Tune-Yards has released a new song, Heart Attack, from the forthcoming album I can feel you creep into my private life. On the heartrending bridge, bandleader Merrill Garbus pleads “I’m only human” as her voice dissolves into the digital, endlessly danceable abyss. The accompanying clip is directed by Mimi Cave who directed previous Tune-Yards videos Bizness and My Country. The video is choreographed by Megan Lawson (Madonna, Katy Perry) and features improvisation by the cast of dancers.

Following its premiere as Zane Lowe’s World First on Apple Music’s Beats 1 Radio, Heart Attack is now available everywhere and we have posted it here for you to enjoy.

Don’t forget to grab your tickets for the show at ACCA on 18 March: http://bit.ly/2igWW2v

Are you a performance maker living in Brighton & Hove? Do you make and present work in the city or close to it? If not, why? If you do, how can the support be improved? 

Are you a technician, designer, performer, independent producer, builder, director, choreographer, live artist, writer, theatre maker or composer working in the area of live performance? Do you live in Brighton & Hove or the surrounding areas? 

Join Louise Blackwell, Richard Freeman and Peter Chivers at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts on 6 February to discuss what you need to make things better in the locality.  This event is for artists at any point in their career. 

Tickets are free but must be booked in advance here and are going fast: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/brighton-hove-artists-evening-meeting-tickets-41492977613 

Louise Blackwell is an independent arts producer based in Hove who currently works with Clod Ensemble and Fevered Sleep and co-founded Fuel. Richard Freeman is CEO of always possible helping creative leaders make critical decisions about their work, impact, growth and reach. Peter Chivers is Director of Our Future City a cross-sector and cross-agenda organisation growing creativity and improving wellbeing for children and young people in Brighton & Hove through culture.

Louise said: ‘I’m excited to host a meeting for artists in Brighton & Hove to discover how more high quality performance work can be made as well as presented in the city. I know there is a thriving community of people living here and making performance happen around the UK and the world. I look forward to hearing their thoughts and opinions on how they’d like to make their work in their own city more regularly.’

Ahead of Hidden Orchestra’s arrival at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts this Saturday 9 of December, Laura Ducceschi, our Contemporary Music Programmer talks with producer and composer Joe Acheson about his music under the alias of Hidden Orchestra. They discuss Joe’s creative process, new single ‘Alyth’ and about his inspirations for his eclectic and ‘imaginary orchestra’.

We’ve compiled a few questions from the podcast but to listen to much more from their conversation click here:

How would you describe Hidden Orchestra?

Hidden Orchestra is like an imaginary orchestra that I compile myself in my studio using a lot of recordings of different musicians that come down and record on my studio. Partly things I’ve written for them, bits of improvisation that I use as sampling material. I combine all these different players to create an orchestra that doesn’t really exist, layered with lots of drums and bass and field recordings. I often record people that I meet while travelling and all kind of things that would be impractical to get people together. Also, the way I work with recordings, people sometimes find it a bit unusual at first but quite often I would do sort of directed improvisations which I use as sampling materials. So, I’ll look for hooks and phrases and individual notes and build what I want out of that, so it’s a very free way to put an imaginary group together.

You have an album release very soon, I believe, there is an announcement coming out in a couple of weeks and there is a single dropping imminently called ‘Alyth’, is that how you pronounce it?

Alyth yeah, it’s actually a small village in Scotland, well a little town. I went there a few years ago for like a week. It was sort of a writing retreat, in a little cottage and in that track, there are a lot of rain, fire and birdsongs that were all recorded when I was there. It also features a lot of Scottish harp recordings with my collaborator Mary Macmaster playing some traditional folk music. Tying everything together with the Scottish themes.

You dropped an album earlier in the summer called Dawn Chorus, what’s going on with this new exciting release?

It’s a remix album, so the sort of idea behind Dawn Chorus was that each track is set to a different Dawn Chorus recording, so I sort of collect them along other recording while I’m traveling on tour. This was a really great opportunity to make a cohesive album of remixes, with carefully chosen artists. I’m really lucky that I get a lot of people that either influence me or people I am just a fan of.

If I was to make a whole lot of inappropriate presumptions I would imagine, from what I hear in your music, that you have been a classically trained musician and you were very much into a life in nature and you like to dance, that’s the kind of picture that comes to mind from what I’m hearing. Is anything of this true?

Yeah, I grew up in the countryside and that was the great things of living in Edinburgh and again Brighton, being so close to really beautiful countryside. I was classically trained, started out mostly singing in choirs and that was my biggest influences both on the aesthetic but also the compositional style. Maybe the reason it is hard to pick out individual instruments when you listen to it, is because I like to stack up lots of recordings on top of each other. It ends up being that the overall sound is more important than the individual voices, in that kind choral sort of way. And yeah, I like to dance.

