Preview: Cloud Dance Festival @ Pleasance
Kinisi Dance Company
Trouble and Desire marks the return of Cloud Dance Festival for another year of new contemporary choreography and we can’t wait to see how will they follow their excellent end of year ‘best of’ showcase last December.
Slanjayvah Danza are back “by popular demand” with their beautiful duet “Blind Passion – Live Cut” and the exquisite Mavin Khoo appears on Saturday and Sunday with a new duet based on Romeo and Juliet. We can’t wait to see Rambert dancers, Jonathan Goddard and Gemma Nixon’s ‘Ladies and Gentlemen: how bored are you?’ as we anticipate being not bored at all by these fabulous performers.
Pleasance Islington is the venue for 26-28 March with 3 eclectic mixed bills of 19 dance companies, a smattering of dancers off those reality telly shows and others from around the world – including a rare trip to town for Welsh rep company, Ffin Dance – over one performance pick and mix of a weekend.
More info at www.cloud-dance-festival.org.uk Tickets £12.
View the Olympic Site from the View Tube
It’s been covered brilliantly months ago on other London blogs but it always takes your author a while to catch up, so today’s idea is the View Tube, overlooking the Olympic site.
In typical Olympics fashion, the largely-empty expensive-looking website can’t just say it’s a cafe with a nice view of the building site, it has to be ‘a social enterprise and community venue located on The Greenway adjacent to the Olympic Park’, but your author is pretty sure it was mainly a cafe with a nice view when he popped by on Sunday. Made from bright green recycled shipping containers, it’s a partnership project between Leaside Regeneration, London Thames Gateway Development Corporation, the Olympic Delivery Authority and Thames Water.
Whilst the website is plastered with words like ‘events’, ‘create’, ‘learn’ and other meaningless terms, there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount to do other than drink tea and look at the view, but it does seem that you might be able to hire a bike for about a fiver and from here you can ride for absolutely miles along the Greenway (to Beckton) or along the Lee Valley, which sounds like great fun, and it’s a sport. Oh, and also there is a cafe with a nice view of the Olympic site there.
The View is open daily from 9am until 5pm, for more, see http://www.theviewtube.co.uk/
Study magic at Davenports Magic Shop
Davenports Magic Shop was founded in 1898 by Lewis Davenport, a renowned magician and music hall performer. The business has remained in the same family ever since and today it is managed by Lewis’s great-grandson, Bill Davenport. Two of your author’s closest friends recently took lessons at Davenports and it is under their recommendation that it is included here.
The shop, hidden away in the Charing Cross underground arcade, adjacent to the tube station, has a studio where the various magical activities are held, from lectures by visiting magicians to magic courses.
Davenports shop sells a vast array of magic tricks, books, DVDs and accessories for magicians of all levels, and passionate staff who know their trade. The popular beginners Saturday magic course, which guides new starters through basic moves and tricks, and important background, runs regularly in groups of six to sixteen people. An intermediate course is also set to start soon. The next rounds of both courses begin in April.
Davenports is open Monday – Friday, 9.30am – 5.30pm and Saturdays 10.30am – 4.30pm. For more, see www.davenportsmagic.co.uk
^Picture courtesy of Davenports^
Fortean London: London Stone
Fortean London is the London of strange histories, folklore, unique people, outsider ideas, ghosts, monsters and more. Take us by the left hand and hold on tight.
Opposite Cannon Street station sits the London Stone. Grey, dusty, set behind a metal grill in an abandoned office block, the stone is about the size of the television that well-off families kept in their kitchens in the early nineties.
The earliest mention is in, possibly, 1098, but everyone agrees that the stone is old. The sober theories suggest the London Stone is the marker for the centre of medieval London, a Roman milestone, a place where debts were paid, a stone notice board or the last remaining stone from the first Lord Mayor’s house which was the only stone building in the city at it’s time.
The more drunk / off-their-nut ideas mutter about the London Stone being the last remnant from a stone circle on Ludgate Hill, that Brutus, the Trojan immigrant Britain is named after, brought the stone with him when he arrived as an altar base. Others say that the stone is part of an intricate pattern of ley-lines and all that that 20th century mythology entails.
The strongest idea about the London Stone, as Steve Roud points out in London Lore, is that the stone is seen as an omphalos for London. “So long as the stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish,” says the proverb (coined in 1862). If it is harmed or moved, terrible danger with befall the city. When, in 2006, the shop occupying the stone’s current building was being demolished, the shop-owner Chris Cheek felt compelled to stop a builder putting a chisel to the London Stone. “I’m not into hocus pocus, but,” he said “there’s something special about it.”
