One of John Zorn's leftfield music projects - Naked City - made its name from neck-jarring changes of direction that showed off both the skills of the musicians and a witty approach to the idea of genre. Given that much of Naked City's music is borderline unlistenable, you wouldn't expect to see them on a talent contest: certainly not one that might see in its final three a rather plain woman able to turn out a decent showtune, or a saxophonist with aspirations to become the next Kenny G. Remarkably, however, it turns out that Britain does have talent after all. Whether through the dark art of vote-rigging or a genuine outpouring of taste in the Great British Public, the winner of that ignoble television event was the dance counterpart of Naked City.
Sordel is something of a sucker for dance, being one of the last remaining people who would rather watch Riverdance than Stavros Flatley. Perhaps it comes of being part of the original Torville and Dean generation, but anything genuinely exciting in the dance line always reduces me to slack-jawed admiration, and three of the dance acts in the final of BGT were worthy of celebration. Diversity was the best of a rather fine trio: best not merely because they were incredibly polished and disciplined, but because of how carefully their act had been tailored for the stage on which they were performing.
As always with these stories, there is a deeper backstory that emerges once you look into it, for the Diversity that performed last night was drawing on the experience of a Diversity that is visible on that patient chronicler of entertainment evolution, YouTube. Viewing the video of their stunning performance at Streetdance '08 it is easy to see that the lean, crowd-pleasing routine that won BGT was the brilliantly-choreographed offspring of the muscular routine that wowed the street dance audience. The younger dancers - a clever seasoning to the street dance - were pushed into greater prominence for a mass audience, the gymnastic tumbling reined in, the cultural references gathered together for our collectively low attention-span.
This is the true vindication of the story, because while several of their competitors were examples of pure unvarnished talent (such as the genuinely staggering vocals of Shaheen), the success of Diversity was that of talent, intelligence, wit, experience, grace, determination and hour upon aching hour of rehearsal. While a victory for Susan Boyle would have gratified those for whom fame is a second national lottery, victory for Diversity reminded the rest of us that there are some fairly important steps between our sofas and the front pages of the tabloids.
It is highly unlikely that the cognoscenti will spend as many hours delving into the genius of Diversity as they have into the genius of John Zorn, but their virtues are consonant and worthy of comparison. The success of Diversity is a cheering reminder that great art finds a way to flourish in the most unpromising of soils.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Spending-Our-Money-Like-Water-Gate, Day 2072
Like an over-loved teddy bear Harriet Harman has evidently been put out of the reach of small hands until Mummy can get to her with needle and thread. So much can be inferred from the fact that Margaret Beckett (a politician for whom the answer to the question "Is she still alive?" has for some years been No) was disinterred and sent creaking into the world last night for the purposes of occupying the Labour seat on Question Time. Since this seat is the only one likely to remain in Labour hands after the next election, leaving it vacant would clearly be at best unwise.
Now QT is - as we all know - a bear-pit on an average night, and like watching the Christians thrown to the lions on a good one. In this case, there were several lions on the panel and a great number in the audience, giving the clear impression of a three-day convention at which only one small plate of vol-au-vents has been served.
To clarify the metaphor, Mrs. Beckett was the principal canape on that plate, and one would have felt sorry for her but for the self-serving and casuistic arguments that she brought to bear in order to justify her various positions.
The first of these is that Grace and Favour apartments are not given to politicians free of charge. How the lions roared with pity for those politicians faced with onerous duty of living (as Mrs. Beckett has done) at Chevening and One Carlton Gardens! Their eyes grew quite wet with hunger.
The second argument that she ventured is that the issue of politicians' pay was really much too complicated for us to understand and we should stop worrying our little heads about it. The lions nodded appreciatively at this argument and shook out their napkins with a renewed appreciation of their meagre intellectual abilities.
Best of all, however, was Mrs. Beckett's answer to the question as to whether she approved of The Telegraph's decision to publish the details of MPs' pay in the first place. Puff pastry that she was, all plump with chicken and mushroom, she had the timerity to argue that she condemned The Telegraph for having taken delivery of the personal details of (and at this point I insert a conspicuously unnecessary parenthesis for the true significance of this to sink in) MPs' staff.
The lions blinked at one another, uncertain as to whether their manes had fallen in their ears again.
No, they had it right first time. Evidently the concern of MPs at their dirty washing having been laundered in the full light of day is not directed towards themselves but entirely towards poor Muggins-in-the-office, slaving away at the paper shredder unconscious of the fact that the security of her data was about to be jeopardised by The Telegraph. (Since Muggins-in-the-office is quite probably a member of their own family, perhaps MPs are right to be concerned.)
At this point the lions paused for a snack and were later seen to be giving Mrs. Beckett's arguments full consideration as they flossed her out of their fangs.
Now QT is - as we all know - a bear-pit on an average night, and like watching the Christians thrown to the lions on a good one. In this case, there were several lions on the panel and a great number in the audience, giving the clear impression of a three-day convention at which only one small plate of vol-au-vents has been served.
To clarify the metaphor, Mrs. Beckett was the principal canape on that plate, and one would have felt sorry for her but for the self-serving and casuistic arguments that she brought to bear in order to justify her various positions.
