Front Row Folgen

Samira talks to Nigerian American performer, choreographer and writer Okwui Okpokwasili about the UK premiere of Bronx Gothic at London’s Young Vic. How does the piece delve into one woman’s attempt to shake loose memory in a performance at the intersection of dance, theatre and visual installation.Musical acts always used to be the headliners and sole draw for music festivals. Recently we have seen the rise of alternative stages at these events – often including literary events. But what make them different to what you might find at mainstream literature festivals? We speak to Laura Barton who programmes Green Man’s literary space and Colin Midson, the main programmer for Port Eliot Festival’s literary stage. Thirty years ago today the name Tiananmen, which means the Gate of Heavenly Peace, assumed a tragic irony when the (also ironically named) People’s Liberation Army, massacred the crowd of young people peacefully calling for democracy in the Square. We'll look at the role of writers and musicians in creating a milieu in which that demonstration became possible. The actor and writer Daniel York Loh considers how cultural life in China has changed in the intervening 3 decadesAfter 18 years, Apple has announced the end of iTunes. What does the move from downloading to streaming mean to those of us who have been building our iTunes libraries for years and for how people will access music in the future?Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Oliver Jones

Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music

Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat Pray Love has sold fifteen million copies around the world and was made into a film with Julia Roberts. Her new novel is City of Girls, the story of a young woman discovering an exhilarating life in a theatre in New York in the summer of 1940. She talks about why she was unafraid of writing about a young woman’s sexual desire and about the dramatic and difficult events in her personal life that shaped the writing of the book.“The biggest thing since the Beatles” has become something of a pop cliché, but in the case of the south Korean boy band BTS it might be justified. This year they became the first group since The Beatles to earn three US Billboard number one albums in less than 12 months and this weekend they’re playing in London. Haekyung Um explains the BTS and K pop phenomenon.Natalia Goncharova was a Russian avant-garde artist known for her large scale abstract canvases, performance art and textile and theatre design. Ahead of a retrospective of her work at Tate Modern, the show’s curator Natalia Sidlina discusses her unique style and significance today.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Sarah Johnson