Feelings of pity and admiration and fear for her safety all fight for space

Feelings of pity and admiration and fear for her safety all fight for space. Similarly, when thugs accost wheelchair- bound Jon French, spinning him like a roundabout, handspringing dangerously in his path and finally tipping him right out, we are outraged But again the rug is pulled. “I’m alright,” he says irritatedly to his rescuer, “just leave me alone.” We are all of us full of contradictions, Claid seems to be saying. Don’t presume a thing.The word of Shobana Jeyasingh is another example of contemporary dance that, by dint of stylish inventiveness, has powered its way into the mainstream. Jeyasingh’s basic language is bharatha natyam, the classical dance of southern India, but she has rewritten its grammar to reflect modern Indian women’s liberated status.

Traditionally performed solo, bharatha natyam presents a dense complexity of detail: fingers curled into hieroglyphs, splayed feet stamping out mathematically ordered rhythms, and those strange little darting eye movements that suggest a shy and startled animal.Jeyasingh retains the angled character of the dance, but simplifies and emboldens it, directing our gaze to the stronger shapes of massed dancers performing the same steps. Palimpsest, her latest piece, is exactly what it says, an ancient text rubbed out and a new one written over it. But mysteriously the old code continues to make its presence felt. Women in sharp citrus colours tilt and curve into contemporary-looking shapes in sympathy with Graham Fitkin’s thoroughly Western score – cellos, a clarinet, electronics. Yet as the looser, more fluid new dance progresses, the old percussive rhythms gradually reassert their hold The effect is galvanising. Then suddenly, as if there is any danger of seeing these serious young women as mere ciphers, formality gives way to chattering, giggling, whispering social groups. A final, wary glance over the shoulder at the audience suggests that some exquisite secrets remain untold.The other half of the bill revives an old piece, Romance …

with Footnotes, a gorgeous concoction in which traditional rhythmic elements are more straightforwardly set out. Glyn Perrin’s fascinating score (so good you want to hear it again, without the dance) takes its cue from a series of jathis, the syllabic rap traditionally recited by an Indian dance-master to dictate the rhythms for the feet. Combine this aural virtuosity with the sight of Jeyasingh’s lovely women clad in topaz and rose, carving out diamond patterns from a space of midnight blue, and the effect is ravishing – pure pleasure for mind and eye.CandoCo: Warwick Arts Ctr (01203 524524, 6-8 Mar. Shobana Jeyasingh Co: Cambridge Arts Theatre (01223 504444), Tues; Bristol Arnolfini (0117 929 9191), Thurs & Fri.. IN ALLISON Anders’s segment of Four Rooms, Madonna’s coven of witches attempt to conjure a goddess from a cauldron of frogs, dogs and Tim Roth’s sperm. The balance of ingredients couldn’t have been right: Amanda de Cadenet rises from the pot.

Something similar afflicts the director’s latest confection, Grace of My Heart (15), an attempt to relate the history of Sixties pop through the predictably disastrous love life of a singer/songwriter heroine, Denise Waverley (Illeana Douglas). It starts off as promisingly brassy comedy: Denise begins her career as Edna Buxton, plain girl and Philadelphia heiress, who escapes to New York and is taken up by manager Joel Millner (a pop-eyed, squirreling John Turturro, in the film’s most engaging performance) Then things begin a long slide into maudlin introspection. Sent to work in the famous Brill Building hit-factory at 1619 Broadway, Denise endures an unhappy marriage to cynical, self- centred songwriter Howard Caszatt (Eric Stoltz), has an affair with married, self-centred DJ John Murray (Bruce Davison), and finally gets hitched to paranoid, self-centred record producer Jay Phillips (Matt Dillon), who smashes furniture and walks into the sea like the Little Mermaid.
Despite Denise’s decade-long progress through the emotional mincer, Grace of My Heart produces few opportunities to break the seal on the Handy Andies. The film’s cartoonish period-sense and surfeit of kooky wigs and beards ensure that the heroine’s doomed – and uncomfortably sadomasochistic – attraction to the men who done her wrong seems like an extension of the three-minute, repeat-to-fade sentimentalities that she bashes out on her office piano.And this air of bubblegum unreality is amplified by Anders’s all-too- knowing fictionalisations of real Sixties figures. Dillon’s doped-up Jay Phillips is a bootlegged Brian Wilson; Denise is a thinly disguised version of Carole King; and clones of Phil Spector, the Everley Brothers and the Shirelles pop up in the studio in the way that Sonny and Cher used to pop up in Scooby Doo.