Tickets for the show are available here.

 “Weisz’s formula includes teaming a small professional cast with local children. The productions are high quality but touchable, a perfect access point for young first-time theatre-goers.” The Stage

Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts are pleased to be handing over our space this Christmas to JW Productions for The Amazing Adventures of Pinocchio. We speak to director James Weisz about his career as a director and producer of the pantomime tradition. The show will run here from 20 December to 6 January.

Why did you get involved with theatre?

One of the very first stage performances I attended was The Fantastic Mr. Fox at the Gardner Arts Centre (now named Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts). I was only a few years old yet I still remember being completely captivated by the story, the action and the excitement of the play. It was my introduction to theatre and from that moment on, my love for it has never faded. It doesn’t matter what genre, I’ll be there at the drop of a hat, and I’ll travel far and wide to get there!

In the mid-1990’s, I attended a theatre Summer school on the University of Sussex campus, with a final performance at the end of the week on the (then called) Gardner stage. From 2001-5 I worked in the chorus, and then it was the leap to stage management for me at Christmas. Thus, began my career in theatre.

Is this why you decided to come to perform with us?

Yes! It is such a thrill to be able to bring our Christmas show here. It’s a wonderful feeling of going full circle and it feels completely right to be bringing a production ‘home’. The Amazing Adventures of Pinocchio is an unusual tale that feels – to me – a perfect fit for Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts. For this show we are collaborating with Brighton’s The Circus Project who will be bringing stunning aerial acrobatics and general fun to the production.

How would you describe the show to be?

Well, rehearsals have begun and are as exciting and full of energy as we had hoped. The joy of pantomime is the diverse nature of it. Yes, we are delivering a well-crafted and well performed story, but it’s a medium that allows everyone to have fun too. Come along for a night with a wealth of comedy, a diverse range of music and musical styles, along with boo-able villains and cheer-able heroes. So, no matter what age you are, I am sure you’ll enjoy it. Fall into the panto magic, bring out the child within, sing along with the festive tunes, and I dare you not to have a big smile on your face by the final curtain. 

Remember, young people, don’t tell fibs or your noses will grow! Season’s greetings.   

Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts and South East Dance presents Tony Adigun’s Avant Garde Dance: Fagin’s Twist this Christmas. We spoke to Tony to learn more about the show which takes place with us from the 14-16 of December. 

When Tony set up Avant Garde Dance in 2001, what was his ethos / vision? What kind of company did he want it to be?

The company’s ethos is “Innovate, Never Replicate.” I wanted to challenge whatever the norm might be. The company brings together a group of like-minded dancers to explore unusual, abstract and artistic ideas.

I love strong image, and the artistry of bringing together different elements to achieve this - costume, music, movement, voice, lighting, set.  And I have always been interested in blending different movement and musical vocabularies and influences.

I want our audiences to feel something. I’m not necessarily about the clear narrative, I’m more about the emotional narrative. I say to my dancers: your job is to evoke an emotion from the audience, whatever that may be. The worst thing is for someone to be at a show for an hour and not feel anything. I’ve made a piece, but that doesn’t mean mine is the only way it can be interpreted. Everyone’s different interpretation and what people get from it are as valuable and as important to me as my original reason for it.

Fagin is one of Charles Dickens’ most interesting characters, often painted in a bad light but with a good heart. Exploring his younger years, and what made him the man he is, is a fascinating idea - what prompted you to do it?

When I first started creating this work and had finally settled on the story of Oliver Twist, I thought about the different characters in the book and how it would be good to re-imagine some of them. We started off with the idea of re-telling the original story of Oliver Twist but in the end, we agreed that it wasn’t the direction we wanted to take – Oliver’s character was too simple, he was too nice and everything just fell into place for him. It seemed too easy.

Oliver, Fagin, Bill, Nancy and the Artful Dodger are the most prominent characters in the story so we delved deeper into their individual characteristics and examined the relationships between them. We created backstories for each of them if they didn’t already exist so that the dancers, playing these dynamic people, could be engrossed by them and really embody the roles.

Fagin was the last person we looked at. I’m a believer in the underdog and I was very interested in his personality, the one that everyone knows from either having read the book or seen the movie or the musical. I wanted to take his journey before he got to the point where he’s most recognisable and look at his past, at his childhood and see what parallels I could make between him and Oliver.

How would you describe Fagin’s Twist?

I have always been excited by the idea of retelling a popular tale. I wanted to add a mischievous twist that would play with, and challenge audiences’ perspectives of a much loved classic.

