A blog about art and the soul

By Joy L. Martin

It must go further still: that soul must become its own betrayer, its own deliverer, the one activity, the mirror turn lamp. (W. B. Yeats)

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Without Stars/There We Have Been: this bird has flown

24 October 2015. The Cambridge Junction presented a double bill of dance pieces last week by the James Cousins Company, and when I found out that the show was based on the novel Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, I went to buy the book a few days beforehand. The first, longer piece…

The Artistry of Stand Up Comedy

1 October 2015. I think there is a quiet prejudice against comedy as an art form circulating in our current cultural environment, and I think I unconsciously absorbed this prejudice without realising it. The Arts Council does not fund comedians, and in August The Independent reported on a letter sent…

Of Riders and Running Horses: the roof under our feet

17 September 2015. It’s Thursday night in Cambridge, and the way into the show I am about to see,Of Riders and Running Horses by Dan Canham’s dance theatre company Still House, is a long climb up a winding, breezeblock stairwell to the top of the five-storey car park next to the…

The BE Festival: Democratic and Delicious

3 July 2015. The BE Festival is a gathering of contemporary European performance and takes place at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre; when my mate Nicky and I arrive we are told to go around the back of the building. It’s a strange, deserted alleyway that we walk down at first, and then,…

The Watch Out Festival at Cambridge Junction, A Review

On Saturday 23 May 2015 the Cambridge Junction presented Watch Out, a day-long festival of contemporary performance which follows in the footsteps of their previous festivals Night Watch and Sampled. I studied the line-up ahead of time, and it was interesting, as always, to consider the different dimensions of theatrical experience: The Before, The During, and The After.…

Guest Reviewer-Poet Rosalind Bouverie on Gandini Juggling’s ’4×4′ at Cambridge Junction

20 May 2015. The dancers dart and glide between the patterns of falling and rising juggling clubs, gently varying their steady geometry. These airy diamonds hold the dance momentarily in a live force field. Then there is flow and escape. The violins, viola, cello, and double bass make a harmonious landscape…

Guest Reviewer-Poet Rosalind Bouverie on Kim Noble’s ‘You Are Not Alone’ at Cambridge Junction

7 May 2015. Sombre and tender he recounts a tale of woes to a handpicked listener but the story fans outward to us who sit in the dark then in the light. The straggling text of online chats are magnified in their littleness as we watch it all scroll down. …

Bombs in the The Blue: A Response to ‘Grounded’ at the Cambridge Junction

4 March 2015. I’m always going to love it when I walk into a theatre and hear the howling guitars of AC/DC turned up - right up - on the sound system, as I did when I entered the Cambridge Junction to see Grounded by award-winning playwright George Brant last…

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Around the World in 80 Days…A Glowing Review

I went to see the Cambridge Junction’s Christmas show Around the World in 80 Days on Thursday night, and my heart is still warm and glowing from it, as if there is a nonchalant heap of red and gold coal behind an iron grate on the front of my chest. …

Some Thoughts About Dreams via an Avant-Garde Remix of Don Quijote

I went to see Don Quijote, a show by Emma Frankland and Keir Cooper, in association with Ultimo Comboio, which came to the Cambridge Junction on Wednesday 24 September. I have a dear Spanish friend, José, so I invited him to come with me. As we entered J3, the Junction’s…

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