For its 25th anniversary, the company shows off both its ‘technical ability’ and the dancers’ ‘impressive dramatic powers’

Ballet Black was founded in 2001 to provide dancers of Black and Asian descent with opportunities in classical ballet. Since then, the London-based company has more than fulfilled that ambition, said Sarah Crompton in The Observer – not least by commissioning some 70 new works. That is an “astonishing” feat, by a company that punches far “above its weight”.

Now, to mark its 25th anniversary, it has revived its Olivier-winning 2019 hit “Ingoma”, by the South African choreographer Mthuthuzeli November, a company alumnus, and paired it with “…all towards hope”, by the American choreographer Hope Boykin. “Ingoma”, about a strike in South Africa in 2012, when 34 miners were killed by police, is an intense and sophisticated work that “effectively conveys the suffering that is a part of resilience”. Boykin’s piece, an ode to togetherness, is “glorious” at times, but “ struggles to sustain momentum”.

Boykin’s work opens this “crackingly good” double bill, said Sanjoy Roy in The Guardian. An abstract piece, with a jazzy score by Bill Laurance, it speaks (“often literally”, as Boykin reads her text) “of idealism, warmth, openness and community”, and I found it “entirely disarming”. With “an eloquence all its own”, the choreography blends neoclassical, contemporary and jazz dance to create “lovely skeins of motion: lines that ripple out and reform, sudden sprints that pull others into their tailwind, easy walks and heart-lifting sways that the dancers unaffectedly share with each other”. It’s celebratory, and very affecting.

“If Boykin’s piece shows off the company’s technical ability – and it does, to a great degree – November’s showcases the dancers’ impressive dramatic powers,” said Teresa Guerreiro in The Times. The miners arrive on a crepuscular stage in boots and headlamps, their ensemble dances – “rhythmic stomping to driving percussion punctuated by voice calls” – taken directly from African tribal dances; but we also feel the impact on their families. The piece starts with a passionate duet, in which the wife of a miner (Isabela Coracy) clings to her husband (Ebony Thomas) as if for the last time. “It’s an emotional, heartfelt work.”

Lowry Theatre, Salford, from 14 April, then touring to 9 July

by James Macintyre 

In 1971, at a party at the home of Francis Ford Coppola, his “friend and protégé” George Lucas wandered upstairs, hoping to catch a few minutes of a new TV movie, said Graham Daseler in Literary Review. It was “Duel” by Steven Spielberg – then a “gawky 24-year-old” whom Lucas had met a few times. Riveted, he watched till the end, at one point rushing downstairs to tell his indifferent host: “This guy’s really good.”

Paul Fischer’s “superb” book tells the story of how, over the next decade, these three directors – Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg – went from “obscurity to cinematic immortality” and “remade the movie industry” in the process, while also becoming close friends.

Coppola was the first to achieve stardom when “The Godfather” (1972) raked in $250 million (£185 million), making it the highest-grossing movie of all time. Three years later, Spielberg “took the title” with “Jaws”, which “earned a cool $458 million [£342 million]”. And then in 1977, Lucas topped both with “Star Wars” – a film so successful that “even on slow days”, it banked upwards of $1.2 million (£895,ooo).

“The most richly ironic aspect” of Fischer’s book is that these massive hits were all expected to flop, said Ty Burr in The Wall Street Journal. A “profound disconnect” then existed between what “old-guard Hollywood thought audiences wanted” and what they actually did.

Forced to make things “up as they went along”, the trio behaved badly at times: “friendships were betrayed, bankruptcies filed, and the women in their world – be they collaborators or partners – got the short end of the stick from the boys’ club”.

This isn’t exactly a new story, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. But Fischer presents it “with the enthusiasm and commitment of a true fan” – and the result is a “really readable, closely researched account of life at Hollywood’s top table”.

Songwriter whose career was revived by Elton John

A prolific songwriter with a gift for melody, finely tuned commercial instincts and a great relish for the spotlight, Neil Sedaka co-wrote and sang some of the “definitive teenage anthems” of the late 1950s and early 1960s, said The New York Times. Among other hits, he was responsible for “Stupid Cupid” (a UK chart-topper for Connie Francis), “Calendar Girl” and “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”. The “British invasion”, and its harder rock ’n’ roll sound, cast him into relative oblivion in the mid-1960s, but he bounced back a decade later, thanks largely to Elton John – whose career had followed a similar trajectory to his own.

Neil Sedaka was born in 1939 into a Jewish family in Brooklyn. His father, a taxi driver, was of Lebanese descent. His mother, Eleanor, was of Polish and Russian ancestry. While pregnant with him, she’d tried to induce a miscarriage by taking repeated roller-coaster rides; later, she dedicated her life to him – but also controlled him, said The Guardian. Advised by a second-grade teacher that Neil should have piano lessons, she took a second job to pay for a piano, then made sure he practised for five hours each day. When he started earning, she appointed herself as his manager, banked his paycheques and gave him an allowance. When he married his wife, Leba, in 1962, she told the newlyweds where to go on their honeymoon. In about 1964, he discovered that she and her lover had spent most of his money on high living, but he seems to have quite quickly forgiven her. He was, he said, a “mama’s boy”.

Aged nine, Sedaka won a piano scholarship to the prep school for the Juilliard. He also studied at Juilliard itself, but by the age of 16, he had started writing pop songs with a neighbour, Howard Greenfield, his musical partner for the next 20 years. At a time when many songwriters knew only four chords, Sedaka stood out – and before long the pair had been set up in a cubicle at Aldon Music on Broadway, opposite the Brill Building, where numerous music publishers and studios were based. “Stupid Cupid” was their first hit. Sedaka then got his breakthrough as a performer with “The Diary”. Later hits included “Oh! Carol”, about Carole King, whom he had dated at high school when she was still Carol Klein; she responded with a song called “Oh, Neil!”

”Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” gave him his first US No. 1 as a singer, in 1962, and established him as a teen idol. Then The Beatles arrived in 1964 – and Sedaka’s recording career ended, almost overnight. He continued to write for other artists, but had no further hits in his own name until the early 1970s, when he went to England and, with four future members of 10cc, recorded the album “Solitaire”. It marked the start of his comeback. In 1974, he signed to John’s Rocket Records, and within months he had topped the US charts with “Laughter in the Rain” and “Bad Blood”. In 1975, Captain & Tennille had their first big hit with his song “Love Will Keep Us Together”. As it closes, said The Times, Toni Tennille can be heard ad-libbing “Sedaka is back”. His popularity waned in the 1980s, but he continued to play to large crowds, and in 2005 Tony Christie’s version of his song “(Is This the Way to) Amarillo” made an unexpected reappearance in the UK charts, after Peter Kay filmed a spoof video of it for “Comic Relief”. Sedaka was married to Leba – his manager for many years – for more than six decades. She survives him, with their two children.