It’s late afternoon on one of those early November days when it’s as if the sun has decided to stay in bed under the covers. It’s unseasonably warm, the air is damp and a few leaves hang on the trees like decorations. I’m on my way to Sanctum, Theaster Gates’s first public project in the […]

Michael Begg surrounds himself with sound at Sonica in Glasgow They are a form of theatre. They are compositions in space that effectively pull one into a sense of something other, another time, place, dimension. There is often a narrative waiting to be interpreted. Often, too, there is scenery and sound, and some form of […]

From a door at the rear of the performance space a figure emerges – tall, proud, disturbing. A dream image; an archetype of Noh theatre – a warrior with a silver mask shining in the blue stage lights, smoke curling around his feet. His precise, staccato movements dominate the stage, accompanied by a crash of […]

  Two Scandinavian companies brought their explorations of circus and gender to this year’s Circus City, Bristol’s biennial circus festival. The most powerful image that stays with me from all-male Swedish company Sisters’ exploration of precision physical interaction – Clockwork – is of men flying through the air, pole to pole, like silent gibbons. Not […]

Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls. It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world. Yes indeedy. Once upon a time The Kink’s Lola was my signature tune when plying my trade as an ‘exotic dancer’. In those days (mid 1970s), I saw myself as a kind of drag artist – playing […]