Performing Arts Class Clips

Yeah, it's so crazy right now...

The music on Strictly's so important because it's the heart of the dance.

With no music, with a good song, there won't be any good performance.

At the start of each series we talk to all the dancers

and ask them to send in a list of music they'd like to use.

Each of the dance styles we use on Strictly Come Dancing

have their own tempo, their own characteristics

and it's my job, with the dancers, to decide on a piece of music

which will give them the best opportunity to do the best dance they possibly can.

It's not necessarily possible for us to use each of the dancers' first choices.

Sometimes the piece of music has been used before.

If you take a track like Just Dance by Lady GaGa, it's a good tempo for a cha-cha-cha.

A lot of the dancers requested it this year.

But because that music is so electronic in its composition

we just don't think that it would sound great with our live band.

It wouldn't be using our band to their maximum.

Once we've decided on a piece of music with the dancer, I then speak

to my music editor, Mark, and say, "I'd like a one minute 30 cut."

Ben Skilbeck will send me a track which will be three or four minutes long. I will take that track,

edit it down to a 90-second format, which will be an introduction, verse, chorus, ending, usually.

Maybe a guitar solo to make it more interesting.

# Holiday, holiday. #

It can take two minutes or it can take two hours.

I will bounce this down and e-mail it back to the guys

and they will tell me if it's any good.

Ben will then go back to the dancers. They'll go, "I don't like that. The chorus is in the wrong place.

"It's the wrong tempo."

If the tempo's not right, I have to speed it up or slow it down.

It goes backwards and forwards till everyone's happy.

We get the music on the Saturday night after the live show.

Then on the Sunday, as soon as I wake up, I have my little espresso

and then start playing the music over and over again,

so I can get the feel of the song.

This is the title of the song, Holiday, and this is the "rev3".

That means the song has been cut already three times.

So fingers crossed I'm going to like it.

MUSIC: "Holiday" by Madonna

My name's Dave Arch and I'm the music director of Strictly Come Dancing.

I have to deliver all the music to be played by the band

and I'm sort of responsible for it sounding good.

I guess!

# Holiday... #

After I get the edits, I need to listen to all of those tracks analytically

and write down every single note of them for the band to play.

# It would be, it would so nice... #

That could take between four to five hours per track.

I never change the music during the week.

What I do sometimes, I change the ending.

A different ending will fit better with my celebrity partner.

The best thing about my job is Saturday

when we get to the studio and the band starts playing all this music.

The atmosphere in the studio is electric.

That's when it really comes home to everybody that, yeah, show day. Time to perform.

The band first see the music at band call,

which is typically about lunchtime on the Saturday.

We have a little sound check, where we might play a couple of the harder things.

Then we move on to a band call, where we're playing for the dancers. We do each track twice.

Sometimes we get in there, they might be a couple percent slower

or a little bit faster.

We go through it roughly around three times.

By the end of it, it's spot on. We really enjoy it.

Here we go.

Will you lot shut up?

Even though the band plays the track at exactly the same tempo that the couple has been practising to,

sometimes when they get to the studio,

sometimes they hear things differently.

They ask to speed things up, slow things down.

We can always do that. It's the great thing with having a live band on this show.

Then we have a dress run.

Then we're live on air.

So it's normally the fourth time that we play.

That is pretty hairy.

Live television is not easy.

Once the music's ready for the live show,

once we've gone through band call, there's nothing I can do about it.

It's now up to the dancers to do their best stuff.

The band will do what they do and play it live.

It's samba time.

# Celebrate, it would be so nice. #

As a creative force, Soulwax are impossible to pigeonhole.

They play live with their band of the same name, are two of the world's genuine superstar DJs,

and their self-produced side project 2 many DJs

was a mash-up album that blew dance culture apart.

When the brothers are not on stage,

they are two of the most sought-after remix producers on the planet.

Their new album brings together a collection of their best remix work

and includes underground classics, alongside tracks from Kylie and Robbie Williams.

So what do you need to hear in a track to make you go, "Yeah, OK"?

There's no real system. If the track is not that good,

it makes it sometimes easier because you can take a little part that you like and just use that.

Most of the remixes we do, we just take a little bit and we completely redo it.

Have you turned remixes down simply because you didn't like the artist?

-Yeah.

-Really?

-Yeah, but we tell them we don't have time.

So right now there are loads of artists going, "Wait a minute, they told us that."

-It's not you.

-There are also a lot that we like that we turn down because we didn't have the time.

Do you listen to music in a way that's different to other people?

-No.

-You don't listen to music and de-construct it?

I don't know, I listen...

That's like asking, "How do you look at things?" I don't know.

A Soulwax club re-working of your track provides a kudos,

a coolness by association that artists are literally queuing up for.

Given the guys' reputation, I was dying to have a look at where and how they work.

