Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
I’m excited to share this spring arts special with you – this time it is steered by the art of sound. The issue brings together some of music’s most dazzling proponents, among them the blisteringly brilliant Irish band Lankum, jazz prodigy Samara Joy and the Nigerian sensation Burna Boy. Dance is another theme throughout the issue – we meet the painters who are trying to capture the kinetic energy of movement on the canvas, as well as the choreographers Polly Bennett and Léo Walk.
Walk has already been featured in HTSI – he was our Aesthete last year – and ever since, I have dreamt of working with him again. For HTSI he has staged a fashion shoot in collaboration with his Paris dance group La Marche Bleue, photographer Janneke van der Hagen and stylist Julie Velut. Looking at the bodies of his performers, I rather yearn for the dancer I believe (inside my heart) I could still become. I have never quite let go of the notion – possessed as an eight-year-old dance fanatic – that I might one day be the next Ginger Rogers or Kid from Fame. Walk insists that the true dancer’s training requires eight hours of daily practice for a minimum of 10 years. By his estimate, if I start now I might yet make my debut at around the average retirement age.
Similarly, I was sick with envy when our contributing editor Fiona Golfar, following a double hip replacement, suggested that she might take a class with Polly Bennett – currently the hottest movement coach in film. She’s the woman who taught Barry Keoghan that epic strut that closes Saltburn, she worked with Austin Butler on his Elvis and has lately been helping Kingsley Ben-Adir to inhabit the reggae legend Bob Marley. She treated Fiona to a bespoke one-on-one session in which they knocked together a quick number from A Chorus Line. Read all about it – as well as Polly’s list of favourite film dance scenes and transformations – in “How to strut it à la Saltburn”.
And there are still so many other stories in this issue. Did you know about Basquiat’s foray into rap while he worked in LA? What about Martha Wainwright’s guide to her Canadian hometown, Montreal? Peter Blake, our Aesthete this week, is arguably the creator of the greatest album cover of all time, although he has had “mixed feelings” about the association over the intervening years. Now 91, he’s still an inspiration: his humour and curiosity remain undimmed.
It’s also an enormous treat to feature Michael Stipe. The 64-year-old spoke to us about a new book of photography and exhibition of additional artistic passions he has pursued throughout his musical career. They say you should never meet your heroes, but he lives up to every expectation. While my younger self would be disappointed not to have grown up into a prima ballerina, she’d be crazy happy she got to exchange DMs with the lead singer of REM.
Want to read HTSI before everyone else? Get all the top stories straight to your inbox every Friday. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter here
