DANCE - Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre
Sadler’s Wells By Sam Jones

ON my 13th birthday a friend gave me a postcard of a dancer. Her right leg and arms were flung gloriously upward in such spiritful poise.
That dancer was Judith Jamison, and she was dancing her mentor Alvin Ailey’s Revelations. It was my first acquaintance with Ailey and his company.
Ailey died in 1989 and made Jamison the artistic director. She remains theatre’s inspiring helmsman and has her hands deep in this current tour programme. Would her company, though, live up to the dynamic perfection of that photograph?
The evening is a dance pastiche, beginning with a populist bang – Shining Star. The music of funk masters Earth Wind and Fire drives this piece from the pulsing, brassy September to the demure That’s the Way of the World. There’s no pointe work, but there doesn’t have to be.
Occasionally the toes are so taut they could be on point and the style is tightly balletic with deep contemporary overtones. Glenn Allen Sims and Linda Celeste Sims perform a romantic pas de deux, sensuous and physical, a burst of what is to come.
Clifton Brown, a strong, powerful dancer shows in the whimsical Caught what strobe lighting and astute choreography can do, seeming to be suspended in air. He is an artistic dancer but, between the admiring applause, could not have done that without tremendous athleticism.
In the next piece, Reminiscin’, Brown is paired with the diminutive Hope Boykin. Boykin is a petite spark of energy. Coupled with Brown they have good chemistry and total trust. When she runs up his thighs and stands on them she seems to be sprinting up a sturdy mountain. To the sad anguish of Diana Krall singing Joni Mitchell’s A Case of You it is one of the night’s highlights. Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and Roberta Flack, among others, provide further musical patchwork. Then we finally come to Ailey’s Revelations. Based on the sights and sounds of his Texas upbringing it includes blues, gospel and spirituals and is regarded as among Ailey’s finest work.
There is something about this company that lifts it out of the ordinary. The dancers are technically excellent but it is more than this. When they dance there is life, electricity and fire in their steps. It is a joy to watch them.

Until September 10
0870 737 7737

Audience harrassed in genius production

MACBETH
Arcola By Tom Foot

OUT of Joint’s African Macbeth – complete with child soldiers, voodoo magic, machetes and “fright wigs” – returns to the Arcola after a tour spanning Nigeria, Mexico and Japan.
Out of Joint have enjoyed enormous success over the past three years – producing David Hare’s Permanent Way for the National, Robin Soan’s Talking with Terrorists at the Royal Court, and this extraordinary take on Shakespeare’s shortest and fastest play.
The Arcola is renowned for its focus on Black, Kurdish and Turkish communities and anyone who has walked down Dalston High Street will have seen many different faces; a bright and vibrant mix of cultures.
How odd then to walk into the Arcola’s foyer and be confronted by a capacity audience made up entirely of white people.
Malcolm’s line: “Black Macbeth will seem as white as snow,” was always going to be particularly loaded. Mock soldiers brandishing AK47s and formidable machetes herded the crowd down an alleyway to a side entrance to the theatre. They searched bags, barked orders and told a startled audience to stay in single file.
“I want to go in with my sister,” said one woman who tried to sneak in two by two. “Shut up and get against the wall!” came the response.
And against the wall she leapt. Bored children dragged along by parents couldn’t believe their luck as their parents squirmed in the heat – was this really Shakespeare?
Those who made it inside looked on in disbelief as the opening Witches scene – traditionally three hags cackling over a cauldron – became a ritualistic tribal dance.
The actors whooped, roared and hooted at the audience who were made to stand. One man was hit square in the face by a headless chicken.
How I smiled – until one of the witches snatched, swigged and squashed my can of pop.
Macbeth is Africa’s favourite Shakespeare play – it is performed more than any other. Shakespeare comes in all shapes and sizes these days – traditional productions are becoming a thing of the past. But it was particularly refreshing to see a Macbeth that didn’t get bogged down with English academic quibbles, and focused its energies on the raw excitement of the military coup and the savagery of the murders.
The Globe once staged Yoruba – an African Macbeth musical. But surely this country has never seen anything like this before. The most exciting Shakespeare I have seen – by a mile. Get yourselves in line.

Until September 10
020 7503 1646

Dressage champ makes promising acting debut

HUIS CLOS
The King’s Head By Tom Foot

IN Huis Clos (No Way Out), a traitor, lesbian and nymphomaniac arrive in “Hell” – a locked room, with no windows, three chairs and no mirrors.
There are no racks or torturers – not even a Chelsea fan. Just three battling egos that need each other as much as they can’t stand each other. The characters begin to comprehend an eternity together and conclude: “Hell is other people.”
Most people will associate the French philosopher and playwright Jean Paul Sartre with existentialism – the sort of word that excites literary theorists but will send 99 per cent of the rest of the population reaching for The Beano in despair.
Sartre believed that every work included an image of its audience. The same went for people’s actions as well.
Individuals can try to give meaning to their actions but other people are equally free to give meaning to those actions. This is why Hell is other people – just as authors cannot prevent readers from interpreting their works as they please, so we cannot prevent other people from judging us as they please.
So Sartre fans will understand if I find better plays at the theatre this week.
Judging by my colleagues’ reaction to the idea of coming to see the play it is clear most people may think that Hell is Jean Paul Sartre.
But Huis Clos is surprisingly funny. And all the actors were excellent – especially Kristan Milward as Ines. Director Drew Ackroyd’s gamble in casting English dressage champion Emile Faurie – in his first role – as Garcin seems a masterstroke. The King’s Head must have worried about switching from the hugely successful tabloid farce Who’s the Daddy to this intellectual mind boggler. But the theatre was full and long may it continue.

Until September 25
020 7226 1916

Audience in spin after mind games

MARC SALEM’S MIND GAMES
Tricycle by Martina Anzinger

RIGHT at the start of his one-man show, Marc Salem strips out the impossible – nothing supernatural or occult, no hidden apparatus, and no stooges either, he says. Which only left the improbable; something up his sleeve.
But somehow that didn’t quite explain how he guesses a number you were only thinking of, the serial number on a banknote, words you glimpsed in a book, the amount of cash in your pocket, your favourite holiday destination and the price on a supermarket receipt.
And that was before he’s “warmed up”, as he kept assuring us. He even invited five members of the audience to lie – and still caught them out, by identifying who had drawn which picture on a sketchpad.
Heaven knows what he might have done if he’d moved into miracle mode.
The genial, bearded, wisecracking American is a psychology academic from New York and leading authority on non-verbal communication who has worked as consultant psychological profiler on police investigations. His new book, Mind Tools, is published later this year.
Salem claims that the mind is an open book and has taken his astonishing demonstrations around the world.
And he gobsmacked them in Kilburn, too. Dr Ming – an intern at a local hospital – was invited to help out in a feat of divination that was – well, absolutely, impossible.
The good doctor helped place coins, sticking plaster and blindfold over Salem’s eyes, before the “mind-gamer” asked his medical assistant to hold various objects under the palm of his outstretched hand.
Gasps of “I don’t believe it” echoed around the intimate auditorium as Salem – without touching the object – precisely identified the shape, composition and even provenance of a clutch of personal items tendered by six members of the audience. By the time he had finished Dr Ming too was gaping in disbelief.

Until 17 September
020 7328 1000

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