The first of these is that Grace and Favour apartments are not given to politicians free of charge. How the lions roared with pity for those politicians faced with onerous duty of living (as Mrs. Beckett has done) at Chevening and One Carlton Gardens! Their eyes grew quite wet with hunger.
The second argument that she ventured is that the issue of politicians' pay was really much too complicated for us to understand and we should stop worrying our little heads about it. The lions nodded appreciatively at this argument and shook out their napkins with a renewed appreciation of their meagre intellectual abilities.
Best of all, however, was Mrs. Beckett's answer to the question as to whether she approved of The Telegraph's decision to publish the details of MPs' pay in the first place. Puff pastry that she was, all plump with chicken and mushroom, she had the timerity to argue that she condemned The Telegraph for having taken delivery of the personal details of (and at this point I insert a conspicuously unnecessary parenthesis for the true significance of this to sink in) MPs' staff.
The lions blinked at one another, uncertain as to whether their manes had fallen in their ears again.
No, they had it right first time. Evidently the concern of MPs at their dirty washing having been laundered in the full light of day is not directed towards themselves but entirely towards poor Muggins-in-the-office, slaving away at the paper shredder unconscious of the fact that the security of her data was about to be jeopardised by The Telegraph. (Since Muggins-in-the-office is quite probably a member of their own family, perhaps MPs are right to be concerned.)
At this point the lions paused for a snack and were later seen to be giving Mrs. Beckett's arguments full consideration as they flossed her out of their fangs.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Oh, Oh, Oh What A Lumley War ...
Until last night, it had never been worth anyone's while to commit to memory the name of Phil Woolas, the United Kingdom's immigration minister. He may well have been calculating that, with a year to go of Labour Government, a prominent place on the Shadow Cabinet would be his for the asking after the bloodbath that will doubtless follow the next General Election. It was all going so well.
Searching for Phil Woolas on Youtube (that new instrument so beloved of Downing Street) it is possible to find a video of him on the receiving end of a custard pie. Those were the good old days, however, for now he finds himself unwittingly in the vanguard as Brown and company charge the Russian guns. "Someone had blunder'd" indeed.
The guns in question belonged, of course, to Joanna Lumley who - short of setting about them with a closed umbrella - could scarcely be doing a better job of treating our political masters as the pack of whelps and curs that they are. Our government is much happier to deal with the Great British Public in general, believing (quite against overwhelming evidence to the contrary) that you can fool all of the people some of the time. By saying that she trusts the prime minister, however, Ms. Lumley eloquently conveyed precisely the opposite, and Mr. Brown would do well to view the retribution visited upon his hitherto-anonymous lackey as merely a foretaste of what will come if he does not approach the issue of the Gurkhas with the same pre-emptive haste that he previously showed on the subject of MPs' pay.
Which reminds me.
Harriet Harman - who (let us recall) unsuccessfully introduced in January a Commons proposal to exempt MPs' personal expenses from the Freedom of Information Act - was on Newsnight last night defending her fellow cabinet members as a consequence of the Telegraph's revelation that some of them had been sucking over-enthusiastically on the national teat.
(Evidently the Prime Minister and his brother have been mucking out at the Augean stables, since they found it necessary to spend £240 a month of our money cleaning something. If Lady Macbeth had committed that scale of investment she might have been able to sleep better at night.)
Ms. Harman is, it seems, the government apologist of last resort, and this sets up a potential title bout that might cast the Rumble in the Jungle into the shade.
Harman vs. Lumley.
Let it be.
Searching for Phil Woolas on Youtube (that new instrument so beloved of Downing Street) it is possible to find a video of him on the receiving end of a custard pie. Those were the good old days, however, for now he finds himself unwittingly in the vanguard as Brown and company charge the Russian guns. "Someone had blunder'd" indeed.
The guns in question belonged, of course, to Joanna Lumley who - short of setting about them with a closed umbrella - could scarcely be doing a better job of treating our political masters as the pack of whelps and curs that they are. Our government is much happier to deal with the Great British Public in general, believing (quite against overwhelming evidence to the contrary) that you can fool all of the people some of the time. By saying that she trusts the prime minister, however, Ms. Lumley eloquently conveyed precisely the opposite, and Mr. Brown would do well to view the retribution visited upon his hitherto-anonymous lackey as merely a foretaste of what will come if he does not approach the issue of the Gurkhas with the same pre-emptive haste that he previously showed on the subject of MPs' pay.
Which reminds me.
Harriet Harman - who (let us recall) unsuccessfully introduced in January a Commons proposal to exempt MPs' personal expenses from the Freedom of Information Act - was on Newsnight last night defending her fellow cabinet members as a consequence of the Telegraph's revelation that some of them had been sucking over-enthusiastically on the national teat.
(Evidently the Prime Minister and his brother have been mucking out at the Augean stables, since they found it necessary to spend £240 a month of our money cleaning something. If Lady Macbeth had committed that scale of investment she might have been able to sleep better at night.)
