Overworlds & Underworlds was a large site-specific project for the Cultural Olympiad created by the Quay Brothers working in collaboration with Leeds Canvas, a consortium of local arts groups. It mixed installation, sculpture, film, dance performance, and, above all else, atmosphere. The Underworld part of the event took place in Leeds’ Dark Arches, an amazing subterranean […]

The number of straight young men encouraged into ballet schools might plummet after two and half hours of brazen campery in Matthew Bourne’s triple bill. Presented to celebrate his company’s 25th anniversary, it is a timely selection for a year of Jubilee and Olympic festivities, a lighthearted, nostalgia-ladened programme of exquisitely performed classical ballet with […]

So, you know the 80s action movie Predator? The one with Arnie in, about an alien stalker who picks off a load of butch blokes one by one when they stray off the beaten path into the deepest depths of the South American jungle? You don’t? Neither did I, which some might consider a disadvantage for […]

Presented under the auspices of ‘east. by. south. east’, a collaboration between key venues in those two regions, Made in China’s We Hope That You’re Happy (Why Would We Lie?) is a strange beast, in the best sort of way – an interesting mix of new writing and physically embodied, really there, live art performance. It took me […]

Two dancers, a strand of light behind them, an intense white strand of light, cutting across the rear wall – in response to the dancers, or is it that the dancers are responding to the light? This mesmerising brilliant strand is superseded by lines of light streaming down, vertically, contrasted by horizontal lines projected onto […]