Arena — Season 1, Episode 199: The Catherine Wheel
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Tonight Arena presents one of the most ambitious dance projects ever seen on television. The Catherine Wheel combines the talents of Twyla Tharp , one of America's most imaginative choreographers, and David Byrne , leader of the rock band TALKING HEADS, who composed and performed this original music score. The starting point of the dance is the image of a Catherine wheel and the unattainable ideal of physical and moral perfection which St Catherine herself aspired to. Energy, benign and malevolent, is the central theme of the work, which builds to a spectacular climax of virtuoso dancing in the final Golden Section. When premiered on Broadway the New Yorker referred to The Catherine Wheel as a 'major event in our theatre' with dancing of ' astonishing beauty and power'.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.