"For cutting-edge dance you go to BAM," he said.
Aaliyah's new album, titled simply "Aaliyah," was released a month ago, and its most remarkable asset is its restraint: whether she's tackling a mid-tempo ballad or a cutting-edge dance track, Aaliyah sings without histrionics.
But for cutting-edge dance music head to Dattera Til Hagen (dattera.no), which allows you to see the cream of the US and European underground in a place that feels as intimate, friendly and bacchanalian as a house party.
The short answer is that there has not been a comprehensive, up-to-date, twentieth-century-to-millennium history of tap, the most cutting-edge dance form on the American stage.
I figured I might someday take an amibitious cultural jaunt through Europe, catching a classical concert at La Monnaie in Brussels, a musical off Las Ramblas in Barcelona, and cutting-edge dance performances in Berlin — all from the best seats in the house.
The major change in the Lyon company over the years has been its move from an eclectic ballet troupe occasionally involved with modern dance to a versatile ensemble open to conceptual pieces and willing to train in cutting-edge dance techniques.
In the even less likely event that Sir Michael Parkinson wanted not only to attend Glastonbury, but to hear nothing but bleeding-edge dance and electronica all weekend, that too could be arranged: he could take in a DJ set from someone called Roland the Bastard, and end with a nerve-jangling dubstep triple-bill on the G Stage: DJs Appleblim, Caspa and Rusko, and a live set by Benga and Skream.
The lack of joy in this sentence says much about Reynolds's usual uber-serious style, recalling Caitlin Moran's description of him in her bestselling memoir How to Be a Woman, remembering the early 1990s, when both were Melody Maker writers: "[He is] a pre-Raphaelite Oxford graduate, into unlistenably cutting-edge dance music… so clever, half of us are too scared to talk to him".
Despite its maturity, I claim that tap dance remains the most cutting-edge dance form on the American stage today.
Championed by the likes of Destructo, Wax Motif, and Amine Edge and DANCE, the sound has produced some absolute winners in year or so of its existence within dance music.
