Turning

Originally staged at New York’s Whitney Biennial exhibition, TURNING is a stunning collaboration between Antony & The Johnsons and Charles Atlas, an American conceptual video artist who specialises in live “interpretations” of theatre, dance and performance events. The evening's premise is a simple one. As Antony Hegarty and his band perform, a parade of striking New York women take it in turns to mount a small revolving platform to the side of the stage. Atlas films them and beams the results – blurred and interwoven with external images – on to a giant screen behind the musicians.

The concept sounds risibly pretentious but is breathtakingly effective. Hegarty’s gentle music invariably obsesses on themes of alienation, gender and sexual identity, and his melodramatic contralto, quavering and seemingly insatiable, chimes magnificently with Atlas’s stark visual reinventions of his handpicked “13 New York beauties”.

In the presence of Charles Atlas.