It’s a show that you can enjoy with or without any previous knowledge of the original story. The relationships between the characters are really strong – Oliver and Bill; Bill and Nancy; Nancy and Fagin; Fagin and Dodger; Dodger and Oliver. I want the audience to sit up and take note of what’s happening but there are also moments that are just light and fun, that people can just sit back and enjoy. The movement style for each character is very distinct.

Text is a really important element of the show. I previously worked with Maxwell Golden, who is the writer on Fagin’s Twist, on Romeo and Juliet and I really liked his style of writing. I make dance pieces all the time and I’ve used text a few times before but I really wanted to push it this time, as it’s such a big production. It brings another layer and I enjoy the complexity and the simplicity that text can bring to a moment. It’s a third element which helps to infuse what’s going on and explain what’s happening.

The eclectic score for the show is made up of music meticulously selected by myself, with sound design by Brian Hargreaves. It includes original compositions by Benji Bower and Seymour Milton and tracks by underground artists including Mika Vainio and Tisme. 

Tickets for the show are available here.  

Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts is thrilled to present  The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein’s Notorious. Ahead of the show, we spoke to the artist about the creative processes leading to the creation of this transgressive performance. Lauren highlights the major influences for producing Notorious and how it relates to current popular culture figures such as Nicki Minaj. 

Tell us a bit about the new show:

Notorious is an interdisciplinary performance that explores the relationship between pop culture and representations of the female ‘monster’. It is a visceral, bodily piece, which will evoke layered and dissonant emotions in you – you will hate it (and me) and maybe even love it (and me), but you will certainly feel some stuff. And it will also be hilarious, witchy, unhinged, and ridiculously excessive.

Which thinkers influence your performance of Notorious? Are you inspired by any current activists?

Angela Carter (especially The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman, but also, everything she’s ever written) because she’s a fantastical, magical, feminist genius novelist. Her fiction teaches me about the nuance of feeling, the necessarily overlapping quality of being both an active and a passive subject, and how to create new worlds.

Ana Mendieta because the texture of her work is somehow both bold and restrained. Because her work on ghostliness and disappearance makes her own presence that much more tangible and political.

Nicki Minaj because she is two different people, potentially on purpose – one that’s a black Barbie, and another that is pretending to be a black Barbie in order to sell records, but who is really a talented rapper. Whether we are meant to see both people in her, or their relationship, I’m not sure, but I’m intrigued.

Female agency and empowerment is critical in your work - and often criticised for it - what advice would you give young/new performers who want to create messy and not fetishisable performances on the female body?

Fuck the haters. They’re just threatened by your agency and your refusal to please them.

Why did you decide to perform with us at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts? How was your time in residence this summer here?

Laura McDermott, Creative Director of the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, has been a supporter of my work and co-commissioned Notorious with Fierce Festival. This relationship and the fantastic auditorium at ACCA were reasons to create this work for this stage. The residency in the summer was a key part of the process of making Notorious and allowed the creative team and myself to experiment and visualise what this work would be.

Notorious is an ACCA co-commission. 

Tickets available on our website here.

“Dakhabrakha – One of my all-time favourite live music bands.  Poetic, skilful, theatrical, raw - If you ask me they belong up there with Bjork and Radiohead….”  

Ahead of DakhaBrakha’s first show at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts on 30 November, our Music Producer Laura Ducceschi has penned a few words on the band.

In a world where borders have been – and remain – of great relevance, DakhaBrakha’s transnational music is one of a kind.  Using Ukrainian singing tradition as a base and implementing folk tune influences, these multi-instrumentalists use a variety of traditional instruments from: Ukraine, Africa, India, the West and the Middle East.

Continuing their presence in the UK, DakhaBrakha will be returning to Brighton to perform their first ever live show at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts. Their performances assure an always fascinating multi-cultural approach to music and will deliver an eccentric and one of a kind musical treat.

Dressed in traditional wear and high fur hats, the musical quartet present us with a liminal performance that mixes theatricality with music presentation. In unison, their lyrical verses harmonious beautifully when working together with the percussion which is a key element of their music. With the variety of small/midsized drums they accentuate each spoken word passage throughout – an instrumental and vocal range that is alluring to say the least.

The band’s name literally translates to “give-take”, which fits perfectly to the enriching experience that they will grant their audience. Give these musical artists a chance to take away an unforgettable musical evening that will make you revaluate what musical performance should be like.”

Tickets available from our website here.

This Friday we host Brighton Rock: Redux, Richard DeDomenici’s latest in a series of works where he collaborates to recreate sections of popular films shot by shot with local people.

Richard has been working with local people in Brighton to remake a 10 minute lo-fi celebration of Brighton Rock, on the it’s 70th anniversary and as part of Cinecity. 

Learn more in Robin Gibson’s report for BBC South East below.