TRYING NEW THINGS IN HACKNEY SPECIAL: Salsa the night away

Exercise is not my forte. Running on a treadmill while others watch and laugh at my ineptness and lack of stamina simply does not appeal to me.
So in my bid to get fit, two months too late for it to count as any sort of new year’s resolution, I coaxed a friend into accompanying me to a salsa lesson. And what a night it was, Rachel Rouse reports.

We arrived at the Backyard Comedy Club to find the instructor Michael decorating the sparse room Cuban style (putting up two Cuban flags), and two other newbies sitting at the edge of the room. Michael assured us that other would be coming ‘manyana’ (Spanish mean-time), and began to teach the four of us some basics. Trepidation soon turned to some relief as ‘Dave’ and his party guests stormed the school-hall like venue, soon to be followed by a gaggle of dancers who seemed somewhat more confident than me.
The evening began promisingly as a cheery and encouraging Michael led us through the basics of foot-tapping and hip-wiggling. One gentleman behind me seemed particularly eager to impress everyone with his advanced moves, as he threw in a few spins while Michael wasn’t looking. Michael was joined by another instructor, who replaced his well-placed camp enthusiasm with some concerted, fast-paced instruction. Undeterred, I got into the spirit of the night, and waved my hands and shook my bum along with the best of them. My dream of winning Strictly Come Dancing seemed to be well underway.
Then came the partnering up. After downing a quick drink by the bar (handy if you need a bit of Dutch courage), I limbered up for the beginners class. My friend and I were perfectly happy to partner-up with each-other when a lack of men proved to be an issue. But, luckily for us, a pair of knights came to our rescue. Unfortunately, these knights were about a foot too short. I’m the first to admit that I’m above average height for a woman, but I didn’t imagine needing to crane my neck down quite that far in order to gaze into the eyes of my dance partner. Brendan Cole he wasn’t. Not only that, but he struggled to count to six, that oh so important number when counting the beat for salsa.
I was relieved then, when a partner swap meant I ended up with Joe. Taller than me, he was also a salsa instructor himself. I found myself learning, and getting better and more confident with it. My hips swung more assuredly and my feet tapped to the beat. Not only that, but I found myself looking longingly at the intermediate class, wishing that we could do spins like them.
The formal class was followed by a more casual dancing session, when I encouraged one of the more advance dancers to show me how to do one of the said spins. It was a bit beyond me, but my confidence was growing and my enjoyment of the evening was mounting. So much so that I was reluctant for it to end.
As the evening drew to a close, I found myself filled with a sense of pride that not only had I learnt something, I’d done a bit of exercise and had a great deal of fun with it. I’ll never be a gym bunny, but Salsa may be a new calling. Now comes the quest to gain Z-list celebrity status so I can demonstrate my new-found talent in Strictly Come Dancing. Watch this space.

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TRYING NEW THINGS IN HACKNEY SPECIAL: Finding new music: Julian meets Robin

Hackney is a hot bed of new musical talent. Julian Cheatle went to meet one of the Borough's rising stars.





ROBIN Grey believes that if he puts in the effort, one day he will reap the reward.
He is sitting in a small Hackney recording studio, tucked away behind a row of terraced houses. He moved to London last year because, he says, that’s where his music needs him to be.

Everything Robin has done since school has been part of his grand plan. He learned classical guitar at school, as an homage to REM lead singer Michael Stipe and other legends who had classical training. He went to university because his favourite bands, like REM, had met at university. The fascination is not with REM, but with an ideal: Robin is a work-in-progress. “It’s all about being patient and working hard,” he says. He knows what he wants to achieve but understands only hard work and determination will bring success.

At university in Leeds he met some of the musicians that he has gone on to work with: Jonny Berliner and Joe Allen.
“We made a lot of mischief together,” he says. “We went to the Edinburgh festival and had a month long residency where we played every night, two or three times, for about a month.” The intensive schedule of performing was great practice, he says. Next, though, on the hard road to achieving his goal, was to learn more about recording. That was where the move to London came in.

“It’s a completely different art form to performing,” he says. “It’s like standing in front of a really harshly lit six-foot mirror. It highlights all the things that aren’t quite right, and then you have to stare at them. It makes you approach music in a very different way.

“There are two schools of thought here: the Bob Dylan approach, which is to just do it and leave the rough edges in, and the Paul Simon approach which is to spit and polish every millisecond. With my band Blue Swerver, every single second is like that, but a lot of the stuff I do myself is deliberately as organic and spontaneous and live as possible.”

Now he spends most of his time at the Blue Door, the studio he set up in Hackney last year. The room is packed with instruments: there’s a charango from Peru, a double bass, several guitars. He’s collected instruments throughout his life, wherever he’s been. In Ghana, for example, he acquired a one-string kalabash violin. He visited the West African country before starting university. “There was music everywhere,” he says. “I used to walk around with my minidisc, recording it all.”

And they wanted to hear him, too. “Kids used to sit outside my window and wait for me to start playing guitar in my bedroom. I used to say, ‘Oh guys, just come in!’ Somewhere in this small village in Ghana there’s a bunch of people who all know a song called Saxon Street, by a small Cambridge band, which was my favourite at the time.”