On first impressions, it's not quite where you'd expect

two of the world's best producers to base themselves.

Oh, my gosh, this is the lab!

It's like a 1970s science fiction film.

The place is crammed full of vintage gear.

Most of it you'd be more likely to find in a skip, never mind a working studio.

One of the many tracks they remixed here was by indie rockers The Gossip.

When you break down a track like Standing In the Way Of Control by The Gossip,

how many parts do they send you?

-How many does that mean?

-30 tracks?

Yeah. Something that takes a lot of tracks is drums.

There's a kick drum, snare drum, overhead mics.

Ambient mics. There's a lot of tracks for drums,

but internally we bounce it down to two tracks.

-We have two tracks for drums.

-Do you think anybody is still following this?

The guys begin work by stripping songs back to their basic recorded elements,

and then set about reinventing the track.

So by this point, these sets are building up

to the point where they are going to replace the rest of the guitars and base.

At some point, it will just be these kind of machines.

That added with the drums would give you...

Sorry.

That's the chorus.

Yeah. Then the guitars, bass, and...

So this is the whole thing together.

What amazed me about their method of working

is that they use 30 or 40-year-old analogue gear alongside state-of-the-art digital equipment.

This mix of the old and new is crucial to how the brothers work,

providing edge to the process that gives each track a unique quality.

Those sounds would be almost impossible to replicate if they only used digital devices.

The thing with this desk also is, and I think that's one of the cool things...

Most mixing desks now are automated,

which means that any movement you do now,

it remembers it.

You do something, like you're mixing the levels and everything,

then you push a button and it will go back to where you were.

With this desk, it's old school.

It's a really, really old one.

So the slightest touch sometimes changes the whole sound.

It means that you have to be prepared.

We have to prepare ourselves because the minute we put it on there, that's it.

We can't go back to it. Like the version you had of The Gossip,

if someone asked us to redo it - make the same remix - it would take us weeks.

It's a really delicate process.

It's kind of like conducting something.

You really have to prepare it. It's nice,

cos you know once you do it, it's always going to be hard to do it a second time.

Spending time with Soulwax, what hits you is the level

of real musicianship that they bring to the remix process.

People always think about electronic dance music, electronica, as being always modern thinking.

All these big companies are coming up with the latest sound modules.

You guys, this is all retro. How old is this machine?

-Mid-'70s.

-So what does this give you?

What does this give you that a 21st-century digital sound module can't give you?

That's what makes it interesting for us. See, for example, with this.

You know how this goes...

It's not perfect.

It's kind of... The de-tuning is what makes it interesting.

I think it's also what the human ear picks up.

Something that doesn't sound right.

-OK.

-A lot of electronic music is just made with presets like a machine.

You just have 99 presets, and you just go through them.

"Yeah, that sounds right to me."

That, to us, is boring. Cos it... You're not really doing anything.

You find that you spend a lot more time going through all those presets than actually making...

If you have limited possibilities,

you make your own sounds. It's a lot more interesting.

-This is kind of sadomasochism doing this?

-Yeah.

The motto of Soulwax is, "Why do it the easy way?"

It just doesn't seem to work for us.

Venezuela is an unlikely setting for a musical revolution.

Despite having some of the largest oil reserves in the world,

60% of its population lives in poverty.

Since 1975, an ambitious scheme,

known simply as El Sistema - The System,

has been taking children from all over the country and putting instruments in their hands.

But it's not just about music. It's unashamed social engineering -

keeping kids off the streets and away from drugs and gangs.

The Simon Bolivar is an orchestra like no other.

Apart from anything else, there are 200 players - twice as many as in the average orchestra.

The musicians have all grown up together

and they now work and tour internationally.

They're at the pinnacle of the Venezuelan system,

which comprises 150 youth orchestras and 70 children's orchestras.

270,000 kids in all.

The man who started El Sistema 33 years ago

is Jose Antonio Abreu, and he's still in charge today.

Abreu began with just 11 youngsters, rehearsing in an underground car park.

Now 15,000 teachers train over a quarter of a million children.

What made you start The Sistema in 1975?

TRANSLATION: I realised one of the most efficient ways

to fight poverty was to introduce excluded children

and young people to a musical education.

Give them a way into music that they didn't have before.

And turn their families and communities into our allies.

Jhoanna Sierralta started learning the viola at the age of 13.

Now, at 23, she leads the viola section.

TRANSLATION: The goal for all young musicians in Venezuela

is to play with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra,

what used to be the National Children's Orchestra.

TRANSLATION: All the others in the orchestra with me moved to Caracas

so they could train to join the Simon Bolivar Orchestra.

Back then there were 100 of us, now there are nearly 200.

The Sistema and its musicians don't exist in isolation.

Following Abreu's original vision, music is fully integrated into the life of the country.

