Review: Through Warm Temperatures, Assembly@Dance Base
From time to time, her dancers will come downstage and point fingers at the audience – but not in an openly hostile way. There is nothing haranguing or reproachful here. Instead there is a sense of restorative calm, of caring and connection that is in place from the opening moments when Broomes' back is lovingly anointed with oil by a fellow performer, each stroke burnishing her skin until it gleams under the lights.
Read more:
Upstage, cellist Simone Seales introduces an initially wistful note but as the piece progresses, and the dancers occasionally chant and vocalise, what builds is a feeling of close community – hints of familiar rituals even, that tie in with shared beliefs and endeavours.
The movement, meanwhile, ranges from a pliant sinuosity to a sharp angularity that tingles with energy. Ensembles, duets and solos – with Broomes herself in dynamic form – reveal the individuality of each performer, reminding us that differences can enrich and strengthen group bonds.
By the end, when fingers are again pointing out at us, it's as if their message is 'Look! Look!' – open your eyes, your hearts, your minds. Like castor oil, much of what lies around us has intrinsic value that can help our bodies and our mental wellbeing.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scotsman
4 hours ago
- Scotsman
Edinburgh Book Festival round-up David Olusoga Anne Sabba Ta-Nehisi Coates Michelle de Kretser
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The day started with Auschwitz and ended with toxic lesbian vampires and on the way took in racism on at least two continents, Spinoza, the mythical Hindu Saraswati river and an experimental novel that gave a very gentle kicking to Virginia Woolf. Say what you like about the Edinburgh book festival - and its middle Saturday wasn't particularly star-studded - but if you spend a day there, you don't half come out knowing a lot more than when you went in. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad One of the less well known faces in the Celebrity Traitors Castle will be David Olusoga. The British-Nigerian historian is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester and a BAFTA winning film-maker. He's a 12/1 longshot for the Celebrity Traitors title. | AFP via Getty Images Anne Sabba's book The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz lifted only a small corner on the horrors of that place, but even that was enough. Anti-semitism ran even within the orchestra itself, its Polish prisoners (for whom the camp was originally built) refusing to share the food parcels their relatives sent them with their Jewish fellow-musicians. Jewish music was banned, but so too was Beethoven, too gloriously German to be sullied by inferior races. The music they did play - cheery marches, mainly - was, as Sabba pointed out, a form of torture. It didn't help the prisoners, who were kicked (or worse) if they fell out of step, didn't soften the hearts of the guards, and the 50 or so musicians it helped keep alive were either shunned by survivors or consumed by guilt. Real music is different. Mahler's niece Alma Rosé, who died in Auschwitz, was lead violinist in the women's orchestra and died there. She only seems to have made one recording, of the Bach Double Violin concerto in D Minor, with her virtuoso father, in 1928. Sabba played an excerpt. It's on YouTube: a bit scratchy, but beautiful and, when you think of everything that Alma's future was to hold, heartbreaking. All the time she was writing the book, Sabba said, she was thinking what she'd have done facing such a cataclysm. That's exactly what I found myself thinking listening to acclaimed African-American cultural commentator Ta-Nehisi Coates, for whom the cataclysm is racism. America was built on it, he said: worse, it still is. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad So is there no hope? asked a woman in the audience. No, he replied. 'There IS a whole African-American tradition of hope and I respect that, but whatever I am, I am the descendant of people who have been enslaved for 250 years... I have debts to pay and that motivates me more than anything.' To Coates, America's racism is systemic and its dominant narratives fundamentally flawed, and he sees echoes of both in Israel's treatment of Palestinians. 'Everyone always told me this is such a complex historical problem, that you'd need a PhD to understand what's happening in Ramallah. No, you don't. Sometimes we hide behind our intellect. If we see someone beating their child, the reasons don't matter, it's nothing to do with right or wrong, you just want them to stop.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad That might sound obvious, even banal, but Coates was brought up in the Black Power/vindicationalist tradition, and in The Message he acknowledges how much of this is echoed in Zionism. So now, charting what he calls the latest genocidal atrocity in Gaza - the 'deliberate' killing of the al-Jazeera journalists - he sees the danger of such dreams. Although he didn't take that thought as far as he does in the book, this was a fascinating event, with a far younger audience than usual and so many hands raised for questions that if they'd all been answered, we'd all still be there. Coates was chaired by David Olusoga, Britain's best TV historian (though he himself would say that the honour belongs to Simon Schama) and who signed off his own event with the news that not only will his excellent BBC Two series A House In Time soon be back on our screens but it will be set in Edinburgh. Olusoga's fascination with history began, he said, when his mother told him that Yoruba soldiers from Nigeria (where he was born but left aged five) had fought in the Second World War. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'At first I almost didn't believe her because I'd never heard anything about that. But I became fascinated with history because I felt there was a story being withheld from me.' It was. Take Captain Yavar Abbas, the 104-year-old who made Queen Camilla (and 'my brave king') cry at the service for the 80th anniversary of VJ Day last week. He was one of 2.5 million Indian soldiers to sign up. We don't hear too much about them. If the teaching of black history faces the kind of limits already being drawn up in America, he said, we might hear a lot less. The attacks on the National Trust 'which have been going on for the last five years by so-called patriots' may be a sign of things to come. Australian writer Michelle de Kretser has won all of her country's most glittering literary prizes, yet has a neat line in self-deprecation. Unlike her friend, novelist Deborah Levy, whose mind leaps like a chess knight, she said her own is predictable and purposeful, like a pawn. 'So here, I tried to do the leap.' 'Here' is her latest novel, Theory and Practice, 'my attempt to write a novel that reads like non-fiction', starting off like a conventional novel and morphing into an intriguing-sounding story of a mashup of memoir, essay, and a meditation on Virginia Woolf (and her casual racism to a Sri Lankan guest). Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Canadian writer Madeleine Thien's The Book of Records, set in a fantastical, crumbling and placeless palace where 17th century Dutch Jewish philosopher Spinoza, eighth century Chinese poet Du Fu and American political theorist Hannah Arendt all help her young girl migrant protagonist. She did try introducing Virginia Woolf to the proceedings, she said, but it didn't work 'because she was double-booked in my friend Michelle's book'. British Indian writer Gurnaik Johal's debut novel Saraswati, which mixes myth, the politics of water and ecological collapse, is similarly ambitious. In it, the Indian government decides to bring a mythic river to life. For that, they to abrogate the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan – which is exactly what happened earlier this year. Prescient or what? Finally, as promised, to toxic lesbian vampires. The genre is new to me but VE Schwab is clearly its queen. Like Thien, she picks her three supernatural stars from across the centuries, but the baddest of them all is the oldest (500 years). Sabine is 'a mix of Lestat [from Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles] Villanelle [from Killing Eve] and Florence Welch from Florence and the Machine'. She dominates every space she enters, is unapologetic about her urges, 'and fulfils all my queer desire for villainy'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad For too long, Schwab said, lesbian fiction has concerned itself with likeability - in itself a form of self-censorship. She'd done that in her own life, when she started off as a young fantasy writer: 'I was a coward for such a long time, downplaying my sexuality because I wanted to succeed.' After 25 books, she's had enough of that: 'I'm in my Sabine era is what I'm saying.' Cue cheers from the audience - mainly female, mainly young, and clearly fans - as they charged off en masse to the signing tent and the mercifully vampire-free Edinburgh night. David Robinson
Daily Mirror
10 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Prince Harry 'lonely' as Meghan Markle 'takes back seat' after explosive row
Meghan Markle has returned to Instagram posting and publicly announced her and Prince Harry new deal with Netflix - but there is one issue she's not spoken out about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle may be toasting their new Netflix deal - but a war of words has still rumbled on in the background. Earlier this year, the Duke of Sussex stepped down from Sentebale, the charity he founded to help children orphaned by Aids in Lesotho, following a boardroom battle with the chairwoman, Dr Sophie Chandauka. Harry was said to be devastated by the row, which saw all sides rebuked by the Charity Commission for allowing the war of words to play out so publicly. Meghan was even dragged into the row earlier this year when Dr Chandauka claimed she caused a stir at a fund- raiser for the charity with little notice. But despite posting on Instagram and publicly announcing the new Netflix deal, Meghan has stayed silent on the row. And according to former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond, there is good reason for this. She told the Mirror: "This is a very sensitive issue all round. Sentebale was Harry's charity from the start, along with his co-founder, Prince Seeiso. "The allegations of misogyny and misogynoir - both discounted by the charity commission - make this an even more sensitive issue for Meghan to become involved with. "So I think she has wisely taken a back seat on this and left it to her husband. I'm sure she has supported and comforted him in private, and I think Harry will completely understand that it's not her place to get involved in a public row with his charity." Since the Charity Commission's report, it has since been revealed that Harry might be set to start a new humanitarian charity. His spokesperson said: "The duke remains absolutely committed to continuing the work he started, supporting the children and young people of Lesotho and Botswana, nearly 20 years ago. In what form that support takes — no decisions have been made. "All options remain on the table; whether that be starting a new charity or working to support pre-existing charities operating in the same sector in the region." But for royal historian and expert Dr Tessa Dunlop, Meghan's silence on the issue has been notable. She added: "Now that Meghan and Harry have signed a new Netflix deal ('looser' and apparently less lucrative than the previous $78m one but a deal nonetheless), might the Duchess find her voice? "Not the one she volubly uses to hawk As Ever wares (in conjunction with Netflix) but rather the voice Meghan famously re-found after leaving the Royal Family, the one that talked her truth to royal power and surely could talk her truth to the Sentebale fiasco? "No, really, why hasn't Meghan come out batting for Prince Harry in his latest round of verbal fisty-cuffs concerning his former African charity? After all, the Duke has consistently spoken out in support of his wife, establishing the precedent early on and against the wishes of his family when he condemned Britain's media coverage and insisted he had never before witnessed such a 'degree of pressure, scrutiny and harassment' from the press. As it currently stands, Harry cuts a lonely figure."
The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
Review: Through Warm Temperatures, Assembly@Dance Base
In expanding our understanding of its properties, Broomes is, however, also conjuring up images and moods from the African and Caribbean cultures that have persuasively informed much of her previous choreography. From time to time, her dancers will come downstage and point fingers at the audience – but not in an openly hostile way. There is nothing haranguing or reproachful here. Instead there is a sense of restorative calm, of caring and connection that is in place from the opening moments when Broomes' back is lovingly anointed with oil by a fellow performer, each stroke burnishing her skin until it gleams under the lights. Read more: Upstage, cellist Simone Seales introduces an initially wistful note but as the piece progresses, and the dancers occasionally chant and vocalise, what builds is a feeling of close community – hints of familiar rituals even, that tie in with shared beliefs and endeavours. The movement, meanwhile, ranges from a pliant sinuosity to a sharp angularity that tingles with energy. Ensembles, duets and solos – with Broomes herself in dynamic form – reveal the individuality of each performer, reminding us that differences can enrich and strengthen group bonds. By the end, when fingers are again pointing out at us, it's as if their message is 'Look! Look!' – open your eyes, your hearts, your minds. Like castor oil, much of what lies around us has intrinsic value that can help our bodies and our mental wellbeing.
