Blog

I’ve had an ambivalent, lifelong engagement with exercise and movement, striving to balance an enquiring mind with an increasingly anarchic body. But alerted to dance historian Marion Kant’s online lecture, Rudolf von Laban, Reactionary Modernist (Insiders Outsiders Festival, October 2020) based on her revelatory book, Hitler’s Dancers: German Modern Dance and the Third Reich, I […]

I’m on the rack again. Glancing at my watch.  Silently willing the hour away, willing my life away until that evanescent moment when I’ll feel integrated, body and soul. Body, mind and soul. Currently, my mind is urging my body to stretch beyond its habitual capacity. Mind over matter. Remembering the insouciant ballet years of […]

In search of Sassoon House, former jewel in the crown of Enfield’s Trent Park, I stumble into a 413-acre estate `of mature farmland’ engulfed by a rash of Berkeley Homes. Scene of my third movement and drama year at Trent Park Training College fifty years ago, the site now resembles a Monopoly board of click-together […]

My interview with Viennese Jewish emigre Eric Sanders: composer, pianist, teacher, soldier, crime novelist and antifascist, filmed by Roger Schindler, will play the Rio Cinema, Dalston; JW3 in NW3; and an event for the Association of Jewish Refugees in December/January, all with live Q&A celebrating a remarkably prolific centenarian.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m2-4oAJmio&feature=youtu.be

JUST THE TICKET: VOICES IN THE DARK I’d been clearing out my attic, trying to decide how to dispose of five years’ worth of old receipts. Make a bonfire, cautioned a friend. You don’t want anyone jumping onto your credit card details.  So last Sunday, just before the rain hit, we emptied the contents of […]

Listen to the inspiring story of the centenarian Eric Sanders, who was interviewed by actor Norma Cohen about his years before the Second World War in Vienna, his flight to the UK and his life after the war. Listen here :https://www.acflondon.org/events/music-morse-eric-sanders-100/

My two favourite radio programmes: Desert Island Discs & Private Passions. Two days ago, I stood entranced in front of the radio listening to Marlon James’ rolling, ironic, bass voice reflecting on his journey towards emancipation and liberation on the personal and writing fronts. Essential listening for anyone struggling with the pressure of rejection, especially […]

This week, two programmes had a powerful impact on me. On Wednesday, BBC Radio Wales’ Eye on Wales put out a searing half-hour documentary on two of the last remaining Jewish women refugees in Wales, now aged 85 and 90, whose lives were saved when their parents put them on trains and into the care […]

On Monday, December 10th, I’m performing in THE RASPUTIN SHOW: an inter-generational cast including veterans of the alternative theatre movement and young performers, playing (at least) a cabaret performer, a posh woman and a government minister. Unfinished Histories present The Rasputin Show  by Michael Almaz: history as farce, fast-moving and topical. A staged reading of […]