Rarely performed outside Japan, Kabuki theatre is a multidisciplinary art form, merging dance, acting and singing with music. At times beautiful, others disturbing, it has inspired many other art forms in Japan and beyond. The skills of the Kabuki performer are passed down through families, taught practically from birth -- with the names of great performers also being passed on through generations. A skilful Kabuki performer can transform themselves into a young girl through body movement alone. One such performer is Ebizo Ichikawa XI, the 28-year-old "Brad Pitt of Kabuki", in Fuji Musume (the Wisteria Maiden). He also will be joined by Kamejiro Ichikawa II to perform the dark and disturbing Kasane, famed for its music by Kiyomoto Saibei. Altogether a multi-sensory experience, with incredible movement, unusual vocal sounds, lavish costumes and traditional Japanese music, it may be a while before genuine Kabuki like this is seen in this country again.

NB: runs till 11/06.

Hackney Empire is putting on another interesting event at this great, unfussy warehouse theatre space, which, as rumour has it, is set for demolition. A shame, but it's worth a mention; any rumour can be a contributing factor with this covert operation. We have already started noticing the occasional flash of a red stiletto, scarf or vanity case around key locations in the centre of town. Chic women, dressed identically, followed in haste by at least one photographer. This time last year a large group of "red ladies" piled out of an unmarked limousine onto Trafalgar Square; within moments flyers circulated -- "these women are dangerous" -- and a while later a helicopter soared overhead with a "leader" shouting commands at them through a megaphone. The Bullion Room event promises to be a "revelation of their true identities" and a laying bare of their manifesto. Is the theatre's subsequent demolition part of the plan? Like, "read and destroy"? By far the most infectious of their projects to date, The Clod Ensemble have amassed no less than 22 of London's finest female performance artists for an epic and spectacular study of crowd phenomena.

NB: runs till 10/06.

Doudou Cissoko specialises in the kora, a 21-string African harp. Taking this mystic, ancient sound and fusing it with contemporary movements has resulted in some pretty impressive statements. But for us here at KultureFlash HQ, we reckon the real thrills will come from DJ /rupture's band Nettle. DJ /rupture himself has achieved near legendary status in a very short space of time. His initial mixes Minesweeper Suite and Gold Teeth Thief for the Tigerbeat6 label are near-essential deconstructions of the term world music, mixing as they do everything from hip-hop / blues / noise / techno / dub and all musical points in-between to create a breathtaking whole. Tonight he'll be joined by Abdel Hak on violin and banjo and Jen Jones on cello. Eastern music taken to edgier extremes.

When Warp announced they'd started a hip-hop label, Lex Records, back in 2001 the move took most people by surprise; when that same hip-hop label (amicably) divorced itself from Warp in 2005 there was less shock. In the four years since its birth, Tom Brown (head of Lex) has created a label that is one of the most exciting and consistent out there, from their sumptuous packaging and design to the roster of internationally acclaimed artists that includes the likes of Danger Mouse, MF Doom and Ghostface Killah. This week's showcase, featuring two of the label's US acts, Fog and Subtle, goes to show why just as Lex is no longer a Warp subsidiary, it is also no longer just a hip-hop label. Subtle, who are promoting their new album / DVD Wishingbone, are a six piece hip-hop, post rock, electronica band, who include Doseone (from cLOUDEAD) and Jel (from Themselves), whilst Fog is one Andrew Broder whose live show consists of found sounds, hums, clicks and scratches being sampled live, looped and accompanied with piano, guitar and his own vocals. Both acts draw inspiration from the hip-hop scene but neither have been constrained by the genre's often self-imposed limitations and as a result produce and perform startlingly original music.

Do we all have ADD, we ask you? A night out just won't wash unless there's an impressive melange of films, live music, dressing up, dancing girls (naked preferably), circus acts and booze (and by god there better be lots of it). Cacophony maybe, a great mid-week shake up definitely. One of the finest in the chocolate box selection of entertainment extravaganzas currently titillating the capital is the Future Shorts festival, which launches on June 1st in the cavernous labyrinth of the seOne club, before hawking its trade round the country. This year it's a gothic orgy of a spectacle, with the coup de cinema being a screening of Nosferatu accompanied by live music from Darryn Harkness. The Transylvanian makeover of the club sounds like the bastard brain child of Bram Stoker and Dita Von Teese, as screenings of edgy short films compete for punters' attentions with the nipple-tassled, titty-swinging exploits of burlesque artists (is any night complete without them…?). On the off chance your sense aren't kicked into overdrive by all this, there's an impressive array of DJs and VJs and live sets from various scions of left-of-field rock bands including the Soho Dolls.

