Strictly come dancing

Thursday

Rupert Christiansen

What a sad thing Strictly Come Dancing has become

Those of a violently masochistic disposition would have heartily enjoyed the Saturday matinée of the Strictly Come Dancing: Live Tour at the Utilita Arena, Birmingham. Talent loses out to glitter and hype, as shrieking vulgarity envelops all What deliciously perverse pleasure was to be drawn on this bleakly cold afternoon from the vast, snaking queues, the blared injunctions from the Tannoy, the drear concrete ambience, the over-priced merchandise tat and the chaos of the ultra-processed catering outlets – not to mention the £15 charge for leaving an empty backpack in the cloakroom. And then there was the show. How sad that what started off 20 years ago as a timely

Sunday

Graham Watts

Is it time to cancel Strictly?

The BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing returned this weekend, but rather than being met with the usual fanfare there is a growing feeling that the glitter ball may have been irreparably tarnished. Some former contestants have alleged that they were subject to bullying by their professional partners and – having already used almost 300 contestants in its now 20 year history – many think that the producers have been scraping the bottom of the celebrity barrel in recent years. Such criticisms have led to speculation that it might be time to cancel the show. Cancel culture won’t yet claim Strictly as another victim. There are signs of life, however. This year

Thursday

Steerpike

The only way is Essex for cash strapped Commons

If politics is show business for ugly people, then parliament is the stage on which they shine. And since 2014 – when the first major Hollywood film was shot at the Palace of Westminster – Commons bosses have raised desperately needed funds for the site by charging media crews access to shoot here. Despite fears that such plans risked turning the institution into a ‘theme park’, figures obtained by Mr S show that parliament raised some £223,883 from 106 requests for such filming between January 2014 and November 2020. Steerpike was intrigued to peruse the records of such requests to find out who exactly has been filming here. Many of the requests are, as expected,

Thursday

Sara Veale

Sensual and silky: the Royal Ballet returns to Covent Garden

Wayne McGregor’s Morgen! and Frederick Ashton’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits are the first pieces of live dance — streamed in real time from an empty auditorium — to come out of Covent Garden since March. Unaware that recordings would be available afterwards, I clung to these fleeting displays with the panic of grandparents on a Zoom call, furiously, helplessly slapping the screen whenever it buffered. Both are quick ballet interludes to longer opera programmes — not afterthoughts, exactly, but not centrepieces either, though with two shirtless danseurs and a beloved ballerina between them, they do just fine asserting their presence. Vadim ‘the Dream’ Muntagirov tackles the Ashton work, reaffirming