Playing Around - DVD

A sparkling personality on the contemporary dance scene, Swedish choreographer Alexander Ekman has been invited for the first time to work with the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet. His language, both visceral and tinged with humor, combining theatricality, and classical and contemporary vocabulary alike, perfectly resonates with the incredible versatility and stage presence of the Ballet the result is Play, a piece that evokes the world of childhood and it's careless pleasures. But beyond pure entertainment, this performance contemplates the meaning and the importance of play when we become adults. Best known for the spectacular quality of his pieces and their dreamlike imagery, like for instance his Midsummer Night's Dream, the Swedish choreographer fills the stage of the Palais Garnier with an entrancing energy. The metallic structures, dancers suspended in space, and the elevations are but a few of the powerful images that will strike the audience's imagination! For this new creation, Alexander Ekman worked with his acolyte composer Mikael Karlsson, but also with a talented team of instrumentalists not often seen on the stage of the Palais Garnier, among which gospel singer Callie Day, or the incredible percussionist Adelaïde Ferriere. An unexpected performance, carried along by enticing rhythms and communicative energy!

Framed for a new generation-by another elite tier of acting talent-the BBC revisited it's acclaimed broadcast series of Alan Bennett dramatic monologues from the '80s and '90s. Ten of the original pieces, and two newly written by Bennett, are performed by Martin Freeman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Imelda Staunton, Jodie Comer, Lesley Manville, Tamsin Grieg, Sarah Lancashire, Maxine Peake, Harriet Walter, Lucian Msamati, Monica Dolan.

Set decades before the brassy, bustling contemporary Busby Berkeley musicals to follow three years later, 1930's period pre-code musical The Florodora Girl might also be called Gold Diggers of 1900. Sharpie showgirls of the Florodora Sextette cast their nets wide for rich husbands while advising (with plummy double-entendre aplomb) their beau-less chorus-mate Daisy Dell (radiant Marion Davies) in the finer points of man-trapping. Making