On my radar: Richard Alston’s cultural highlights

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/jan/18/on-my-radar-richard-alston-rembrandt

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Choreographer Richard Alston was born in Sussex and educated at Eton before studying fine art and theatre design at Croydon School of Art. In 1967, he became one of the first students at the newly established London Contemporary Dance School. He studied in New York, principally with Merce Cunningham, before joining Rambert, first as resident choreographer in 1980 then artistic director from 1986 to 1992. In 1994, he was made artistic director of The Place where he set up the Richard Alston Dance Company. The company celebrates its 20th anniversary with performances at Sadler’s Wells on 26 and 27 January.

Book: Nairn’s London by Ian Nairn

London is still the city I love most and long ago in the 1960s, when I dropped out of school and came up to town, I’d walk every day sometimes for hours around the City and the docks clutching a well-thumbed copy of Nairn’s London. Ian Nairn was a down-to-earth, beer-drinking journalist who wrote with vivid passion for his subject, a detailed and idiosyncratic description of the best buildings in London. I was so excited by his vaulting enthusiasms that I eagerly went exploring, seeking out the places he wrote about. To my utter delight they’ve just recently republished Nairn’s London and it’s as eccentrically convincing as ever, still so exciting to read.

Place: Segesta, Sicily

At Segesta there’s the shell of a perfect Doric Greek temple sitting alone in the midst of fields. It’s extraordinary, so powerful and yet peaceful. The story goes that centuries ago the city of Segesta expected a Greek invasion, so to placate their unwelcome visitors they set about building this temple. Suddenly the expected invasion evaporated into thin air and they stopped building. As time went on the city of Segesta disappeared entirely, but still there in the middle of nowhere is this beautiful temple. There was nothing else in Segesta when I went – I hope it’s still so.

Music: Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty

At Christmas, I somehow have again a child’s need of magic, so this year I found myself listening obsessively to Sleeping Beauty. It’s a score I never tire of, so rich that I always find new things. Not just pretty and lyrical, it has wonderful darkness and barbaric sonorities in the music for Carabosse, the evil fairy. Stravinsky was a devoted admirer, and indeed you can hear the beginnings of what became Firebird and even Rite of Spring.

Dance: Bayadère – The Ninth Life

This spring the brilliant Shobana Jeyasingh turns her astute intelligence and marvellously three-dimensional movement towards re-examining the story behind the 19th-century Petipa classic La Bayadère. I can’t wait to see it – Jeyasingh is one of the few choreographers whose agility of language and clarity of rhythm can totally engage my attention. Also she has a great cast for this project, dancers from such a variety of backgrounds, to see them move together should be fascinating.

Exhibition: Rembrandt – The Late Works

This exhibition at the National Gallery is a truly once-in-a-lifetime show. It’s worth begging, borrowing or stealing a ticket just to see The Batavian Conspiracy, a masterpiece in Britain for the very first time. It’s not such a large show, but has at least two major late works in each room. How Rembrandt managed to express such overwhelming humanity in mere paint is a mystery to me and one I’m happy to explore again and again. I’ve been twice already and know I need to go again. If I can’t get in before it closes I’ll just have to go to Amsterdam in March – and I probably will!

Film: The Beat That My Heart Skipped

This film has haunted me ever since I first saw it. A young Parisian works for his gangster father as a violently racist hoodlum. Glimpsing his old piano teacher across the street awakens in him an obsessive desire to reconnect with his childhood – his dead mother had been a concert pianist. He starts to study again but the intolerable tension between the two sides of his life ends in tragedy. The power of the film is the brutality of the violence juxtaposed with the serenity and purity of the Bach the young man plays. The music is quite wonderful and so the imagery of his father’s ruthless tactics is made all the more troubling and savage.