The stone is there now, at 111 Cannon Street, and it still attracts those who venerate it. Passing in September 2009 we saw petals left behind the grill as a floral offering for the stone. Someone had decorated its grill with tinsel for Christmas 2009. The are tales of the stone being moved to the Museum of London or incorporated into the redeveloped Cannon Street station but we shall see.
The stone has even been given a ‘voice’ on twitter. We’re confident that twitter is another thing the London Stone will outlive.
By Scott Wood
London On The Cheap: 11-17 March
The Henninghams ‘Chip Shop’ at the launch of the London Word Festival. Get a word printed on Sunday.
Tonight: Learn about the unknown ghosts of London with gentleman ghost hunter Alan Murdie, of Ghost Club and Fortean Times fame at SELFS, The Old Kings Head from 7.30pm, £2.50.
Fancy a private view? Tank gallery at the Ladywell Tavern presents From Mud to Mortar, four artists attempting to capture individual viewpoints of the London landscape. From mud in East End canals to vast panoramas of the Thames, each of the artists has a unique perspective of the city they occupy. 6.30-9pm with DJ set.
Salsa for a fiver with the Salsa Technicians at The Litten Tree, Old Street. Beginners and Improvers from 6.45pm till 7.45pm. Intermediate/Advanced from 7.50pm till 8.50pm. Social dancing until closing time.
Friday: Meet Facehunter at Foyles, Charing Cross Road and get a copy of his pretty book signed from 5pm
It’s the first day of the Telegraph Hill Festival and upstairs at The Telegraph you can take in “wry reflections on the ups and downs of life in and out of coupledoom” with Couples in Crisis, sketch comedy and songs from 7.30pm.
Saturday: Help move soil in Southwark at Tabard Gardens Community Allotment. 10 tonnes of earth needs moving ready for grow bag action. Great exercise! 10.30am-5pm but drop by and help for as long as you like.
Sunday: It’s Mother’s Day, remember. Why not take her to the London Word Festival Chip Shop and giver her a word? When mum’s gone home though you can enjoy a screening of cult film Blue Velvet at the Roxy, 7pm, £3.
Monday: IanVisits points us to a lunchtime tour of Goldsmiths Hall between midday and 2pm. Free but please book.
Lambeth Music Festival opens with a free showcase concert at 8pm in the Clore Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall.
The Secret Chiefs meet at the Devereux pub, 20 Devereux Court, off Essex Street, London WC2R 3JJ from 7.30pm with a talk on ‘Interactive Destiny’ from Andrew Soltau at 8.30pm, £2, all welcome.
Tuesday: The Grant Museum hosts a big screen showing of Sanders of the River from 1935 featuring extensive and often spectacular footage of Africa during the Colonial days of the British Empire. The film will be introduced by Chief film buff Dr. Joe Cain (UCL Science and Technology Studies) and, as usual, a complimentary drinks reception and private view of the museum will follow the screening. Free, from 6.30pm at the Christopher Ingold Chemistry Lecture Theatre, 20 Gordon Street.
Wednesday: Lecture List alerts us to a talk on the Neuroscience of Morality under the auspices of the Ethical Society at Conway Hall at 6.30pm. Free of charge and free thought encouraged.
What did we miss? Tweet us @londonist #lotc for cheap and free events happening around London.
Free Flowers Around Town Today
There’s a big, friendly bus full of flowers travelling round town today. If you spot it, you can get your hands on one of a thousand free bouquets of tulips. Wherefore art the bulb of munificence from which springeth such bounteous clasps of inflorescence? Well, we’re glad you asked, even if you do phrase things in such a peculiar way. it’s a rather lovely marketing push for the International Flower Bulb Centre, promoting its current ‘Brighten Up my Day’ campaign. The route will take the bus round Embankment, Oxford Street, Hyde Park and High Street Kensington. If a single bouquet is just not enough, you can win a month’s supply (!) by photographing the omniflourent omnibus and sending your pic to info@bulbinfo.com.uk.
HS2 Has Terminal Consequences Around Euston
View Mega Euston in a larger map
As we remember saying, on the subject of where to fit a eight platform 400 meter long railway station in NW1, “the practical options are going to involve a trade-off between cost and what you can demolish with the minimum of fuss. We look forward to seeing their conclusion in March.”