TRANSLATION: The Sistema doesn't just produce musicians, people to play in orchestras.

It also trains us as people,

as human beings who are going to teach younger kids,

not just how to play an instrument, but about friendship and sharing.

31 years ago there wasn't much here.

Just a few people studying music and they all wanted to work abroad.

They'd say that there was no future for musicians in Venezuela,

but when Maestro Abreu developed his vision,

he was thinking beyond music to a wider social welfare aspect.

It's not just a question of giving children an instrument or pointing them towards a music school.

We go out and try to track them down.

Try to motivate them, get them away from drugs and alcohol,

from problems with their parents or other family members.

And we tell them, "Here's an instrument for you.

"You don't have to pay for it."

Hard work can overcome anything.

All the children and young people involved in the Sistema

are proof of that.

Across Venezuela, nearly 200 music schools have been established to attract the very youngest children.

TRANSLATION: This is the Simon Bolivar Conservatory.

My mother and I came here without realising that it was part of Maestro Abreu's Sistema.

It's very close to my home. One of the best things about the Sistema

is that it's accessible for most people,

as there are schools all over Venezuela.

Lots of times I saw kids coming out with instruments.

That caught my attention and it's how I got started.

We spent about six months studying theory, rhythm and how to read music.

Then they gave us instruments and that was just totally different.

THEY PLAY A SCALE

TRANSLATION: Then suddenly it was, "Here's Tchaikovsky's Fourth."

It's one of the first pieces the orchestras work on here.

We kept saying how difficult it was, but Maestro Abreu reminded us that nothing is impossible.

The more difficult it was, the easier it had to be for us to achieve it.

We just had to work much harder.

What's good here in Venezuela is that when you learn an instrument,

you learn as part of an orchestra.

You don't spend five or six years practising at home or at music school.

ORCHESTRA REHEARSES

Two years after their international smash hit, Black Watch,

the National Theatre of Scotland are launching 365,

a show that aims to turn equally difficult subject matter

into an abstract and truly theatrical experience.

In the run-up to its opening in Edinburgh,

we went behind the scenes to their rehearsal rooms in Glasgow.

Can they turn one of society's biggest problems into the hit show of 2008?

I absolutely don't know.

I think, I think it's really challenging, this piece. I really do.

It could all go wrong. We haven't got anything to fall back on.

It may end in abject failure.

I might piss Scottish social workers off en masse.

You need to go.

You need to learn how to do these things.

365 tackles the issues faced by young people brought up in care.

'The starting point for me was something I kind of had as a pet thought or theory or something,'

which was about how we call ourselves a civilised society,

yet we allow child misery to exist everywhere.

The show is set in a practice flat, a halfway house where young care leavers

learn to live on their own for the very first time.

The practice flat is a place where there is supported accommodation or living.

Where the young people go to learn how to budget, to cook, to exist, to live, to be free.

Often they've been in homes surrounded by loads of other people.

All these ideas floating around my head shrunk into one image of a flat, and a door opening.

And somebody, who's had a really unconventional, complicated childhood,

walking into this flat, to have to learn to be an adult.

I think all of us had no idea, kind of, what care was like at all.

You kind of have this view of it, which is wrong.

I think people kind of know that kids are in care.

But nobody really knows these fine details.

This is the furthest away I have ever been for myself.

It's been quite difficult. I think I can say that for everybody, really.

We have to go to quite an awful place really.

A lot of the times, there's been tears shed.

We talked right at the start before rehearsals about restraining kids.

The idea that, when that's happened to you,

you recall it in your body as a physical experience.

It's amazing that these people are treated in that way.

That's part of their life,

being restrained, and being held down by people.

Like Black Watch, 365 is based on meticulous research,

and real experiences across the care industry.

But this time, the NTS are going one stage further in the way the show has been devised.

The script is a collaboration between award-winning playwright David Harrower,

and the improvisations of a very young cast.

I use the actors very, very closely in this.

I've brought stuff, and they've added to it.

It's been a constant to-ing and fro-ing process.

If you have an idea, you go to David and say, "I've got a great idea, can I tell you about it?"

It's always open door. So, you feel as though you're very attached to the material,

because you're creating it as much as the writer is.

For an auteur like David Harrower, this is an unusual step.

David's been writing all the way through. I don't think one scene remains that we started with.

Everything's been re-written.

One of the things we've set out to the actors is, if we get to the first preview and it's not working,

we could scrap it and start from scratch.

With three weeks to go, the team leave Glasgow for dress rehearsals and previews in Inverness.

It's the first time they'll play to a live audience. But the show still isn't finished.

I'm nervous. Really nervous.

-It's two days to go.

-And we're still getting scene changes.

That process is really hard.

Scene changes and new scripts. But it's exciting. It's good.

You might want to come in two different ways.

