Kids in rehearsal with Royston Maldoom by Camilla Panufnik Dance Umbrella is well underway and fittingly the skies caved in over the weekend but the diverse programme is making splashes of its own. Amid the professional programme lies the obligatory nod to the Olympic Games. Overture 2012 is one for the kids and the Arts Council (increasing accessibility, participation: tick) but funded from a plethora of sources and donors. 120 young Londoners, some experiencing contemporary......

Contemporary dance has come a hell of a long way in the 30 years that Dance Umbrella has been running and that's reflected in this year's programme with the once pioneering and avant garde, now established, respectable big hitters opening the season: Merce Cunningham dance company presents new work alongside classic at the Barbican and Richard Alston celebrates his 60th birthday at Sadlers Wells. As usual, "brief encounters" with emerging choreographers precede the big......

Akram Khan is a choreographer and dancer renowned for his audacious collaborations. Zero Degrees in 2005 explored cultural identities in a stark white box at Sadlers Wells. Sacred Monsters had ballerina Sylvie Guillem singing on stage and dwarfing Khan in the most elegant way possible. This foray with actress Juliet Binoche was risk filled from the start - their mission was to dare, to push their personal boundaries and create across their comfort zones.......

Recapture the Carnival calypso vibe at Sadlers Wells monthly dance club night. This time it's Soca! Learn the high energy moves from Trinidad and Tobago in classes for beginners and improvers then let your hair down, get your sequined bikini and feathered headdress out and strut your stuff into the night for just £8. For more information and to book go to the Sadlers Wells website.......

You don't have to like ballet to appreciate the upcoming new dance programme by Scottish Ballet - you just have to like Radiohead. Or 1930s movie star glamour. Or film techniques interpreted into dance. If you like any or all of these things, then shuffle down to Queen Elizabeth Hall on South Bank ASAP to get your tickets for a triple bill of jaw-dropping contemporary ballet. Running 4-5 October only, this is your chance......

Choreographer Wayne McGregor has compiled a giddy programme for Deloitte Ignite, Friday 12 - Sunday 14 September at the Royal Opera House. All events are free and you will see this grand building in a different light. Art installations, kinetic sound sculptures, chocolate tasting, a room full of perfumed feathers and a virtual game playing against (or with?) teams in Mile End Park guarantee a feast for all the senses. Check out the full programme......

This week, the 20 choreographers and their teams got out the starting blocks with their preview shows for the Place Prize. Premiering brand new work is probably a terrifying business but next week it gets really serious, with the semi-finals, and an audience opportunity to influence who gets through to the all important finals where everyone has the chance of being a winner each night, if they please the audience enough. We're giving away......

Australian music maker Gotye has been stirring up the music blogs big style since he got his first UK radio play on Sean Rowley's BBC London show. Having made his debut album 'Like Drawing Blood' in his bedroom, he went on to the win the equivalent of the Mercury Music Prize in his homeland. The gorgeous and spooky 'Heart's A Mess' has grabbed us most of all currently, but the album is a big......

PiE&MASH's monthly grub and tunes party night in Vauxhall is going apocalyptic tonight. Yes, in the face of farting cows, melting ice caps and rising temperatures eat pie, get drunk and boogie! Doors at 8pm, entry is free and grub's up around 10.30pm. It's the end of the world as we know it, so let's eat pie. Find the fun at the Vauxhall Griffin.......

Fortunate enough to bag sponsorship from Bloomberg, The Place Prize is a biennial contemporary dance competition which commissions 20 British choreographers to create brand new work and compete for a £25k prize based on both professional opinion and a popular audience vote. Bloomberg's financial clout underwrites the cash prize with no strings for the recipient and also, interestingly, peppers the Robin Howard Theatre with suits when the corporate blag comes out to play, making......

Norway's Hans-Peter Lindstrom takes to the stage (if you can call it that) in Rough Trade East looking unassumingly geeky in a checked shirt and a hat that covers most of his face. He is playing as part of the shop's heavily Converse-branded first birthday celebrations and might reasonably be miffed at the smallish crowd who braved the warm August rain to be here. Fortunately in customary trainspotter fashion they all signal their support......

There's plenty to entertain those of us in search of cultural enlightenment this week. London's arts scene is offering a really varied pick'n'mix bag of sticky sweet treats... Enjoy! Happy Birthday West Side Story! This groundbreaking dance musical opens tonight at Sadlers' Wells, 50 finger-clicking years since it first appeared. Without Jerome Robbins' legendary choreography, Londonist can't help think everything from MJ's Thriller to Britney's school uniform would've been rather different. Tomorrow night, you......

Science and art coming together is a beautiful thing. A totally wrong coupling that sometimes climaxes in an eruption of sci-art fusion magic. That's presumably what the Science Museum is after in appointing not onlya writer but a dancer in residence for the summer months. Contemporary dancer and choreographer, Athina Vahla "concentrates on epic, site-specific work taking a collaborative approach to create multi-media pieces." That's artspeak for mash-ups, right? Vahla is specifically working on......

There are more theatre openings in London this week than decent sunny spells, many of them featuring some familiar (read: off telly) faces... Under the Blue Sky, a story of three intertwined love stories with Catherine Tate, a couple of girls you'll recognise from Cranford, and him from the IT Crowd starts previews at the Duke of York today. Over at the Vaudeville, more Cranfordians tread the boards in The Female of the Species......

