Dancing with Nina and Otis

Simone and Redding - they have to be the greatest in putting across a song with abandon, don't they? To make high art out of choreographing them is the biggest challenge, but I can say with some euphoria, as a virgin to the company, that the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater rises to it with unflagging energy. Some time ago I asked our friend and dance lover Liz Holt to tell me what for her was tops. This was her answer, and she proved it by taking me to see the AAADT at Sadler's Wells last night.

My colleague Ismene Brown on The Arts Desk can tell you in more eloquent detail than I why most of it worked (and a little bit didn't, quite). But I want to splurge a bit of enthusiasm, so here goes. Suite Otis (gents pictured above by Steve Vaccariello) bursts on us pretty and vibrant in pink, some 40 years since George W Faison created it. It's not just the exhilarating blend of classical dance with moves and wiggles more associated with the great man's hits that made such an impact; I just loved the individuality of each ensemble dancer's expressions - pride, humour, haughtiness, anger, you name it. Really charming cheek-to-cheekiness from the doe-eyed Ghrai DeVore and stocky, charismatic Guillermo Asca; a final sweep of euphoria to Otis's greatest number that I know of, "Try a Little Tenderness". We have to see him performing that in 1967



and here's a mere minute or so's snippets of Suite Otis. NB: some of these clips are widescreen, so best to click on the moving image and view them on YouTube.



Plotless contemporary dance can be a bit baffling. I felt that about The Hunt, despite the incredible unflagging energy to some over-amplified drumming, and Dancing Spirit, though I found the music by Les Tambours du Bronx compelling. In a charming Q&A afterwards, charismatic artistic director designate and choreographer Robert Battle, an articulate and natural speaker, suggested we just go with it, try and see it again and put our own story to it, which might be more interesting than what he'd thought of in the first place.

Whatever the tale, no-one could fail to respond to the most visceral male dance solo I've ever seen, the phenomenal Samuel Lee Roberts's to Battle's In/Side, a whirling chronicle of pain to Nina Simone's 'Wild is the Wind'. This amazing photograph is by Paul Kolnik.


Again, there's a short composite clip on YouTube:



What I didn't realise until I dug out the Nina album with the song on it is that it was composed by the famous film composer Dimitri Tiomkin, one-time student of Glazunov at the St Petersburg Conservatoire and of Busoni in Berlin. What a link!

And finally, the signature piece, Ailey's own Revelations. Half a century on, the company fill it with feeling, virtuosity and enthusiasm, performing it as if it were a new piece - which, to many in the theatre like myself, it was. Let that never be forgotten by any artists performing what they think is familiar repertoire - to many, it won't be. All of this long spiritual symphony can be seen on YouTube, so I give you just the opening number 'I Been 'Buked'



and the roofraising finale, 'Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham'.



You ought also to see the very beautiful 'Wade in the Water' sequence, too, but there I'll use a couple more classy images. The last three are by Andrew Eccles.



Must have just one more, of the leaping men in 'Sinner Man' (different from the three I saw, who included Samuel Lee Roberts spinning dizzyingly again)


With a wild reprise of 'Rocka my Soul', a standing ovation was never more deservingly won. Good luck to Battle as he takes over from the remarkable Judith Jamison next year. And don't miss the two programmes running at Sadler's Wells until 25 September if you can get a ticket.

Somewhere film

Somewhere high in the top ten of recent, possibly even-all time British films is where I'd admiringly place Sam Taylor-Wood's directorial debut. Nowhere Boy is about so much more than just the man born to be a Beatle. John Lennon's growing-up story is an extraordinary one: raised by his Aunt Mimi, reclaimed all too belatedly by the vivacious - manic-depressive? - mother who gave him up when he was five years old, only to lose her again. The film suggests how his creativity might have been both fostered and blighted by this emotional roller-coaster.

The cinematography is ravishing, as you'd expect from STW's art: no dreary 50s Liverpool and Blackpool this, but a colourful world full of possibilities. In that respect it has much in common with Richard Jones's vivacious view of northern rep in his brilliant ENO Pagliacci. What truly stunned me, though, was the capturing of three great performances that give the film its beating heart.

However good the scenes of pre-Beatledom music-making, it's the love triangle between the two sisters and their joint son that rises to the heights in a visceral confrontation. I challenge you to sit through that dry-eyed. Highest praise for Anne-Marie Duff as the very loveable Julia Lennon is that she's not eclipsed by the nuanced delivery of the ever-surprising Kristin Scott Thomas as the controlled but by no means cold Mimi. And Aaron Johnson - how uncannily he veers between cocky, sexy teenager and a lost boy who needs a good cry. And, yes, he's beautiful.

Still odd to find a sharp intake of breath about the fact that STW set up life and parenthood with Johnson in the wake of the film. Ingmar Bergman did it all the time with women at about the same age distance, and no-one bats an eyelid. And what Bergman wrote about the erotic charge of film or theatre is obviously true. It's partly what gives this film its special quality, and I don't think I'm saying that with hindsight. Goldfrapp score sometimes sentimentally apart, it just doesn't put a foot wrong. Oh, and it has something of the energy you find in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr Ripley. Which Taylor-Wood would certainly take as a compliment, since Minghella encouraged her to make her first full-length film. How proud he would have been.

Thanks, too, for introducing me to so much music. Love Duff's ukulele playing, a very touching scene, and the way she discreetly bounces to Screamin' Jay Hawkins's 'I put a spell on you'. Found an outrageous film on YouTube of Hawkins parodying his already parodistic self, so let's stick to the 1956 single.



And hear how mighty Nina appropriated it to her own very different ends.