a narrative piece but you cannot make much headway without reading a synopsis; finally, DGV, feeling the most contemporary, choreographed by Wheeldon to the music of Mike Nyman and gaining the lion's share of the applause. Sweet Violets, looking back on it, seems unremittingly gloomy both in its story of murdered prostitutes and its staging in half-darkness.

16 May 2014. Alexander Whitley at the Linbury

The programme started with All that is solid melts into air, featuring two male dancers and a traditional balerina in tutu, acting rather as a puppet. The on stage cellist played amplified music by Daniel Bjarnason

The second half was The Measures Taken, featuring a quintet of three male and two female dancers. The idea was to look at the relationship between the music, the lighting installation and the dance. However, the music and lighting fusion took me back 40 years to Pink Floyd and the dancing symbiosis only worked haphazardly for me. It was great to start with but unfortunately it didn't seem to go anywhere in particular. The music by Rutgar Zuydervelt was new to me and definitely worth discovering. 

14 May 2014. The Testament of Mary at the Barbican

A real tour de force by Fiona Shaw in this solo performance of Mary remembering Jesus's life - particularly the resurrection of Lazarus and the Wedding at Cana and ending up with the crucifixition - told in harrowing detail. The audience seemed quite spellbound for the entire 80 minutes which starts with Shaw in a glass case which is lifted for her to take charge of a live vulture. The bird imagery is told as if part of a dream later when she recounts how she took her mind of the crucifixion by watching a man feed live rabbits to a caged bird that half-killed them.
The ending is controversial but provocative - the resurrection of Christ as a shared dream by Mary - as is the depiction of the disciples as a bunch of misfits.

13 May 2014. Kronos at 40 at the Barbican

The anniversary concert for the Kronos Quartet started with a brief video run through of their forty years. Then the first half of the concert featured Terry Riley's the Serquent and Glass's String Quartet no 6. For the second half, they were joined firstly by Bryce Dessner on electric guitar for his 40 Canons; then by Jarvis Cocker on saw for his KERF; then Mariana Sadovska singing and playing harmonium for Chernobyl, The Harvest. Finally, there were two encores which kept those wanting to get their trains on tenterhooks.

19 April 2014. Matisse cut-outs at Tate Modern

I got there early to avoid the crowds and largely succeeded. The exhibition progresses from smaller to larger scale pieces and for me it is the larger that have real impact. It is also fascinating to see Matisse actually executing the cutting with his large draper's scissors, seemingly working with utter assurance and speed.

Despite everything, however, I found the two paintings in the exhibition the most arresting exhibits of them all.

17 April 2014. Pests at the Royal Court

It would be difficult to forget this play. The story, set and characters each etch themselves in one's memory. The story is of two sisters bound together in dysfuntion, the younger one pregnant and trying to get off drugs and go straight, the elder determined not to let her go; both carrying a history of abuse. The story, depressingly, is based on the writer's research amongst prisoners and so cannot be dismissed as inauthentic. They talk in their own version of 'street'. The set features the elder sister's Tracy Emin installation. There is plenty of language and a rather Sloany girl in the front row bolted at the end, presumably back to a more comfortable world.

16 April 2014. The Winter's Tale at ROH

Being more an attender of triple bills at the ROH than full length ballets, this new Christopher Wheeldon piece was refreshingly unusual for me. The cast list helpfully had a synopsis but the dance and choreography were expressive enough almost to make explanation unnecessary. However, only almost as the story is fairly dotty. Leontes, King of Sicilia, becomes obsessed by the notion that his pregnant wife Hermione is having an affair with his friend, the visiting Polixenes.
Polixenes returns to Bohemia; Hermione has the baby - a daughter - which also fetches up in Bohemia.and is brought up by shepherds. Hermione goes into  a swoon and their son Maximillius dies from the stress of it all. Leontes starts to regret.
Fast forward sixteen years and it is time for the daughter, Perdita, to fall in love with Florizel, the son of Polixenes. Her true identity becomes apparent, the two young lovers sail to Sicilia, followed by Polixenes. He has a reconciliation with Leontes and the feel good factor is capped off by Hermione coming back to life from a statue, having been in suspended animation for the intervening years.
The night I went featured an A++ casting rather than the A+++ (Watson, McRae, Cuthbertson and Lamb) that the critics had seen. I'd certainly go again but try and catch the mega-stars.