Onedotzero is becoming a KultureFlash classic. As the festival turns 10 this year, it's gone from an underground event at the ICA to one of the world's most groundbreaking get-togethers of visual talent, a DVD label, production company and live visual creator for U2 and Little Britain. Previous years have seen modern masters amongst the screenings and masterclasses by the likes of Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Jonathan Glazer.

Once again this year we have chosen some of the best of the festival's events to highlight:

Innervisions: Over_Play
Fri 02/06 (7pm)
A look into gaming and visual culture with experts including Blast Theory's Matt Adams, Greyworld's Andrew Shoben and interactive artist Andy Polaine.

Features: Ski Jumping Pairs
Fri 02/06 (8:30pm), Wed 07/06 (6:30pm) and Sun 11/06 (5pm)
Mashima Riichiro's spoof documentary Ski Jumping Pairs: Road To Torino investigates the newly accredited Olympic sport Tandem Ski Jumping! Sounds dangerous, makes very funny feature!

Innervisions: The City In Flux + Four Points Of Coincidence
Sat 03/06 (2pm - 5pm)
Onedotzero live narrative audiovisual commission Four Points of Coincidence from acclaimed director Kieran Evans (co-director of Finisterre) and Argentinian producer Gustavo Lamas, the next stage in onedotzero's on-going exploration of modern city life. Joining them will be KutlureFlash's Scanner and the Daily Telegraph's film editor Sukhdev Sandhu.

Live Event: Undercover Surrealism @ The Hayward Gallery
Sat 03/06 (9pm - 1am)
As part of the Hayward's Undercover Surrealism exhibition, onedotzero are bringing to the South Bank cutting edge film, illustration and animation from Peepshow to Pandemonium (with Giles Deacon, Nathan Gregory Wilkins, Spencer Bewlay, Lazy Eye visuals and George Demure in between)! Plus ondedotzero's newly commissioned AV show The Paradiso Effect by Saam (Clor, The Rapture).

Innervisions: Dave McKean Unmasked
Tue 06/06 (7pm)
Dave McKean is an award winning filmmaker as well as animator and illustrator; this is a chance to find out about his interdisciplinary career and see a special screening of his first feature Mirrormask.

Innervisions: Next Level
Wed 07/06 (7pm)
With super tech creative Jack Mama, who's worked with Levi's, Nike and Orange; Ideo studio leader Matt Hunter; Professor of Forecasting and Innovation James Woudhuysen; and deputy editor of Icon magazine Kieran Long chairing, you get a chance to look into the future. Onedotzero was born from the digital revolution -- what will even newer technology do for our creatives?

Innervisions: Warp: Anatomy Of A Label
Thu 08/06 (7pm)
If you have read this far you are probably dead into onedotzero, which means this should need little explanation. Known for some of the best video work (Chris Cunningham and Alex Rutterford), the most innovative music (Aphex Twin) and as purveyor of new technologies, Warp has had more than a small impact on our visual and technological culture today. Plus Mark Herbert (Producer of Dead Man's Shoes / My Wrongs) and Phil Canning (Warp Label manager) will take part in a Q&A.

Exhibition: Onedotzero_Transvision
Fri 09/06 and Sat 10/06 (2pm)
A re-mix of onedotzero_transvision at the V&A in February (which had 6,000 punters in one night) with 10 diverse creatives mixing installation, interactive work, documentary, short films and more. Catch work from D- Fuse, Ed Holdsworth, Phillip O'Dwyer and Jean Gabriel Poiret.

Innervisions: Group Mentality
Fri 09/06 (7pm)
In the '90s new computer technology gave artists more of an opportunity to work together on a common platform creating more collaborations and collectives than ever before, including the groups involved in this discussion: Tomato, Airside and Lobo.

NB: onedotzero_10 runs from 02/06 till 11/06.

