Wildlife

National Dance Company Wales Autumn Tour Published Friday 23 September 2011 at 17:58 by Susie Wild National Dance Company Wales’ Autumn Tour brings together the best of its trademark energy, individuality and inimitable style.   Split into three sections, the first uneven piece Quixoteland is a contemporary interpretation of the classic Don Quixote story. Choreographer Gustavo Ramirez Sansano brings Cervantes’ story alive with imaginative verve and quirky black humour. He uses the Minkus music from the original 1869 Don Quixote ballet and yet modernises the age old love story with swift, entertaining movement that doesn’t quite keep momentum. The set of 20ft high silver lances becomes the perfect backdrop for a clowning Cupid (Eran Gisen) to spread his magic and mischief, and later closes in to become cages for the two lovers and their dynamic duet. After the interval, the second and most inventive piece Phantoms of Us lays things bare, quite literally, as the semi-naked da...

" Earlier this month, the  New York Times ran a news story  that didn't contain much news. Britain's National Theatre, Pat Healy wrote, has succeeded in business without really trying. Well, not trying to appeal to the marketplace, that is. Through a strategy of artistic boldness backed by populist shrewdness, the piece argued, the National, under Nicholas Hytner, had found an unlikely cash cow in  War Horse  (to mix farmyard metaphors), which was still running in the West End and banking $1m a week in its  Broadway incarnation . How, Healy breathlessly asked, did Nick do it?" More:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/sep/21/us-compete-national-theatre

" There's something heartening about how much venues now think about supporting artists. The spread of  scratch nights  and  development programmes  across the theatrical landscape has helped the creation of a real breadth of brilliant and unusual work – as has the number of venues that now support a host of  associated artists   resident artists . "But I sometimes worry that this wealth of support can also have a demotivating effect on artists' willingness or readiness to do something on their own. In the worst cases, these programmes can infantilise artists, making them dependent on a IV drip of financial resources, space and opportunities supplied by a supporting organisation. Perhaps there's something lost in this well-intentioned mollification; something vital and interesting about the way an artist has to navigate their own way through the socio-economic conditions in which they find themselves. As with so much of the best art, often it's not just...

Saturday 24 September, 1.00 pm Shot in the Dark, City Road, Cardiff A worldwide poetry reading, with over 450 cities in 95 countries involved, will take place on Saturday 24 September. Of the 600 events, only one of these will be in Wales, with selected poets and open mic readers performing at Shot in the Dark, City Road in Cardiff from 1.00 pm. The Welsh poets will join others around the planet in a celebration of poetry as a vehicle to promote serious social, environmental and political change, with poetry demonstrations being organised in such political hotspots as Cairo, Kabul and Jalalabad. The Cardiff event places its focus on mental health, creativity and well-being, with an event theme – ‘the doors of perception’. The event is free to attend but any voluntary donations will go to Lapidus Cymru. The many poets taking part include local authors  Bob Rogers  and  Susie Wild , Somerset Maugham award winner  Mark Blayney , acclaimed ‘black mountain poet’...

Tyler Keevil was raised in Vancouver and lives in Wales. One of Parthian Book’s Bright Young Things, his debut novel  Fireball  is currently short-listed for  the Guardian ‘s Not The Booker Prize. He is interested both in literary and slipstream fiction, and has been published in  New Welsh Review, Planet, Transmission, Dream Catcher, Black Static , and  On Spec , among others. Interviewed by Susie Wild You’ve been nominated for Not The Booker Prize, and have recently won the Wales Book of the Year People’s Prize for your debut novel  Fireball . How does it feel? Outside of these, do you take much notice of literary awards? It feels good. It’s been great to get some recognition.  The Wales Book of the Year People’s Prize , in particular, was a big boost for me – partly because it was so unexpected. There were some well-known names on that long-list, and I assumed the larger publishers would dominate the voting. But readers rallied around  Fir...

