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 […]

Snail trails, bear-baiting, and Rice Krispies. Miriam King witnesses three performance works at National Theatre Studio on the last day of SPILL Festival 2015 The durational Snail Portrait, performed over four hours, is a new immersive work combining performance, visuals, text and installation, inspired by the Persian phrase ‘khane be doosh’, meaning ‘home on your […]

Mind, body, spirit. Thomas Wilson reflects on the closing weekend of SPILL 2015 SPILL Festival has, over the past decade, gone from strength to strength, firmly establishing itself as one of the key London arts festivals, programming adventurous and rigorous work from established and new artists, across a number of venues – which for the […]