Okay footie Flashers, the wait is nearly over. It's Holy Grail time, and with 32 teams in the mix, the cup might runneth over... For the non-believer, it's not about 4-4-2, 4-5-1 or even Parreira's 4-6-0, but rather football -- 22 men trying to put one ball in a net -- and especially the soap opera that is the World Cup: star turns, dodgy metatarsals, conspiracy theories, Mrs Beckham, cheats, heroes, hair bands and referees! Now, the Curzon Soho is going to maximise our self-indulgence with Kicks n Flicks, an international football film season. Not only can you re-live Svennis' finest moment at the trouncing of Germany (1-5), gain more depth into why the Argies love that "hand of God" moment over the next goal that Maradona scored, see the Jamaicans try to make Sven's face red -- live -- and other fictional favourites. The good news is that we've been spared Sly Stallone's goalkeeping antics, and the bad being that all this comes too soon for us to catch Zizou's fancy footwork. Finally, for half of you north London Flashers, still mourning the loss of Highbury, an opportunity to see the Arsenal Stadium Mystery on the big screen!

NB: runs from 02/06 till 08/02. For the full programme check the website for details.

Most of us have done it, sat there disconsolately staring at the summer's festival line-ups trying to see past the army of bland identikit indie mopers, corporate sponsors and idiots in giant foam hats, and thought "I could do better than that". Well, someone has done more than just think about it. Bugged Out! and Dummy have announced their "Dream Festival", for one night only, under one roof -- we have Prince, Kraftwerk, Talking Heads, Gorillaz and Bloc Party. Now assuming you're still reading this and haven't run off to queue for tickets we should point out that the roof in question belongs to the Coronet and all the acts mentioned will be appearing on the cinema's screen; still you can't fault their imagination or indeed chutzpah. And should the likes of Sign O' The Times, Stop Making Sense and Minimum Maximum start to seem a little too 2D then there will be flesh and blood performances from the likes of Bugged Out!, Gucci Soundsystem and Jojo De Freq. Now as long as people can avoid starting campfires in the cloakroom and singing Levellers songs, it should be a quality night.

Art collective? Architects? Activists? Following their Supper Market installation at the Deptford X Ephemeral Cities exhibition and a performance piece in the German capital, London-and-Berlin-based artist trio Pankof Bank seems to fall graciously somewhere in between the three. An activist architecture collective, then, and one that's invading the Architecture Foundation (Britain's first independent architecture centre, established in 1991 and in the process of building a new Zaha Hadid-designed centre for architecture in Bankside) for more than a week with an installation that promises to transform the temporary The Yard Gallery space (launched in July last year) into a public architectural office, complete with fax machines, coffee makers and printers. The idea is to offer a space in which to examine the possibility of public space in our increasingly privatised reality. Manon Awst, Sam Causer and Simon Fujiwara's experiment kickstarts the Renegade City season of exhibitions and events, which will also contain an Iain Borden-organised exhibition about (of course) skateboarding culture and urban space , as well as "Best in Show", where a pick of the country's best architecture students get to show off their projects. If it's this good now, how good will it be when that Zaha centre finally opens (likely to be in autumn 2008, at least two years late)?

NB: Renegade City runs from 02/06 till 02/09. For the full programme see the website.

The brainchild of singer-songwriter and Domino recording artist Adem Ihlan (who pulls rank and performs on both days, the scamp), Homefires is the festival for people who hate festivals. It's indoors for starters -- and unfurls within the elegant, wood-panelled environs of central London's Conway Hall, not on some blasted provincial heath or in a godforsaken, lino-clad holiday camp. While previous Homefires festivals have proffered the cream of the new folk caucus, the third casts its net that bit wider. That means, on Saturday, the live debut by The Aliens, formerly three-quarters of the misbegotten Beta Band, and an unlikely headline act in erstwhile Belle & Sebastian chanteuse Isobel Campbell. Her recent album with Seattle grunge nabob Mark Lanegan (Ballad Of The Broken Seas) won many plaudits, though tonight she'll be revisiting its songs in the company of, er, Scottish grunge nabob Eugene Kelly. Sunday continues the Caledonian female theme, with two Edinburgh-based attractions. Ex-Delgados singer Emma Pollock steps out in rare solo guise, while veteran headliner Vashti Bunyan -- once the very epitome of lost '60s cultdom, now fully restored to the bosom of the new folk caucus -- will round things off with her intimate, whimsical songs about rabbits, rosehip and snails. It's not exactly the last night at Glastonbury. Hurray!