Well, it is March, and all has been revealed by Secretary of State for Train Geeks, Lord Adonis, and as we reported yesterday the ‘winner’ is good old Euston.
HS2 Ltd’s proposals are out and the promise of a 50 minute trip to Birmingham (and, more importantly, a 50 minute trip back to town) moves one step closer. The consultants at Arup have had their OS maps out and they’ve drawn a thick, futuristic, red line across the country – ending at a neglected car park in Birmingham and starting in the Cafe-Bar of the Ibis London Euston (though for standard class passengers you’ll likely be nearer the cigarette machine in the reception of the Thistle London Euston, 400 meters up the road).
Euston will grow and become a 24 platform mega station (having settled on ten platforms for HS2), spreading out of it’s current site to the south and west. So farewell ugly Network Rail buildings, The Ibis, St James’ Gardens, the Cottage Hotel, The Bree Louise Pub and most of Cardington Street (you can take our tour round the condemned streets on Google Maps above). Us transport geeks will face the sad loss of an original, if disused, Leslie Green Station Building on Drummond Street, there are also a fair few houses on the site and around 200 flats will go in the Regents Park Estate to widen the approach tracks. If you do get one of these leaftlets through your door, our condolences.
The report itself is packed with geeky goodness. We have learned that they did consider burying a station in Regents Park, they still hold Kings Cross Railway lands as a backup site and there’s all sorts of Heathrow Terminal 6 and Crossrail information buried in the sizable PDFs, if that’s your sort of thing…
Most interesting (we think) are:
A) The suggestion to divert London Midland Trains from Milton Keynes onto Crossrail, potentially solving Crossrail’s little problem with not having enough customers west of London – a last laugh for superlink?
B) The rather brilliant idea of having a Clapham Junction like interchange in Old Oak Common (a rail depot, not a leafy open space) that will take passengers straight onto Crossrail (for Central London, Docklands, Essex, Kent, Heathrow) and and provide interchange with the Great Western Lines (for the West Country, Cotswolds and Wales). Anyone who has ever had a ‘Via London Terminals’ ticket from the South West to the North understands why this is a good thing.
C) The rebuild of Euston Underground to finally link the two bits together.
D) The suggestion that Crossrail 2 would be needed to relieve the Victoria line from all the new awestruck arrivals from Birmingham, but the omission of any passive provision for Crossrail 3 (a dream to link Euston and Waterloo).
E) No connection to HS1 – so no Paris to Birmingham Midlandstar for now.
F) Absolutely no mention of rebuilding the Euston Arch! (Correction; Pararagraph 3.2.2.2 states that the proposal to rebuild the Arch would be compatible with the prefered scheme).
Reading these detail packed pages you can almost imagine yourself in 2027 – standing in the great hall of a new Euston; a web of shiny, air-conditioned, carbon neutral, step-free transport connections reaching out in every direction…
Alas, this report may join the sizable pile of similar documents in the National Archive’s basement, as the vital consensus on High Speed 2 from all parties has failed to emerge. Labour wants a first step to Birmingham linked to the existing West Coast Mainline for services north. The Conservative’s policy calls for an ‘Inverse S’ serving Scotland and the North East via a two runway Heathrow, Birmingham and Leeds.
With a timetable stretching out into the 2030s this project is going to need an agreement between Labour and the Conservatives, who welcomed the plans by calling them “a betrayal”, “lacking in ambition” and unable to grasp “basic truths”. Strong basis for consensus then…
Nevertheless, all parties agree with a London to Birmingham line being part of the HS2 – how about we just get on with this and then argue about the rest in 2027?
A Trellick Tower For The Bees
An ecological centre in Lambeth has hit upon a novel idea for bee-housing: they’ve built a scale model of the Trellick tower for their resident bees to pollinate.
The 1.6m-tall, 31-storey tower, built from timber blocks, has holes bored into the length of it, which the centre’s population of endangered solitary bees will inhabit once spring has sprung. The ’service tower’ acts as an observation area, with a hinged door on the side allowing the curious to watch the bees nesting in perspex tubes.
Whether the tenancy patter will match that of Erno Goldfinger’s west London icon / eyesore, with its heady mix of council tenants, Eighties vintange right-to-buyers, and architecture and design geeks, remains to be seen; if you spot a bee swanning about dressed in a black turtleneck, you’ll know where it lives.
The tower can be seen at at Roots and Shoots, in Walnut Tree Walk, Lambeth, SE11 6DN.