Ms. Harman is, it seems, the government apologist of last resort, and this sets up a potential title bout that might cast the Rumble in the Jungle into the shade.
Harman vs. Lumley.
Let it be.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
She's "Got A Little List" (She Never Would Be Missed)
Until yesterday I am not sure that I had heard of Michael Alan Weiner. I had heard of Fred Phelps, because Louis Theroux made a television programme about him called The Most Hated Family in America. I imagine that we'll be hearing more of both of them, though, because the UK government has determined that there was some slender political advantage in naming them as people not welcome here.
Where is the Minister for Stop & Think when you need her?
It goes without saying that the policy of naming these undesirables has been placed in the safe keeping of Jacqui Smith, a politician of whom no news would be good news indeed. Instead of sitting in a corner crying (as any normal human being would with her recent record of catastrophe), the Home Secretary has popped her head above the parapets long enough to champion this list, and someone has even given it the name of "UK's Least Wanted." This suggests that someone in government thought that the idea was good enough to merit a snappy title.
So, of course, the news today is that Michael Alan Weiner is threatening to sue someone for defamation. Given that he has a hugely successful radio show and lives in a country with no shortage of lawyers, I favour his chances of dipping his hands into the pockets of British taxpayers at some point in the near future with a rapacious enthusiasm previously reserved for members of our own parliament.
Even should he fail (perhaps the case will never be brought, perhaps the lawyers for the Crown will be so greased by our money as to slip through his fingers) the net result of all this will be that Britain will extend its reputation as a country where the government is so terrified of dissenting views that it would rather ennoble them with an arbitrary and incompetent ban than expose them to the light of day. Personally, I never heard of a country that banned entrance to a campaigner of any sort without thinking that it was dictatorial and cowardly.
Louis Theroux made Fred Phelps look sinister and unbearable; Jacqui Smith has made him look like a martyr for freedom of speech.
The most worrying element in this, however, is the views for which Weiner has been banned. He is opposed to gay marriage but not apparently to homosexuality in general: a fairly bland view for an American right-winger. He has said some pretty ignorant things about autism, but hardly the sort of thing that posed a risk to public order more grave than a rowdy protest. He is opposed to immigration, which should surely put him and Jacqui on the same page.
He is reputedly anti-Arab and anti-Islamic.
Bingo.
The suspicion dawns that Weiner was not on the list for any especially grave or worrying views that he might hold, but in order to establish that the list of the UK's Least Wanted was not missing a final word: Muslims. Most of those on the list with viable militant credentials are indeed Muslims (not you, Mike Guzofsky) and there is a strong sense that the raison d'etre of the list is an attack on Islamic extremism to which some other names have been scraped up in the interests of apparent balance.
The only potential upside of this list, then, is the publication of a photograph of Jacqui Smith alongside the headline "UK's Least Wanted". With any luck it will be a photograph of the entire cabinet.
Where is the Minister for Stop & Think when you need her?
It goes without saying that the policy of naming these undesirables has been placed in the safe keeping of Jacqui Smith, a politician of whom no news would be good news indeed. Instead of sitting in a corner crying (as any normal human being would with her recent record of catastrophe), the Home Secretary has popped her head above the parapets long enough to champion this list, and someone has even given it the name of "UK's Least Wanted." This suggests that someone in government thought that the idea was good enough to merit a snappy title.
So, of course, the news today is that Michael Alan Weiner is threatening to sue someone for defamation. Given that he has a hugely successful radio show and lives in a country with no shortage of lawyers, I favour his chances of dipping his hands into the pockets of British taxpayers at some point in the near future with a rapacious enthusiasm previously reserved for members of our own parliament.
Even should he fail (perhaps the case will never be brought, perhaps the lawyers for the Crown will be so greased by our money as to slip through his fingers) the net result of all this will be that Britain will extend its reputation as a country where the government is so terrified of dissenting views that it would rather ennoble them with an arbitrary and incompetent ban than expose them to the light of day. Personally, I never heard of a country that banned entrance to a campaigner of any sort without thinking that it was dictatorial and cowardly.
Louis Theroux made Fred Phelps look sinister and unbearable; Jacqui Smith has made him look like a martyr for freedom of speech.
The most worrying element in this, however, is the views for which Weiner has been banned. He is opposed to gay marriage but not apparently to homosexuality in general: a fairly bland view for an American right-winger. He has said some pretty ignorant things about autism, but hardly the sort of thing that posed a risk to public order more grave than a rowdy protest. He is opposed to immigration, which should surely put him and Jacqui on the same page.
He is reputedly anti-Arab and anti-Islamic.
Bingo.
The suspicion dawns that Weiner was not on the list for any especially grave or worrying views that he might hold, but in order to establish that the list of the UK's Least Wanted was not missing a final word: Muslims. Most of those on the list with viable militant credentials are indeed Muslims (not you, Mike Guzofsky) and there is a strong sense that the raison d'etre of the list is an attack on Islamic extremism to which some other names have been scraped up in the interests of apparent balance.
The only potential upside of this list, then, is the publication of a photograph of Jacqui Smith alongside the headline "UK's Least Wanted". With any luck it will be a photograph of the entire cabinet.
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