'A lot of things have changed. There's been eight'

new scenes written, which have replaced other scenes.

I promised the actors that I'll stop making changes after this Friday, which is five days away.

But I can't really promise that.

HE KNOCKS LOUDLY

Are you in there?

Open the door.

The thing about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

is that audiences are there because they want to go to the theatre and they're interested.

So there's definitely a sense of adventure.

Opening at the international festival is slightly different than the Fringe.

The eyes of the world are upon it. You're going into the lion's den.

-Get away from my front door!

-I'm not going anywhere.

I'm staying right here until you face me.

Katie Mitchell is one of theatre's most innovative directors,

enthusiastically using film and multimedia in her stage productions.

Ready? Action.

I'm watching rehearsals for her new National Theatre production, based on Dostoevsky's The Idiot.

It's all filmed and projected live on to a screen above the stage.

While actors appear silently on the screen, others provide voiceover and sound effects,

and even operate the cameras.

As a film critic, I've always been very sceptical about artists from other media

attempting to transpose film into their work.

It's a very dangerous area, and, put simply,

the chances of getting it badly wrong are much greater than the possibilities of getting it right.

But Mitchell claims this method of live filming is the only way

to try and simplify the difficult source novel.

Explain for me in terms of, it's a theatre production,

how you used the cinematic imagery with the theatre production.

We started using video like this when we did Virginia Woolf's The Waves,

and we were trying to find a form, actually, which could communicate a novel,

which was entirely made up of internal monologues, which are just thoughts inside people's heads.

So we realised we couldn't do that as spoken word, we'd have to use some other tool.

So we looked at video close-ups, and then voiceovers.

And, from that, we evolved a way of shooting,

and combining that shooting with live performance.

It would be almost impossible to adapt The Idiot on stage,

and capture huge swathes of the internal dynamics in someone's head,

like Myshkin, the protagonist, absolutely impossible.

In moments of great joy,

he always felt sad, and did not know why.

The thing that's most impressive in just the scene that I've seen being rehearsed,

is how beautifully choreographed the projected image is.

I quite like the ugliness of the chaos of the construction, and the exquisiteness of the shot.

And we aim to set the bar very very high on the shots, to make them be as lit,

as beautiful as they possibly can be.

And the problem is, or the beauty perhaps is, there will always be errors,

because it's entirely live.

As soon as the audience cotton on to the fact that every element is live, you can see the audience suddenly go,

"Whoosh," because they go, "This is not pre-recorded output, it's live.

"And there could be an error at any moment."

And there's a great delight in participating in that, I think, as an audience member.

The film elements aren't add-ons here, but are integral to the performance,

so I feel a whole lot more comfortable with them.

But Mitchell's style hasn't always won her fans.

Critics have accused her of an arrogant, auteurish approach.

One theatre-goer posted a programme of her production of Chekhov's The Seagull back to her

with one word scrawled on it, "Rubbish."

One of the criticisms of your work is, "She'll take a text, then throw it out the window

"and make her own version of it."

You have come in for a certain amount of flak with people saying, "It's her vision."

Hm. Yes.

In my head, I'm not looking at a play like The Seagull

and smashing it to smithereens in a careless fashion.

Actually, I'm studying it really carefully.

So, for me, it's very delicate to make a very old play,

from a much earlier time, live very clearly and brilliantly now.

Do you like to think of yourself as an auteur? I would take that as a compliment.

I don't like so much to be called an auteur.

It doesn't sit very comfortably on me.

I'm just trying to do things as clearly as I possibly can.

In a way, every director makes a huge range of interpretational decisions,

the costuming, the casting, the translation of a text, the design of it.

And it's just different degrees of intensity of interpretation.

So I suppose in mine, it's just a little extremely interpreted.

But it's almost as if there's me extremely interpreting it,

and everyone else doing a very discreet, beautiful, true to the text thing. But that's not the case.

They're all interpreting it, but they're interpreting it in a different direction.

I'd like to reclaim that term as a term of praise,

not a term of abuse. When people call you an auteur,

-you should say, "I am. And I'm very proud of it."

-I'll try it out then.

-OK.

It's the recipe for the blockbuster musical that no-one's been able to match.

Take a deformed ghost,

a virginal beauty,

her rather drippy suitor,

and a collapsing chandelier.

Add lashings of lush romantic music, and there you have it,

the most successful stage show in history.

Transforming the show into a lavish West End musical fell to the late Maria Bjornson.

But, the opera designer had never worked in mainstream theatre before.

This I'd quite like to be a shiny black,

-that's actually quite reflective, and to mix velvet with a shine.

-Sure.

Maria was a crazy genius really.

She was tough to work for,

she was always tearing her hair out

about some terrible detail that wasn't going right.

But you put up with it all, because you knew the final product was going to be amazing.