NB: Homefires III runs for two days on 03/06 and 04/06.

It's smoke and mirrors, but not as you know it. Aurelia Thierree's (sister of James Thierree) silent stage show is a sensitive and haunting dance of physical improbability, fantasy, trickery and melancholy humour. Aurelia's tricks are enthralling -- no less so because you know them for what they are. If anything, understanding that they are feats of deception makes them more impressive, because they are executed with such grace and inventiveness. In one scene, Aurelia sits behind a huge white lace veil, which cascades down in a continuous stream like snow. Engulfed by a black background, she is a fragile silhouette in a white dress. From the wings, a monster appears (a simple white-line drawing which also shines out from the black backdrop). It takes hold of Aurelia's leg and grabs a frayed end of white material -- before you know it Aurelia's leg is unravelling at high speed as the monster makes his get-away. Legless, however, Aurelia remains stoic, and swiftly knits herself a new leg. You know that black leggings beneath white cotton ones are the magical secret, but it's still amazing -- breathtakingly so. Aurelia lives up to her formidable Chaplin pedigree, and, like her grandfather, for a silent artist she makes one hell of a noise.

NB: runs till 17/06.

Myths of the near future have always managed to capture and hold our attention, perhaps to the detriment of those concepts which inspired our forward looking in the first place. It is somewhat refreshing to think that it is not always necessary to race blindly against progress in the hope of subverting the intentions of ideologies not yet fully formed. On an artistic scale, where contemporary context can be read in revolutions-per-minute, perhaps a reflection on modernity is like stopping to smell the proverbial flowers, or perhaps it is a much needed reassessment of what we hope to achieve through art. Modern Lovers brings together an international group of artists and artworks, ranging from David Mabb's combination of Russian constructivism and William Morris' classic textile designs, to a collection of headgear that protects us as much from information as radiation and summons images of a more threatening time in the struggle between art and the social framework. Playing lightly between concepts of worship and representation, Pil and Galia Kollectiv's film bounces off those of Lapinu and David Maljkovic, creating a serious yet playful dialogue between then and now.

NB: runs till 04/06.

As we proclaimed aeons ago, the ACBF is a "sophisticated art car boot sale for the inner city". But before we get all pleased with ourselves that we had the nous to alert your attention to it ahead of the game, we should really say that it has, since it began in 2004, lived up to the hype and promises to do so again this year. All in all, the fair is a mixed bag of bargain basement deals, ferocious bartering, arty-farty pretentiousness, fair-trade / eco / organic mania, burlesque titillation, music, film, and lest we forget, interesting artwork on sale for a steal (well, some of it anyway). It's lots of fun, whichever way you look at it. Basically, think between-the-cars aisles strewn with YBAs (Sarah Lucas, Gavin Turk et al swanning about the place pretending they are still a) young and b) "street"); organic BBQs; live DJs and performances from those scantily clad young things at the Whoopee Club. This year there's also added entertainment of the literary variety in the form of Andrea Mason's King Street Rocks: Salon Saloon -- a wordy poetic fest to rival all the paintbrush twirling going on.

The 1984 documentary Marlene, by Maximilian Schell, dissolves the space where truth and fiction remain in documentary. Revealing yet reinstating the mystery that surrounded Marlene Dietrich and featuring Annie Albers, the film acts as inspiration for Francesco Vezzoli's latest project. At once critic and victim of the camp idolatry of cinema, Vezzoli's work acts as a comment on fame while presenting the artist's own fantasies. By deconstructing the glamour, he reveals the melancholy associated with the fiction and reality of Hollywood. Vezzoli plays with his own presentation, navigating the history of performance. While, to use his own turn of phrase, exploiting the iconicity of female identity in Warhol's world, he saddles up the history of art with the world of cinema. A compulsion to reformulate the convention of images can be related to the search for perfection understood with an obsession for needlepoint. Through exaggeration of motion, meaning is complexed and language becomes confused, proving that all familiarity can easily be subverted. While, in Marlene Redux - A True Hollywood Story! (Part One), the artist reduces the original to the lower levels of the television, while maintaining cinematic format, thus continuing to deconstruct the very space at which the glamour begins.