No doubt all the other instruments hanging on the wall have similarly colourful stories behind them, too. “I’ve waited my whole life to have a room like this – full of toys,“ he says. “It’s worked out perfectly. I can come here any hour of the day. Sometimes I’ve had sessions where I’ve recorded until four or five in the morning because I’ve just been in the zone.”
It’s these hours of hard work that will pay off in the end. Take the Arctic Monkeys as an example.

“With them it’s always been ‘the internet this’, ‘the internet that’”, he says, “but there’s a lot of hard work that goes on. They worked really, really, hard gigging. I’m sure they have had more than their fair share of playing to half empty rooms in the middle of nowhere. If you do lots of gigs and you’re good - which they are - you will get fans who’ll want to buy your records. But at the end of the day you’ve got to put on a good live show. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was just somebody at a record label who decided it was a clever way to market things.”

And so Robin’s patient wait continues. He is working on various projects at the moment: some in bands, some alone – most recently, Blue Swerver played at the Embassy Club in Mayfair. Robin thinks the band is currently his best chance of success. They're good - but Robin is an exceptionally talented musican, and he has a singing voice you could easily listen to for hours. Being stuck at the back playing the bass in a band isn’t where he belongs.


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TRYING NEW THINGS IN HACKNEY SPECIAL: Getting that shrinking feeling: Life drawing

I am not in the habit of staring at naked men, claims Andrew Wander

I'm in the basement of a pub in Hoxton, and the naked man seems rather nervous. I don’t blame him. I suspect he has been down here a while. His eyes follow me into the room, but his body remains motionless. The position he has adopted looks deeply uncomfortable, but at least he is being paid. This is life drawing, Hackney-style.

Twenty pairs of eyes flick from paper to person and back again. A cheap CD player plays fin-de-siecle French accordian music, and artists are busy at work. After a quiet word with the friendly organiser, I am given an easel, pencil and paper. I find a place to perch in the crowded room, and the quiet atmosphere is restored. Only the music and the scratch of pencil on paper break the silence.

There is something relaxing about sketching the human form. Considering the body in a new way, you appreciate a complexity and beauty that is usually taken for granted. In the reverential silence of the pub basement, among a crowd of bright young things wearing Converse trainers and skin-tight jeans, I feel like I’m actually learning something.

You wouldn’t think so from my drawings. One looks like an Easter Island statue, another like the bastard offspring of Frankenstein’s monster and Mr. Potato Head. It is a sad testament to my lack of talent. But in a way that is the point: you don’t need to be Monet to enjoy this. It is the process of production, rather than the production itself that is valuable.

Mind you, when the model asks to see what people have drawn, I make my excuses and leave. No-one deserves to suffer for their art that much.

Life Drawing Classes
El Paso Café, 350-356 Old Street, EC1
Mondays, 7pm

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Fragrant exhibition is a stinker

Novelty smelling art works offends eyes and nose, says Jane Fulcher


Scratch and Sniff Exhibition
Vice Gallery, Leonard St, EC2
Until 22nd March
Free Entry

The hook of this exhibition is that the art works are “scratch and sniff” and will encourage people to interact with art in a new way. Presented by trendy South London freebie Vice Magazine, it claims to feature “the cream of young and not so young artists” from London. These artists have been commissioned by Lynx to represent how fragrance improves attraction.

The problem is that artists have to include a picture of a Lynx can in their work, which essentially transforms the exhibition into an advertisement. It is shocking that a magazine as image conscious as Vice, and 14 artists so obviously in tune with urban trends, would sell their soul to a product as culturally repugnant as Lynx.

As part of the accompanying blurb, the artists were asked 10 short questions. In reply to: “what was your inspiration for this piece?”, one truthful artist replied: “Money”. Another simply said: “Being in this booklet”, and a third, slightly more imaginative answer was: “The finest treasures of the universe”.

These are talented artists, and the pieces by Andy Forshaw, Tim Hill and Ken Chung are particularly striking. Tim Hill’s cartoony, design-led picture seems to be influenced by everyone from Terry Gilliam to Chris Ofili and has the added bonus of not appearing purely as a Lynx advertisement.

It is understandable that young talent should be led by money into such a redundant, vulgar project as a thinly disguised advertising campaign, but that doesn’t stop it from being sad. This project shows that the people behind Lynx think they are connected to Britain’s youth, but the only men buying their products are horny teenagers or people stupid enough to believe their misogynistic television advertisements.

By completely misjudging its demographic, Lynx is set to achieve very little. It is like serving WKD at an ambassador’s reception: so entirely irrelevant that it goes unnoticed.

Apart from anything else, the paintings don’t even smell of anything. Not even after scratching at several of the canvases for a good long while. A gimmick fallen flat. Embarrassing.

