Shorn of elaborate touches,the Barber Of Seville was an all-round operatic masterclass
live-wire ambassador for all things hip-hop in British culture and artistic director of Breakin’ Convention. “Make some NOISE!” echoes Tony Thrills, founding member of the Edinburgh-based Random Aspekts B-boy crew, who has been hosting the preshow foyer events where making noise – and showing off skills – has put the audience in a state of high expectation. They will not be disappointed.
For sure, there’s a huge and noisily loyal following for the local crews who make up most of the first half: Heavy Smokers, Rockabeat, Rice And Peez and Newcastle’s Bad Taste Cru. The last-named serve up Just Another Day, a humorous take on the drudgery of life in a hat store that – as Jonzi D has always worked to encourage – allies hip-hop’s crowd-pleasing moves with theatrical flair. Just how far that approach can go was jaw-droppingly evident in the guest artists who were the “global” element on the bill.
Clash 66 (France/korea) came close to doing the unthinkable: melding influences from contemporary dance and ballet with macho hip-hop in a duet, AP15, that hinted at the yin-yang duality and tensions that character our spiritual and physical selves. Vagabond Crew (France) also underpinned their prowess in Alien with reflections on mortality and the meaning of life – though as the head-spinning, shapethrowing virtuosity reached a fever-pitch of bravura accomplishment, the inevitable thought was: “This is life, but not as most folk’s muscles know it.” The noise made in response was deservedly ecstatic. MODERN BALLET PERFORMANCE, RCS, GLASGOW THERE was a time when this event – longed for by many in the dance and higher education sectors – seemed more a pipe dream than a reality. But last week the planning paid off with a flourish: the first graduates of the three-year BA Modern Ballet course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland stepped out in a programme that brought together various departments within RCS and celebrated the Conservatoire’s partnership with Scottish Ballet, whose depute artistic director, Paul Tyers, is the visionary force heading up the RCS ballet course.
In fact, six of the eight short works had Scottish Ballet connections. Company member Diana Loosmore’s choreography in Quietly Dislocating put the graduates through nuanced episodes of angularity and interacting consequences while artistic director in waiting, Christopher Hampson, challenged three couples with the precise, nippy footwork and courtly gestures of his Capriol Suite, the Warlock music played live by RCS music students.
Live music, too, for an excerpt from the late Peter Darrell’s Giselle, in which the ladies of years one and two were a well-focused ensemble of Wilis commanded by the spirited Myrtha of Suzy Halstead. Matthew Topliss showed why he’s been snapped up by Northern Ballet in, among other roles, the angsty prowess of Creep (from Stephen Petronio’s Ride The Beast). All three years had chances to shine but one piece epitomised the collaborative theme: the final section of Darrell’s Five Ruckert Songs. Sophie Ammam was the expressive soloist, Seho Lee the sensitive pianist and Catriona Morison the thrilling singer. WE ARE ALL …, PLATFORM, EASTERHOUSE JUST days before this show opened, all the best-laid plans threw a wobbly. Xana Marwick, whose last project this was before maternity leave, had intended to be onstage with her locally recruited participants – ages ranging from under 10 to over 60, some new to theatre-making and all strangers to one another. By now you’ve guessed: Baby Marwick – a boy – decided to put in an early appearance. But, as at every point in this show, community spirit came to the fore. On-site filmmaker Matt Addicott took the directorial reins and We Are All Just Human Beings At Different Stages In Our Lives – to give this undertaking its full title – powered through to an uplifting conclusion.
Marwick had always intended that We Are All … should tap into the misunderstandings and fears that see communities fragment into groups where age or appearance are the distancing factors. So the performance begins with the audience being split into age-related groups prior to an invasion of rampaging hoodies while footage of last year’s London riots blasts across the screen. The question throughout the show is not so much why as what are we/you going to do about it and our future society? As young and old in the group volunteer their hopes and observations, what emerges is how Marwick’s concept has got them talking.
Suddenly, her face fills the screen. Wee Megan and Ava deliver a poem to her and the baby. Xana, they did you – and everything Platform represents – proud. BLUE TOUCH PAPER, QUEEN’S HALL, EDINBURGH COLIN Towns’s desire to create a band that carries jazz values into the current – and possibly the next – age has come to fruition in Blue Touch Paper. The keyboard player and prolific composer of film and TV themes is an unassuming physical presence onstage but his ambitious ideas and aim of producing a sense of occasion through sound were obvious the moment the lights dimmed and the band walked on to pre-recorded atmospherics.
A superb sound quality – not always easy to attain in the Queen’s Hall – cast the music in its best light as the six-piece band brought Towns’s creations to often subtle and always precise life. The main voices are Mark Lockheart’s eloquent tenor and soprano saxophones and bass clarinet, with guitarist Chris Montague variously shadowing the melody, adding rhythmic colour and soaring off on fast, fiery extemporisations.
The themes and arrangements are uniformly attractive, owing more to European composers such as Debussy and Kurt Weill than jazz staples, although there were occasional suggestions of latter-day Weather Report and Frank Zappa in the more complex items.
One highlight factored the three witches’ chanting from Macbeth in eerie surround sound alongside terse soprano and plunging keyboards as the expert drums-percussion team of Benny Greb and Stephan Maass created a perfect, exact groove. Bassist Edward Maclean’s ballad feature and Greb and Maass’s brilliant second-half conversation were further outstanding contributions but this was, overall, an expertly conceived and articulated series of compositions that hung together superbly as an evening of music full of engagement and appealing sonic surprises. THE DYKEENIES, QUEEN MARGARET UNION, GLASGOW FIVE or six years ago, The Dykeenies were a mainstay at Scottish festivals, licking at the heels of the UK charts while topping their Scottish counterparts and supporting bands such as The Fratellis, The Maccabees and The Mystery Jets. Then, whether down to a universal change of tastes or record label let-downs, any momentum The Dykeenies had dwindled amid line-up changes, culminating in their split earlier this year after releasing their second album.
As they took to the QMU for their farewell show, you’d struggle to think this was a band on its last legs. Slickly produced, it was a gig worthy of a sell-out headline slot, even seven years on.
This goodbye show – if in fact it is the end of The Dykeenies – saw their once teenage fans, most now in their twenties, belting out pretty much every word of their back catalogue, which the band ran through with no let-up from their faithful following. came out on top after giving an accomplished performance of her wistful poem Jjajja. Meanwhile, the under-18s category saw poets as young as eight years old take to the stage. Ellie Fisher, aged 11, was crowned the under-14s champion for her poem The Writer’s Meditation, and the 15 and over slam champion was Megan Beech, aged 18, who gave an energetic and passionate depiction of Glastonbury festival in her poem. www.poetryrivals.com
Their oeuvre is a mixed bag, with Pick You Up, New Ideas and Stitches all inessential on record, but when 900 people are bellowing each overaccentuated syllable while the band are clearly the most relaxed and wellrehearsed they’ve ever been, it’s hard not to see this as a suitable send-off. A NIGHT IN WONDERLAND, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF SCOTLAND, EDINBURGH ON a night when museums across the country opened their doors out of hours, I doubt any of their customers had quite as good a time as those in the wonderful spaces on Chamber Street. This latest in the series of RBS Lates had a vague Alice In Wonderland theme and plenty of folk responded with suitable costuming. There was much on a playing card theme, more than a few mad hats and at least one girl in a blue frock and white ankle socks. Some of the activities echoed the theme, but as many did not, and for a sizeable proportion of the sell-out crowd the evening was entirely about the music.
Young trio Discopolis brought their own posse of fans and donned bright ethnic tops for the occasion. Their set, which introduced new songs and a cover of We Were Promised Jetpacks’ Human Error, lacked a little punch but still marked them out as ones to watch.
Django Django frontman David Maclean observed that the band were there to replace the goldfish in the museum atrium, and most folk supported the decision to cut the carp. The band look sharp and sounded it too. There is a resemblance to Hot Chip, only with a sound that comes out of space rock rather than disco, but even more of a kinship to Franz Ferdinand, from the sharp shirts to the crisp beats. Details like the array of hand percussion instruments deployed are winning, and the vocals are top notch. Even the queue for the silent disco was enticed to the stage. This quartet is clearly building a big following. Sponsored by RBS. TICKETS go on sale today for the first ever Lip Service official finale event in Glasgow, which will include talks and a Q&A with the show’s creator Harriet Braun and cast at Glasgow Film Theatre. Later, Rubies Bar and Tess’s Dykes Of Hazard birthday party will be recreated at Sloans, soundtracked by live music from some of the bands who appear on the soundtrack, plus comedy and character-themed cocktails. July 15, www.ticketweb.co.uk