The Politics of Dancing

I Call My Brothers The Gate Theatre Notting Hill Gate 10 November – 03 December What happens when fear and paranoia become as suffocating and pervasive as hunger or pain? This is the theme of the Gate’s new production, I Call My Brothers by Jonas Hassen Khemiri. In the wake of a terrorist attack in Central London anyone of Arabic, Middle Eastern or Pakistani appearance both feel and become suspect. For highly secular and western oriented individuals like Amor, -sharply and empathetically played by Richard Sumitro, - the central character of the play, this can be particularly bewildering, alienating and a deeply oppressive experience. The stark minimalist set accentuates this sense of a world of alienation and disconnect. This is further underlined by the fact that, as in contemporary life, so much of the dialogue is largely conducted, - disconnected, broken up, at cross purposes, - on mobile phone. Drunk coming home from a dance Amor is just another late-night reveller, or...

There have been worse years in modern history, much worse, 1914, 1939, 1940for example, but they have been few. Closer to 2016 are 1933 or 1938, for this has been, like both of these years, a year that will have consequences which will be felt for decades to come. Once more the piggy face of nationalism and fascism are triumphant. From Poland to the US and UK the slogan peddled has been that rallying call of the dictator and demagogue down the centuries, “ we will make you great again.” The fact that a serious threat of the break-up of the UK was narrowly averted turned out merely to be a portent, a bell ringing in the wind, warning of a hurricane coming. For the storms of 2016 have been a long time in the making. The root causes are many and often intricately interwoven. From the left’s pandering to militant Islam, the shock and revulsion at the Jimmy Saville revelations and of grooming by Asian gangs of, predominantly white, young teenage girls, to the ravages of cuts to basic...