When you get back from your audition for Showtime Challenge 3 on Saturday, what better way to extend the musical showbizzery than joining Sadlers Wells Dance Club's West End night? Even if you chicken out of trying out for the stage yourself this is a fabulous way to indulge your West End whimsy and learn routines from Chicago, West Side Story and the ultimate dancers' musical, A Chorus Line. Camp it up, honeys! Heels,......

Akram Khan & Juliette Binoche by roll the dice We were fortunate to be in the company of the beautiful people on Friday when actress Juliette Binoche and dance star Akram Khan revealed their upcoming Franco-British collaboration for the National Theatre. The project - In-I - is under wraps in the sense that it's still being made but will see a dance theatre performance of some kind, vaguely based on personal experiences of love hit......

If you're into anything dancy you'd be hard pushed to find a better night out than at Fabric. Tonight in the floor quivering Room 1 Drop The Lime drops in from Brooklyn to play along side Switch & The Scratch Perverts while over in room 2 Australian drum and bass chart invaders, Pendulum, headline with support from the likes of Goldie. It's room 3 we're most excited about though as it celebrates the release......

English National Ballet's return to its roots at the Royal Festival Hall on a balmy summer's evening last night was ultimately triumphant although there were first night nerves, timing and injury issues to deal with. A Million Kisses to my Skin opened the programme but, despite a stand out performance by Erina Takahashi who was delightful to watch, you could have been forgiven for missing the fact that this work is all about the......

Once a year, Canary Wharf is transformed by Dancing City. There's nothing quite like seeing aerialistes descending from the glass and steel powerhouses of corporate finance or parkour artists dashing effortlessly through the artificial garden of Cabot Square to make you look at this blue chip island quite differently. Turn up from 1pm on Sunday and be ambushed by all sorts of dance forms around Canary Wharf. See Bharata Natyam does football, a tango......

English National Ballet returns to the Royal Festival Hall this July after an absence of 11 years, with a promisingly lyrical, accessible and pleasing mixed bill. The Company was formed in 1950 - the same year as the Festival Hall as part of the Festival of Britain so it's apt that this show is called Festival Ballet. Yes, there will be tutus but this is no frou frou event. It's a celebration of classical......

Fed up with this ever changing weather and longing for some summer sultriness? Well, a taste of Cuban culture, live on stage, could be just what you need. Havana Rakatan is an infectious explosion of Cuban music and dance featuring 14 hot and sexy dancers and a live band. Refresh your love of latin grown on Strictly Come Dancing and see the whole gamut from slinky rumba to vibrant cha-cha-cha performed in cool and......

Tonight marks the end of Wednesday's most famous club night - Nag Nag Nag. Borne out of the electroclash wave in the early naughties, Jonny Slut, Fil OK and JoJo De Freq have been packing the underground lair of Ghetto with many a fashionable wreck every week since. At it's peak everyone wanted in from Bjork to Justin Timberlake, Bono to Christina Aguilera but it was the crowd of metro sexual DIY rule breakers......

Frantic crayola coloured "Scribbling" as cockroaches scuttle away under a huge lamp, Saint-Saëns’ wonderful score for "Carnival of the Animals" given a new lease of life by Siobhan Davies, done out in white tuxedoes (spot the beasts!) followed by the entire company dressed as the Queen prior to stripping off their royal garb and throwing themselves off a cliff in "Anatomica #3". All this with the 'mood and dynamics' sign language interpreted at the......

Good News, Dance Fans - London's Big Dance will be going ahead as planned this year. New Mayor Boris had lost no time in appointing a supremo to review cultural events planned by the Greater London Authority, so at Londonist we are pleased to hear that this jewel in the capital's 2008 cultural calendar has not been pulled. We are even more chuffed to get wind that the launch of the countdown to the......

Green Apples by Mark Bruce courtesy of The Place Spring Loaded is The Place's annual festival of fresh contemporary dance. We enthused about the opening show, Probe's Magpie, and we weren't disappointed (it was ace - so different and diverse and frankly, smoking hot and funny). Now the season is coming to a close and we're inclined to highlight a couple of gems that are ideal for popping along to on these gorgeously, light and......

On Thursday night, Four tet headlined The Eat Your Own Ears series at the Indigo2 in Greenwich, an incredible space with a really terrific sound and lighting system. Before we get to fawning over Four tet, however, the opening acts deserve a mention here. First up was Kode9, whose pulsing rhythm set the mood nicely, but to be fair, we were concentrating more on the beer. Next up was the happy surprise of the......

Ether 2008 is well under way, and last night Radio Soulwax Presents… made sure to kick it up a notch. For the UK premiere of the tour film Part of the Weekend Never Dies, Belgian electro band Soulwax had taken over the Royal Festival Hall, and as well as showing the film in the auditorium (twice), guest DJs such as UK DJ Riton played sets throughout the night. The film paints a picture of......

Photography courtesy of D I C K S D A I L Y via the Londonist pool on Flickr. Interested in your drink-related photos appearing on Londonist? Click here.......

Some people are old before their time. Others are always young at heart. Yet others don't know how to act their age and instead of retiring quietly and fading into the background, decide to form an elderly arts group and go on tour with a dance show. Like the China-wide Beijing Elderly Art Group (BEAG) and The UK Zimmers Both groups are made entirely of performers over 65, and for one night only, they......

If you're ever going to listen to our recommendations about dance, today is the day to do so. Dance partnership, Probe, Antonia Grove and Theo Clinkard, are opening the Spring Loaded festival at The Place this year, launching a showcase of the most refreshing contemporary dance talent around. Last year we got over excited about Mark Bruce who - in a fantastic coincidence - crops up as one of Probe's choreographers here. Watch out......