SALISBURY International Arts Festival, running from 16th to 27th June, takes two very different looks at the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet, with a community production of Shakespeare’s play, from 24th May to 7th June, and a dance version, Lost Dog’s Juliet & Romeo, which imagines this enduring tale of love turned upside down….
“WHO runs the world?” ask the fearless and brilliant dancers of the Turkish company Ceyda Tanc, when they come to Buckland Newton village hall on Sunday 1st March. Their answer is “Girls.” The performance, at 3.30pm, is the only Dorset date for the company, and is presented by the county’s rural touring arts charity Artsreach….
ICELANDIC cellist Geirþrúður Anna Guðmundsdóttir, with accompanist Antoine Préat, joins Concerts in the West’s for the March series, starting at 11.30am on Friday 13th March at Bridport Arts Centre, followed by Ilminster Arts Centre that evening at 7.30pm and Crewkerne Dance House on Saturday 14th at 7.30. The duo will play a programme of cello…
ONE of the reasons that Adrian Brendel has slipped so seamlessly into the charismatic shoes of the late Amelia Freedman as artistic director of Bath’s Mozart and Bach Fests, is that he, as he pointed out when introducing The Sixteen Choir and Orchestra’s splendid closing concert in the Abbey, he is fully aware what a…
THE south-west of England has a particularly rich heritage of community plays – Dorchester has mounted seven, a record number. Increasingly, large theatres are commissioning plays for a vast cast of performers, usually with a professional production team and an amateur cast keen for the chance to make friends and perform on big stages, with…
SOME music just tugs at your heartstrings, no matter how often you hear it. A couple of bars of Puccini’s La Boheme and I am transported back to my very early childhood … my mother singing, or, a bit later when we had a radiogram, to Renata Tebaldi’s voice recorded at La Scala in 1951….
THE new exhibition at The Art Stable at Gold Hill Organic Farm, Child Okeford, features the work of 20th century painter and film-maker Humphrey Jennings and his daughter Charlotte. The work is on show in the main gallery and upstairs until 21st March. Best-known as a documentary film-maker, Humphrey Jennings (1907 to 1950) was described…
THE new exhibition at Salisbury Museum, in the Cathedral Close, is Un/Common People: Folk Culture in Wessex, runs to Sunday 10th May. Celebrating the rich folk art, traditions and seasonal customs of Wessex, the exhibition explores how folk culture has been shaped by communities past and present. Created by and for the people, folk culture…
QUEEN Camilla visited Bath Theatre Royal during rehearsals for the theatre’s epic community play, David Copperfield: A Life, which runs from 20th to 22nd February. Her Majesty has been Patron of the theatre since 2008, and last visited in 2009. As well as meeting some of the cast and crew of the play, she also…
WHEN one of Dorset’s finest painters persuaded one of the region’s most exciting sculptors to be painted at work in her studio, the results were bound to be exciting. And they are. Journey: Binny Matthews and Clare Trenchard, Paintings of the Sculptor’s Studio, is at Sladers Yard, West Bay, until 7th March. Inspired by Moroccan…