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What's On Guide

Hackney Post brings you the latest in arts, culture, film, music, and other tasty activities


Thursday
THEATRE
Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads
Set during the last match at the old Wembley Stadium, the touring Pilot Theatre’s version of Roy Williams’ lively, vigorous play explores Britain's obsession with football, race and national identity.
Until March 25th
Hackney Empire, Mare Street, E8
Tickets £10-£16.50, concs available
020 8510 4500

Friday
FILM
Amazing Grace
Inspiring story of legendary politician William Wilberforce, detailing his long struggle to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire. Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Albert Finney and Michael Gambon
Until March 30th
Rio Cinema, Kingsland High Street, E8
Tickets £7.50, concs available
020 7241 9410

Saturday
MUSIC
Barb Jungr
Barb Jungr returns with her trio to deliver a stunning collection of intimate jazz blues and gospel from her recent Linn records release alongside her great love, the songs of Bob Dylan.
8pm
Vortex Dalston, Gillett St, N16
Tickets £12
020 7254 4097

Sunday
FAMILY
Hackney Horrors!
Family day with creative activities for all ages: hear horrible tales of Hackney or dress up and pose for photographs in the courtyard. Children must be accompanied by an adult.
12.30-4pm
Sutton House, Homerton High St, E9
Free entry
020 8986 2264

Monday
ART
Emma Talbot, Cathie Pilkington: The Craft
A home-spun museum of curiosities: a fantastical documentation of a fictional sect presenting the artists' “finds” in the form of a museological compilation of objects, tableau and paintings, all claiming various usages within the fictional community.
12-6pm
Transition Gallery, Andrews Road, E8
Free entry
020 7254 4202

Tuesday
THEATRE
Mojo Mickybo
Owen McCafferty's poetic, colourful and deeply humane tale about two Belfast boys escaping into the world of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, during the summer of 1970. Directed by Jonathan Humphreys.
Until April 14th
Arcola Theatre, Arcola Street, E8
Tickets £13, concs available, Tuesdays: pay what you can
020 7503 1646

Wednesday
MUSEUM
Abolition ‘07
Artist Godfried Donkor’s new work commemorating the bicentenary of the abolition of Britain’s transatlantic slave trade, looking at the impact the trade had on the general wealth and development of this country.
Until July 14th
Hackney Museum, Reading Lane, E8
Free entry
020 8356 3500

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COLUMN: Culture Fulcher

“TOTAL Regeneration, Total ASBO.” Scrawled across a wall near Mare Street, this graffiti serves as an indictment of Hackney’s current situation and a warning of the way things could be going, writes Jane Fulcher,


Regeneration is coming. The Olympics are only five years away and the City is expanding ever eastwards, but we need to be careful not to push out what makes Hackney interesting. As the East London Line creeps northward we must make sure that commuters flooding into Hackney don’t take the borough’s spirit with them when they travel into their banks and management consultancy firms in Canary Wharf.

If snot-nosed advertising executives can persuade talented East End artists to use their work as no more than a cynical marketing ploy, how long is it before other things fall by the wayside?

If we start to marginalise our artists, teenagers and subcultures at a grass roots level then Hackney could soon become just another London borough. If regeneration means labelling anything that gated communities don’t want on their doorstep as “antisocial”, then maybe Hackney should be left as it is.

In Bristol they are painting over Bansky’s artwork. He may have sold pieces to such Heat favourites as Angelina Jolie and Kate Moss but when he started, he started on the streets. Urban artists may not follow the letter of the law, but they make living in the East End of London a lot more interesting.

If the graffiti artists, who often have a more insightful social commentary than most local politicians, are warning that regeneration is leading to a culture of ASBO, we should take notice. Another scrawl in Hackney says simply: “Fuck the Little Man.” Which is what we could be very close to doing.

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COLUMN: ShawCROSS

The Post's resident art critic Harriet Shawcross bemoans the need for modern art ‘blurbs’.

Picture this: a three-metre square candy pink canvas, intersected by six panels of pale pink paint. That’s it – big bland and boring.

You are currently visualising ‘Incubus’, a painting by Gary Hume, which dominates the first floor of the Tate Modern.

Not many people stop for ‘Incubus’: it’s not as fun as the slides, and hasn’t got Picasso’s kudos.
But linger by the accompanying blurb for a few minutes and a curious phenomenon takes place: people flock to join you.

Everyone loves a good blurb. Earnest looking women with backpacks umm and ahh appreciatively, and dopey students stop and stare.

Forget the merit of the art itself - shove a few polysyllables next to a canvas and suddenly it has meaning. Gravitas. Clout.

Take ‘Incubus’ for example: this is not a big pink picture, it is an ‘exploration of the juxtaposition of high art seriousness with the mundanity of hospital doors’. Oh Really.

Even better than that, the ‘high gloss paint creates a reflective surface in which the viewer’s figure appears’, immersing the public in the belly of the ‘Incubus’. How clever.

If only gallery curators could credit the general public with being even half as intelligent as the artists on display.

We don’t need a pocket-sized bit of practical criticism to appreciate modern art. If it’s obscure, then fine, but please don’t patronise us by telling us what it means.

Art is not a verbal medium, and sometimes there’s just not that much to say that could improve on the spectacle itself.

When it comes to ‘Incubus’, it’s pink, and for what its worth, I liked it.

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