October 2013

Did anyone take any decent pictures of last night’s show?

October 10, 2013 David Hepworth 0

I was somewhat preoccupied so I didn’t. Which is a shame because it seemed to go very well. Can’t tell you how much simpler it […]

Word In Your Ear

David Hepworth, Mark Ellen and chums cast an occasionally jaundiced eye over the goings-on in the worlds of music and entertainment.

Mass commercial nightlife began in a Japanese Pleasure Garden in 1657 and it’s blossomed ever since – via Victorian Vauxhall, cabaret Paris, jazz-driven New Orleans, flappers, speakeasies, moonshine, Studio 54 and the rave palaces of the 21st Century. Imogen Willetts tracks its riotous evolution in ‘Up All Night: A History of Going Out’ and wonders if the invention of the iPhone has burst the balloon. She talks to us here about …

… the Tango, the Can-Can: dances that got you arrested

… how bourgeois French ‘slummers’ found a taste of danger

… the heady allure in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens as an escape from Victorian squalor

… how Anita Berber’s chloroform ballet shocked and delighted Weimar Berlin

… when dancing was a mating ritual and the impact of Dating Apps

… democracy on the dancefloor: the unrepeatable mix of punters and celebrities at Studio 54

… and how the invention of the electric light got people going out and the iPhone made them stay home

Order ‘Up All Night’ here:https://www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk/titles/imogen-willetts/up-all-night/9781399617093/

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