The crazy genius and her assistant were facing one of the biggest challenges of their careers.

Their task was to recreate the Phantom's original home, the majestic Paris Opera House.

Maria and I came here in late November '85, and there was a sprinkling of snow outside.

And we came here, really, to get the spirit of the building.

We took hundreds of photographs, and went all the way down to the basement and up to the roof.

We spent a lot of time here on the staircase because, obviously, it's a prominent feature of the show,

and really to find out how we could adapt the details to be part of a theatrical presentation.

A key feature of the show was to be a massive chandelier,

which would crash down over the heads of the audience.

We looked at this amazing chandelier and thought,

"How are we going to get anything like this in a small London theatre, and make it work?"

But, by looking at the design - and it's made in hoops, which makes it collapsible,

which was a godsend to us, we were able to take those elements, and made a simplified design.

On 30th September, previews began.

The public's first opportunity to see the show before its official opening.

All eyes were on the other star attraction - the massive chandelier, which had taken weeks to build.

Not surprisingly, the local council wasn't that keen to let it fall over the heads of the audience.

I was always nervous because you thought,

"Well, if they end up saying no, you haven't got a show."

It really wasn't until the first preview,

which the authorities allowed us to do,

and they saw the show...

and we all sat beneath it as it came down.

And they went, "Oh no, fine. It's all OK. The show's great. Do it."

We were terrified that this chandelier

was going to fall into the pit.

This occupied my thoughts completely.

We were told it could not come in the pit.

Categorically, it couldn't come into the pit.

-From where you were sitting, could you see it fall?

-I could see it.

I could see Mike Reed conducting.

The person who was most terrified was the conductor.

When it came down, he'd conduct like this.

I remember I used to have to duck because it used to come right over my head.

And the first time it happened, I thought,

"Oh, shit. This is going to... This is... This is a bit close."

And it always missed but, you know, just.

The internet has made sketch comedy more democratic.

Anyone who thinks they're funny can upload content.

I love the fact that you no longer need a broadcaster to make your sketches.

A case in point is my childhood comedy hero, Richard Herring.

He records his own material and then podcasts his show, all out of his own pocket.

I've set myself the ridiculous task of writing around 45 minutes of brand-new material every week

for ten weeks, on my own, with no team of writers like all the other proper comedians.

How did the idea come about for running your podcast live?

I'd been doing a Radio 2 show that was about history,

and then I said to them,

"Can I do one about what's happened to me this week

and what's going on in the world, but from my perspective?"

It didn't happen and then I just kind of thought, "Why don't I just do it myself?"

It just felt quite exciting to be able to do a show where anything could happen,

and I didn't have to worry about upsetting people because people choose to download it.

That's another good thing about the internet.

If you're on TV or radio, you're being broadcast into people's homes, and you have a responsibility.

-On the internet, they choose to listen.

-And they can stop quite easily.

They can stop and they don't have to listen.

So I had the freedom to think, "I'll do something that I know people who like me will like,

"maybe it'll get more people to like me, maybe it won't, but let's see how it goes."

That suits stand-ups as well because when you're a stand-up, you write your own shows, you're the boss.

I think, for me, TV comedy, not exclusively,

but the people who are deciding what goes on TV and radio generally don't know as much about comedy as I do,

and are putting shows together, like, "I like him, and him, and him.

"Let's put them together and do the same sketch every week."

So it's that freedom to go, "Look, I've got an idea. It IS good enough that people will like it."

And if people like it, the potential for a cult audience is huge,

as Will Ferrell proved when he posted a sketch about his landlord.

Hi, Pearl.

You don't have to raise your voice.

I can give you half.

The sketches received over 65 million hits,

and led to the creation of the website Funny Or Die.

The site thrives on its audience critiquing the sketches.

Viewers are asked to rate the sketch as funny, or whether it should just be killed off.

A year ago, a British version of Funny Or Die was set up.

I caught up with its creative director, James Serafinowicz, as he filmed one of his sketches.

How do you think the internet has changed the way people make comedy?

It's slowly starting to make people be more open

to ideas of making other stuff.

Like, in the past, I think,

everyone would kind of squirrel their ideas and protect them,

and if you had, like, you know, an idea for a sitcom or whatever,

then you'd make sure that no-one in the world would ever find out what it is,

just in case that was your ticket to fame and fortune.

It's easier to do, because...

You can see what we are filming today, it's just, you know,

you've turned up, we're going to do it, and in an hour we'll be finished.

So it might be easy to make, but, if you're starting out, how do you know that your sketches are even funny?

Hello, welcome to Popcorn Comedy.

Thank you for coming along.

Popcorn Comedy is a night that's run like a gig,

where the best in new internet sketch talent is showcased in front of an audience.

Hi, darling. I'm John Cornish, your husband of 25 years.

And I'd like to welcome you to this DVD.