Short story collections to read... " The following books didn't make it onto the shortlist, but I'd urge readers to seek them out: American Masculine  by Shann Ray, Deyan Enev's  Circus Bulgaria , Karen Joy Fowler's  What I Didn't See , Danielle Evans's  Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self ,  Crime  by Ferdinand von Schirach, and  Volt  by Alan Heathcock. The shortlist meeting was painless, with four books being decided on immediately and the remaining two decided after a short discussion. The resulting six-book shortlist – Suzanne Rivecca's  Death is Not an Option , Colm Tóibín's  The Empty Family , Valerie Trueblood's  Marry or Burn , Alexander MacLeod's  Light Lifting , O'Brien's  Saints and Sinners  and Yiyun Li's  Gold Boy, Emerald Girl  – is entirely dud-free. To summarise each of them in the space afforded here wouldn't be fair, so I'll limit myself to saying that each one of these books engag...

' Everyone’s favourite Lothario villain is reincarnated on stage for Welsh National Opera’s Don Giovanni, juxtaposing light and dark to great effect. This production brings together three of the award-winning team behind Les Miserables - director John Caird, designer John Napier and lighting designer David Hersey. The trio have created an impressively oppressive mood that’s perfect for Mozart’s darkly intense, flawed masterpiece. Taking inspiration from Rodin’s The Gates of Hell, the ominous sculptural set is the grand star of the show, the ornate bronze panels of writhing bodies both lustful and entombed. These pivoting panels act as a constant and theatrical reminder that, beneath the surface amusements of Don Giovanni’s womanising, lies the suffering of his victims and a threat of eternal damnation. Yet despite the dark undertones of rape and murder, WNO have excelled in bringing the comic energy of this popular two-act drama to life without descending into pantomime farce....

The Art of Contraception is One today! Can't believe it is a whole year since the Bright Young Things were embarking on the rock and roll book launch tour. Celebrations. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Contraception-Bright-Young-Things/dp/1906998035

It is a Big Fat Moon Lunar-tick-tock Day. As such here is some niceness: 1. A song / video of loveliness 2. A book I read and loved: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/207700155

Happy Sunday all. I have a new short short story 'Refusal' in Issue 6 of Spilt Milk and you can read it here:  http://www.spiltmilkmagazine.com/issues/six/ Plus a Sunday Message from The Art of Contraception : " I shall be one whole year old on Friday the 16 September... and celebrating with the art of drinking, dancing and laughing. If you haven't already, why not give me a birthday bump into your shopping basket, or send me a birthday card in the form of a review somewhere. In return I promise to try and retain my shiny youthful looks for a little while longer yet... sexy :)" Buy from Parthian Books , Amazon , Waterstone's or, preferably your local independent bookstore.

1. " BBC National Short Story award pits award-winning writers against students Two PhD writing students make shortlist of £15,000 prize, alongside Jon Mc Gregor, MJ Hyland and Alison MacLeod"  http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/09/bbc-national-short-story-award-students 2. Note to self. Enter this:  http://www.booktrust.org.uk/Prizes-and-awards/Sunday-Times-EFG-Private-Bank-Award

" The days of the iconic jacket illustration, the image that forever becomes associated with a much-loved novel, are nearly gone. The stakes are too high now."  http://www.wemadethis.co.uk/blog/2011/08/nick-hornby-on-cover-design/

Some shots from The Raconteur shoot with Tom Beardshaw

Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, the Welsh-language national theatre, brilliantly dramatises Wales's tussle of languages and identities – and its ambitions stretch far beyond its own borders http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/bike-blog/2011/sep/01/pedal-power-open-air-cycle-cinema ALSO: Edinburgh festival 2011: It's a wrap – now how was our performance? ‎"In one of those curious Fringe coincidences, my two standout shows of the festival were Welsh through and through: National Theatre Wales and Told By an Idiot's superbly acted and supremely directed Dark Philosophers, which reached Edinburgh on tour, and one of the last shows I saw, Llwyth (Tribe) co-produced by Sherman Cymru and the Welsh-language Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru – a company whose work I suspect we'll be hearing much more of under its new artistic director Arwel Gruffydd. " http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/aug/29/edinburgh-festival-2011-our-performance