Fonfone
It was bound to happen. What was once a dark and cavernous heavy-metal bar located on a trashy street just behind the Plaça Reial, has now joined the ranks of the city’s trendy clubs. Sleek, geometric forms of colourful, translucent plastic shine a light of pleasing artificiality on the pretty young things that lounge around on the club’s 1970s-style plastic sofas. On the smallish dance floor in the back, things get grooving with funk, electro and breakbeat, though mostly the attractive clientele hang out and eye each other. Needless to say, the ghost of Ozzy Osborne has been thoroughly exorcised.
Mirano Continental Residents Night
It’s still glitter balls a go-go in Mirano Continental, the oldest night club in Brussels. Although its popularity declined slightly as a surfeit of new clubs opened up, this spacious former cinema has undergone a resurgence in recent years. Its owners are therefore in celebratory mode, throwing not one, but two parties. Special reductions on drinks will be offered and R&B grooves will mingle with the club’s customary house beats, courtesy of DJs Olivier Gosseries, Pierre Kaze AD, Murvin Jay and Michel Traxx.
Death and the Maiden
The Anglo-American Theatre Group performs this classic Ariel Dorfman play (later adapted as a film by Roman Polanski), which speculates on the futures of both torturer and victim in a post-dictatorship society. Inspired by the situation in Chile after Pinochet stepped down, this is a story that’s obviously still resonant today. The plot follows a woman who believes she recognises her former torturer and decides to turn the tables.
Opera: The Art of Emotion
Angels’ wings on a coat rack provide an intriguing entrance to this exhibition, celebrating La Monnaie’s 300-year history as an opera house. Old stage props and memorabilia are combined with works by nine contemporary artists. Of the latter, the most arresting are suspended dandelions arranged by Michel François, and the slide images – also on a floral theme – of Peter Fischili and David Weiss. One old picture depicts how La Monnaie was severely damaged by fire in the 1850s. Visitors to this exhibition will rejoice that it has been painstakingly restored.
The Australian Ballet – Nutcracker
The AB plays it safe with their first production of the season. The Graeme Murphy choreography is set in Melbourne on a hot and humid Christmas Eve. Clara’s party begins with her and her fellow émigrés dancing the troika. As Clara dances she drifts through her memories of Tsarist Russia, the war, the death of her lover and her subsequent career as a famous ballerina. Design by Kristin Fredrikson and music by Piotr Tchaikovsky.
Viva
Viva at HQ is reputedly the best Latin club night in town, with the un-crowned queen of Cuban disc-spinning, DJ Claire Moloney, at the decks every Saturday. Salsa, rumba and samba have taken the city by storm, and the Hall of Fame has jumped on the bandwagon with Viva. By all accounts, it’s giving the salsa nights at the Gaiety a run for the money – particularly as it’s a smaller, more intimate venue. Better still is that the promoters promise a Ricky Martin/Jennifer Lopez-free night. Combine it with a pre-club dinner at Bella Cuba and you have the perfectly flavoured South American night out!
Observatory
An embittered astronomer, whose life has been spent dreaming of black holes, quarks and supernovas, clashes with a young female student in ‘Observatory’, the new play by Katherine Snodgrass. The play gets its premiere at Boston University’s Boston Playwrights’ Theater, which is under the artistic direction of Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott.
The Apollon String Quartet
This top-flight local ensemble boldly combines Shostakovich with Miles Davis and John Coltrane at a performance in one of Old Town’s most ancient gothic halls. The Czech composer Richter rounds out the programme, which may just resonate too well in this evocative stony space.
Stan Douglas and Douglas Gordon: Double Vision
Scottish video artist Douglas Gordon is all the rage since collecting the Hugo Boss international art award last year. His video installation of Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ slowed down to run for 24 hours is a meditation on film time – inspired by Godard to create film that disrupts the prevailing order, Gordon attempts this by creating time spaces in which the viewer is invited to deconstruct the assumptions of film. Stan Douglas is one of Canada’s leading artists, making films designed to provoke.