The night was set up a few months ago by two comics.

I think, for the film-makers, they get a chance to see

their films in front of an audience,

and understand where the laughs come, and the reaction.

And that really helps you in the future, so that you know what works. You kind of understand it.

What do you feel the advantages are of making films online as opposed to trying to get things made on TV?

It's quite liberating, cos you don't have to worry about...

In TV, the further up you seem to go in TV,

the more people there are to sort of tell you where you have to change your script,

or just all chipping in there like the proverb, too many cooks thing.

But with the internet, you kind of, you know, you can just do what you want.

What advice would you give to people thinking about making their own sketches?

Make it, put it up. If you've got an idea, put it out.

And also, don't be precious about ideas because, you know, maybe it isn't funny.

But you've got to kind of get through the layers of rubbish before you strike gold.

You can always delete it. If it's not funny, just delete it.

So if anyone can make their own sketches and put them online,

where does a traditional broadcaster now fit in?

People can certainly be successful without a broadcaster,

of course they can. And that's great, but...

So I think it's more for the broadcaster to work out how they fit into the equation.

There is a whole audience out there who are...

They're consuming more media, so television is still being watched.

But they're also consuming it online, and it's part of their media mix.

And if we're not part of that, then we miss out a whole part of people's time and their interests.

And I think there's a danger of becoming less relevant.

Hello, sir, welcome to the hotel.

We do hope you enjoy your stay.

Mark Watson's latest project, The Hotel, is possibly the boldest show at this year's Fringe.

Billed as installation art meets promenade theatre meets comedy,

it's been a three-month labour of love for Watson and production company, The Invisible Dot.

A cast and crew of 75, all working for free, have transformed an empty building on Queen St into a hotel,

cramming its five floors with an incredible amount of detail.

I've done some weird things in Edinburgh, but this

is the most difficult to explain.

It's not really a play,

it's not really a... arguably, it's not even really a show.

What's basically happening is the audience is going to come in and be taken round the rooms.

Second floor, one above that. Enjoy the show.

They'll be sort of funnelled through the hotel by officious staff,

who will be getting in the way and ordering them around.

People will come in groups or couples and, even then, they will sometimes be sort of forcibly separated.

Hello, madam. Come this way, please.

The restaurant's full at the moment. This way.

I'm as suspicious of audience participation as anyone.

I hate the idea of being coerced into doing stuff, but, because of the setting,

I don't think people will feel they're made to do something unpleasant.

Some things that you go to, like this where it's more of a museum,

or installation piece, and it's quite static, you can look around and think, "I've seen this now."

I think here, people will always feel like there's more to see, you know.

Work began on the site back in July,

when a small army of volunteers arrived to scavenge for props, and start building the set.

I think of it in two stages, really.

Stage one is build the thing,

and stage two is to fill it with comedians.

And then Mark Watson's arriving in Edinburgh about 2nd August.

So me and Mark will work with all the comedians, and work up their scripts and things like this.

So it will be by the seat of our pants. We're making it up as we go along.

We got 20 volunteers. They're not getting paid, I'm not getting paid, Mark's not getting paid.

All the money goes on building the show.

Even best-case scenario, you can't make any money.

So I don't really know what I'm doing here.

Started recruiting people on no more sort of substantial basis than just saying,

"We're doing something in a hotel. It will be a show. Do you fancy it?"

And, Edinburgh being what it is, incredibly, a lot of people did come forward from that.

The cast were brought in just one day before the show opened.

They were given some notes by Mark, and then left to improvise.

I think you're all about sort of making these empty statements.

So, in a way, you ran that very fast.

In another way, you didn't run that very fast,

and, in another way, it wasn't you running. Things like that.

And the track wasn't even there.

I think one of the things about...

-There's an envelope in this room. We need to push that.

-Exactly, yeah.

My guy is Vivian Fleet, who is a wellness tsar.

I think it's going to involve some degree of spandex.

Wellness is all around us.

-Yes, I can see that, but is it really?

-It's on the windows.

-OK.

-This woman here...

-is not well.

-She thought she was well, she isn't.

-OK.

What proportion of the guests would you say, are, "well," as you put it?

No-one, apart from myself. Holly is getting there, my assistant.

So not a single person is actually...

No. We've just done a wellness exercise, and it was done extremely poorly by the people in here.

Couldn't even shut their eyes.

There is no precedence, there's no expectations.

There are no rules, so some people will, I think,

be really wowed by it, as they say,

and will really go away feeling like this absolutely unique experience.

But quite feasibly, other people will think, "That was stupid, a stupid thing to do."

And I'm... I think we're all quite happy with that, basically.

Please come again soon.

I've always believed in, with my shows, that in the main,

that it's great to try and sort of bring forward the boundaries of the musical.

At the moment I think the interest in India is at an all-time high.

So, if you ever had to do something like this, this is the right time to do it.

This is going to be a big dance show.

They just move, and they don't stop moving all the way through.

The shows that I've worked on successfully

is when the team gels, and there's no overriding egos.

I mean, we all have our egos, but it's when the egos actually combine and move forward as one.

And it's a very, making musicals is a very, very difficult thing,

because the number of people there with their egos, with their creative ideas...

You have the choreographer, the director, the designer, the costume designer,

the lighting designer, let alone the authors, the composer and writer.

Steven Pimlott and Anthony Van Laast are here to visit Bombay,

to research Bollywood dance routines with Farah Khan,

which their British Asian cast will need to master.

-It's quite exciting seeing it all for the first time.

-It is very exciting.

-It's going to be great today, working with the Indian dancers.

-Yeah.

It's going to be very interesting.

It's the first day of my collaboration, really.

-Yes, it is.

-And how it's going to...

How it's going to work.

-Hi, everybody. This is Anthony.

-Hi, hi, hi.

-This is Gita.

-Gita, nice to meet you. And this is Nicola.

-Hi, Gita.

-Finally.

-And this is Steven Pimlott here, the director.

-Nice to meet you, hi.

Farah Khan choreographed the famous train sequence in the film Dil Se,

which was composed by AR Rahman, and is to feature in Bombay Dreams.

What's so good about watching them now is they have a style

that none of the dancers in England have,

and I think it's really important that I look at this style with you.

Just the way the men move too, it's just very different to the way that our men move.

-Many are better than the girls are.

-It's fantastic.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

-Do that again.

-It's just, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6..."

-So a double here?

But you don't move. It's just there.

-Don't move your legs too much.

-You know what? You need more hips!

And I need to lose mine. You can take mine!

Watching Nicola move now, you can see that she's actually got a much harder edge to it,

whereas when you watch Geeta working,

it's much softer but the weight is right down, the weight is sunk,

maybe because from classical Indian dancing, where the weight is much more sunk down,

maybe that's coming through, maybe in the culture, the way that people move here anyway,

the weight's much further down than we normally work.

You've got to go up and down.

'What happens in this song is that the language kind of dictates

'the kind of movements you would do, especially if they are love songs.

'If it's just a dance number and they're singing,'

it doesn't matter what the words mean, but if it's a love song,

I definitely make sure that what they're saying collaborates with what they're doing,

you know, because with English lyrics, that could look a little ridiculous.

But I think I'll face that problem when I hear the songs.

He's a slum boy who wants to be in films, so he should be doing everything as if he's...

-Almost like he's the star.

-And then the girls can join in behind him.

We'll have a cart he can climb on, and have someone push it.

Exactly. So we'll do a little kind of backing dancing.

Yes, almost like a backing.

We're going to have these really slummy girls, but almost like back-up singers.

You know, if he's got a pipe in his hand and he's using it like a mic.

And these girls behind going...

Would they do all this?

-Would they do this?

-Yeah, yeah.

-Lovely.

-In the Bollywood pictures, you had 40, 50, 60 people doing the same step over and over again.

In the West End, on a stage, that would be interesting for about 15 or 20 seconds.

So what I have to do is somehow...

That would be the climax of the number.

There's an old expression in choreography that unison, which means everyone dancing together,

is the most powerful weapon, but only powerful when used in a very small amount.

So if you had everybody dancing together for three minutes,

it would be like hearing someone screaming for three minutes - boring.

And then also, within the Bollywood steps,

there are steps which will work and steps which won't work on a West End stage.

So I have to edit those steps as well to make them work.

What I've got to do is sculpt them and change them. "Face that way, move that way."

'They don't do a lot of moving around. It's all done in blocks.

'I've got to move it around, shape it around, and then find a way of orchestrating it to make it work.

'It's going to be quite a challenge.'

We're the Ballet Boyz.

We were leading dancers with the Royal Ballet for 12 years,

where the Rite of Spring was one of our favourite ballets.

It's a production that changed the rules of music and dance forever.

It tells the story of an ancient tribe, whose pagan ritual climaxes in the sacrifice of a virgin.

Before that opening night in Paris, ballet looked like this.

Afterwards, it could be raw, primitive, even ugly.

The audience was so outraged that fighting broke out.

A century on, we've set ourselves a challenge.

Using extracts from the original score, we're re-making the Rite of Spring.

We're starting with the pounding rhythms of the adolescents' dance.

This scene introduces us to the younger members of the tribe.

It sounds to us like a battle, teenagers showing off, trying to outdo each other.

We think the best way to interpret this music is with break dancing.

So this is some sort of warm-up. I mean, if you were a ballet dancer,

you'd be standing at a bar now, bending your knees.

-But it looks a bit like a battle. I mean, that's kind of...

-Yeah, apparently this is how it starts.

