What is it about music that makes even non-professionals want to hit the dancefloor, and is it disco, funk or even classical that does it best? Four leading choreographers discuss their theories, with the science to back them up‘I don’t know what it is about house music that makes me move, but I just can’t help it,” says Faye Stoeser. “And I don’t care what I look like. I just go for it.” “If a Missy [Elliott] track comes on, that’s me, I’m in the zone,” says Dannielle “Rhimes” Lecointe. “With hip-hop it’s something deep within the gut that makes you want to move. It has so many rhythms to it – a heartbeat, a pulse, a ricochet – that you feel in so many different places of your body.” What is the best music to dance to? Is it house music, it is hip-hop, is it disco or funk? Stoeser and Lecointe should have some insight since, as performers and choreographers, dancing is what they do for a living. When it comes to popular floorfillers, the DJ Intelligence platform found the most-requested track from UK DJs last year was Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody (with Abba’s Dancing Queen second, and Mr Brightside by the Killers third). In the US, Billboard’s top wedding song is Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars. A 2013 Mixmag poll named Daft Punk’s One More Time as the ultimate dance track, whereas Radio 2 listeners in 2008 voted for Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean.But what about those for whom dancing is more than recreation? When it comes to dance on stage, there is plenty that isn’t driven by music at all. Back in the 1940s, the US choreographer Merce Cunningham began to disconnect dance and music in his collaborations with the composer John Cage, rehearsing the dancers in silence. Some choreographers use music to create dance in the studio that is totally different from what they’ll perform to on stage. Dance that’s focused on musical connection definitely went out of fashion for a while, but there are a bunch of shows coming up where music is the absolute driving force. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 07:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

The novel had no hero, no dialogue and little action. So how was I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning turned into such a funny, rousing and acclaimed film? Director Clio Barnard reveals allAs a kid in 90s Birmingham, Keiran Goddard would gather with his friends to watch the tower blocks coming down. That’s what passed for entertainment back then. Controlled explosions, collapsing buildings. The demolition of the city’s postwar council estates marked the end of one story and the start of another. It was a dust-blown display of regeneration and progress. The housing that replaced it would be an improvement. The people of east Birmingham would move on to better lives.Goddard, specifically, moved on to study English at Oxford University. He now lives in London and writes books for a living. Physically, he has left his home town far behind. Emotionally and spiritually, not so much. “So I feel quite splintered,” he says. “I’m not sure anyone ever really leaves the world they grew up in.” Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 04:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Authors withdraw book planned for young readers after disputes with editors over characterizations of 7 OctoberA book on Palestine for young readers was pulled at Penguin Random House just before its scheduled release, following editorial disputes between the publisher and the book’s Palestinian American authors over their account of Palestinian history.In November 2024, Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House, signed the book deal with Alana Hadid, a philanthropist, activist and older sister of models Bella and Gigi, and Jenan Matari, an author and communications strategist. The book was promoted for release in September this year. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 14:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Live action role play, or Larping, allows me to straddle two worlds with fellow weirdos – and enter a realm where death can be reversed and I’m a cashed-up bureaucratEvery Friday night on a community sports field in Melbourne’s inner north, a few hundred nerds dress up in historical armour and attack each other with foam latex swords. It’s live action role play: turbocharged Dungeons & Dragons meets medieval re-enactment.I’ve been Larping for seven years. It’s the biggest thing in my life outside of comedy, and the two scenes have a lot in common. Everyone’s broke. Everyone was bullied in high school. No one gets into Larp or standup if things are going well. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 14:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

I doused myself in Poison perfume and made the trip back to my childhood home, friends and college. What could I learn by re-immersing myself in a world that brimmed with hope and potential?The house in which I turned 18 was full of clocks. Dark wooden things with aged faces. Every room ticked. If you stood in certain doorways, you could hear all the misaligned second hands racing. I could not understand why anyone would want to count away life like that or decorate their living quarters with so many symbols of mortality.There was no escaping time. Shortly before each hour, a mechanical whir heralded the first chime. We lived in a retirement town with an elderly and conservative population, which amplified the ticking. Worthing, on the south coast of England, was known as “God’s waiting room”. Death was there in our wide, slow roads and low bungalows, the grey sea mists and blue rinses. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 04:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

An umami-packed dish for when you need a flavour hit in a hurryHere is a simple, practical recipe that I trust will be useful to many who don’t have the time for lengthy kitchen preparations. Boil the spaghetti as usual, drain it, and toss it with a little butter and parmesan. Then, for four, take a spoonful of meat extract and dissolve it in a small saucepan with just a few drops of boiling water. Pour the meat extract over the pasta, stir and serve. You will be pleasantly surprised by the exquisite flavour the pasta acquires – achieved with such a negligible investment of time.This is a roughly word-for-word translation of an Italian recipe for spaghetti con l’estratto di carne (spaghetti with meat extract). It is another dish from Ada Boni’s Il Talismano della Felicità (The Talisman of Happiness), which was published in English for the first time last month and, according to the food writer and editor Angela Frenda, is “still considered one of the most precise and accurate of all cookbooks”. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 05:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

There’s something refreshing about unfiltered or unfined wines. We filter through a selection …Centuries ago, Geoffrey Chaucer observed that “ther is no newe gyse that it nas old”. This truth – that there is nothing new under the sun – certainly applies to wine: every year, a well-documented or ancient viticultural practice is repackaged for a mainstream that greets it giddily as an innovation. Orange wine! Wine in kegs! Chilled reds! And, in 2026, cloudy wine, courtesy of Marks & Spencer’s peachy-opaque organic rosé, Trouble (a name that means “cloudy” in French.Trouble is the first cloudy still wine available in a British supermarket, a development that has seemed inevitable since pét nat – pétillant naturel – hit the big time; it’s an ancestral method of making sparkling wine that involves bottling before fermentation has finished. Typically, pét nats are not disgorged (that is, the dead yeast cells left over from fermentation are not removed), which is what gives them a cloudy appearance. They are also often fresh and tangy, so they suit warm weather, but it’s hard to imagine a better pairing for a pizza takeaway on an autumn evening, and without prosecco’s divisive sherbety notes, to boot. (That said, look out for rustic, cloudy col fondo – bottle fermented, undisgorged prosecco – a hazy, lively and bracing take on the nation’s most popular fizz.) M&S, ever quick on the uptake, has an own-label English rosé pét nat (currently out of stock), while Tesco sells a pét nat chardonnay from Argentina. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 12:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN