From gambling dancers to X-rated opera, here are this week's top stories
What's ahead at the State of the Arts conference
There will be plenty to discuss tomorrow at the State of the Arts conference, the annual gathering of the cultural clans in London, with speakers including artist Mark Wallinger and shadow culture secretary Ivan Lewis. Alongside the main event, Forest Fringe's Andy Field is organising (dare we say it) a more intriguing-sounding Flash Conference. Aside from exploring provocative questions such as how artists can have a meaningful role in mass protest and popular resistance, it will examine how small outfits can be protected, when success is so often measured through growth alone. Recently, 24-year-old Cat Harrison spoke out about her experience as an emerging artist-producer. A �500 grant from Farnham Maltings bought her collective, non zero one, the equipment and confidence to stage their debut show at London's Southwark Playhouse; now their work is being developed at the National Theatre Studio. The group hold down day jobs in the arts as trainees, personal assistants and the like ? people in their 20s who have not known the pre-recession days. Keep an eye on those like Harrison ? with their flexibility, robustness and ingenuity, they are the future.
Not so much Black Swan as blackjack: the gambling ballet boys
How do ballet dancers spend their spare time? If you've seen Black Swan, you would think their hobbies were self-harm and psychodramatic encounters with pushy parents, but I can confirm that for certain dancers in the Royal Ballet, it's poker. At last weekend's game, the winner ? taking a pot of �65, and fending off competition from dancers including Ryoichi Hirano and Liam Scarlett ? was first soloist Bennet Gartside. Catch this fiendish gambler in the Royal's mixed bill in March, and as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet at London's O2 arena in June.
Metafiction and metagimmick in Leo Benedictus' The Afterparty
It's not just loyalty that compels me to say that The Afterparty, the debut novel by sometime Guardian feature writer Leo Benedictus, is brilliant. It's not out until 1 March, but it's already on the Man Booker discussion forum, where one reader calls it "wonderful ? metafictional, post-modern, yet still hilarious and beautifully written . . . If it isn't on the longlist, or one of the most controversial omissions from it, I'll be amazed." As part of the postmodern malarkey of the novel (read it to see what I mean), Benedictus is offering to write one reader into the paperback edition. It's not so much a gimmick, he says, as a "meta-gimmick".
The Royal Opera prepares for the premiere of its "x-rated opera", Anna Nicole
Over at the Royal Opera House, rehearsals are gathering pace for Anna Nicole, Mark-Anthony Turnage's new opera about Anna Nicole Smith, which opens on 17 February. The cast have been pole-dancing on the hallowed main stage, while the poster features a buxom blonde "cupping" (I'm afraid that's the only word for it) her breasts. The Mail has been frothing already about this "X-rated" opera. Personally, I can't wait. I'm hoping Turnage will slip in some jokes; his piece Hammered Out, which premiered last summer at the Proms, quoted a passage from Beyonc�'s Single Ladies, to the confounding of the less worldly of the classical critics.
Tessie Santiago Jessica Simpson Mandy Moore Shannon Elizabeth Maggie Gyllenhaal
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