-He's good.

-Yeah. I think we're going to take this whole team. This is their A-team.

So this is the music. I'm not sure if anyone's going to be able to dance to it.

This could be where the plan just falls apart right now.

MUSIC: "The Augurs Of Spring" by Stravinsky

-Stravinsky, right?

-Yeah.

So this is what we see as sort of a battle theme.

There'd be, like, six guys on each side.

The time signatures and the tempo's a bit different than what they're used to, but...

-It's slightly less random.

-Are you going to leave us with that, so we can get used to it?

-Yeah.

-Then that's easy.

-Yeah?

-Yeah.

-All right, I'll see you in a month's time, then.

That's cracked it.

Almost rushing at each other.

Most of these dancers will never have heard this music before,

let alone danced to it.

But we're confident that Kevin understands what we're after.

What are you working out here?

Because I think the idea is that there's two tribes,

and they come together as one,

so I'm trying to get a bit near the end where they kind of meet and become brothers.

1, 2, 3, 4, good.

-So they're going to come out, mince and then 1, 2, 3, 4, and everybody's together.

-Can you show me a mince?

Mince, this is a mince.

That's a mince. Haha!

Let's go from the top.

Unlike the music they're used to, the beat in this score follows no regular pattern,

so Kevin decides just to listen out for the musical highlights.

Wait, wait.

I want you to be out by there.

So, listen to the music. You're most probably going to be first.

-No. I cant hear that music, bro. Choose someone else.

-Why?

-I can't hear it, bro.

-You can, man!

You have to listen to it over and over.

2, 3, 4, 5,

6, 7, 8,

9, 10, 11, 12....

It's the music, it's quite challenging for us.

When you really bang it out, and you catch the beats and the accents,

it's nice. Yeah, it's good.

First time you've danced to classical music?

Not the first time I've listened to it, but the first time I've danced to it, yeah, for sure.

Definitely. But it's an experience and I'm really enjoying myself. This is fun.

Imagine, the son of a Cuban truck driver,

a champion break dancer, who dreams of becoming a footballer,

but who's sent to ballet school by his father,

to keep him off the streets and out of trouble.

That's the story of Carlos Acosta, principal dancer of the Royal Ballet.

This really is a tale of contrasts, the inspirational story of a brilliantly-gifted dancer,

who makes the leap from the back streets of Havana to the forefront of classical ballet.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

I didn't know what ballet was in the first place.

I didn't know what that was. I just saw these people moving around, you know, the girls, and all this.

I said, "Ah, forget it," you know?

"I am athletic, I play sport, I'm not going to do that!"

And look at me, a ballet dancer now, proud of it!

'I mean, who would have thought that I would have been here, now,

'in the Royal Opera House, rehearsing La Bayadere with Darcey Bussell?'

OK, thanks. You know what I think about this here,

you start taking her arm too soon,

and we see you taking it.

I'll show you.

No, you should wait,

-and then take a step.

-Ah, OK.

-Because we can see this hand being taken.

-All right.

-So go all the way.

-OK.

Like that, like that.

-TANNOY:

-'Chris Porter, contact the stage door, Chris Porter.'

We don't seem to have any time off.

'No, we don't. This is our life. This is what we do. We're living. It's a lifestyle.

'Wake up, come here, get your corrections to improve it to the next day,

'then go to costume fittings, and then fix your make-up,

'and then some more corrections and go there, rehearse, class,

'massage, then go home, eat, rest, and then the next day, the same.'

Tomorrow morning, we have a general rehearsal also,

and this ballet's a long ballet, very hard.

And then I need to wake up and do another ballet, lots of jumps...

And then on Sunday, it's the recording.

Then Monday, another general rehearsal.

And then Wednesday, the show.

I'm like this.

I hate it when you don't think. You know, you take one thing at a time.

The eyes position, please. Nice.

Accurately, please. Rhythmically, please, rhythmically.

Hands in the position. Fingers and hands. Thighs again.

-TANNOY:

-'David, Natalie from the press office. Janine, please go to Carlos Acosta's dressing room.'

'Janine to Carlos Acosta's dressing room, please.'

'Ballet's very difficult because it's very unnatural, because the body, the human body's not made for that.

'You have, constantly, injuries.

'Pain is part of our lives.

'It's just very hard, it's very unnatural.

'Right now, I'm having a problem with my knees. And my ankles, I suffer over my ankles.

'I have had four surgeries on my right ankle.

'I use my body so much, I jump very high.

'Of course, you have to pay a price.

'It is difficult to keep the level.

'That's what the people sometimes don't understand, because you are as good as your last show.

'They don't care.

'They don't care if you are in pain, they don't care. They just pay to see you at your best.

'And the day that you don't provide that, then they're going to say,

"Oh, he's not the same."

'And that's how it is.'

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