NB: Marlene Redux - A True Hollywood Story! (Part One) screens at Tate Modern on 02/06 from 7 - 9pm and on both 04/06 and 11/06 from 12 - 4pm.

Adapted from Henry James' classic ghost story The Turn Of The Screw by Truman Capote and William Archibald, The Innocents is a psychological horror played out to perfection. The story follows a governess taken on to look after two orphaned children living in a country mansion. From the moment she arrives she starts hearing voices and seeing apparitions, but is delighted by the beautiful estate and the angelic children. However, after she learns more about the unusual deaths of the people who were looking after the children before her, she becomes convinced the children are in the control of "something secretive, whispering and indecent". The tension and suspense is incredible throughout, letting up only to lull the audience into a false sense of security in the few calmer moments that the governess experiences. Exceptional performances from Deborah Kerr in the lead role, Megs Jenkins as the housekeeper and the two children (Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin) bring superb depth to the story. The film also uses an astonishing array of noises to add to the creepiness -- the sounds of flies, wasps, crows, bats, pigeons, howling winds and stormy weather break the silence at key moments. A timely re-issue from the bfi of an unmissable horror story.

NB: The Innocents is screening at the NFT from 01/06 till 15/06.

Although Thomas Demand exhibits photography, he is in fact a sculptor who constructs complex three dimensional environments from cardboard and paper. He uses them to produce convincing and familiar images of locations that often have political or cultural significance. Several major new works, including a film, will be exhibited alongside his greatest hits from the past decade. Previously unseen pieces include Klause/Tavern I-V, a series of photographs based on media images from a grizzly crime scene that captured the popular imagination in Germany, and Grotto, a large scale image of Demand's life size model of a Spanish tourist attraction, which required 50 tonnes of cardboard to build. In the spirit of William Morris, Demand has designed wallpaper to complement the domestic character of the gallery and provide an alternative environment for his work.

NB: runs till 20/08.

Tacita Dean is a misfit amongst her YBA contemporaries. She doesn't go in for the instant fixes or the subliminal shock value of a Damien or a Tracey. Her art is more of a long, fully conscious gaze, often directed through a camera lens, and occasionally via pen or pencil. A lot of the recent work takes her adopted city, Berlin, as its starting point. Fernsehturm is a hypnotic vista of the constantly rotating cafe which tops the old TV tower giving 360 degree views over East Berlin -- its relentless orbit seems to make time stand still. Beautiful and eerie Palast showed nostalgic reflections of Berlin's history in the burnished copper windows of its old Communist Government HQ. Her explorations have also taken her farther afield -- most famously to the Teignmouth Electron wreck in Cayman Brac in her mission to trace the fated voyage of tragic round-the-world yachtsman Donald Crowhurst. Preoccupations with time, history and the sea repeat themselves in her work, but subtly, attentively, and each time showing a new face.

NB: for those of you going to Basel (14/06 till 18/06) make sure you catch Tacita Dean's largest presentation of work at Schaulager (runs till 24/09).

Another intriguing night presented by London's busiest promoters Eat Your Own Ears presents the fascinating world of Bat For Lashes, the musical vehicle for the vision of Natasha Khan. Kate Bush and Cat Power are worthwhile and oft-used comparisons in describing the band's sound, yet the overall sound is remarkably individual: majestic vocal howls are entwined within soaring strings, esoteric folk instruments, distorted guitars, rumbling bass and thunder-clap drums. Accompanying Khan is Ginger Lee, who provides a richly textured backdrop, playing a mixture of piano, guitars, harpsichord, autoharp and electronic machines. The Guardian described support band Ralfe Band as "appealing wonky acid-folk" -- their hybridised sound conflates Eastern European influences within more traditional folk-orientated sounds. Early arrival is particularly recommended for this fascinating night, since the highly touted Findlay Brown will be opening the night with a showcase of his acoustic, warm and quirky folk.

With a compulsive and exacting gaze the 12 artists included in Until It Makes Sense employ drawing as a limitless strategy to map the passing of time, capturing and reconfiguring idiosyncratic routines and rituals with often mesmeric effect. From meditative ink-on-oil-board drawings that have the appearance of emerging chinks or spectrums of light, created through carefully composed motions (Jason Martin) to the performative tracing of marks on the body recorded through video (Emma Torkington) to the three-dimensional line drawing suggested by the knotted strands of liquorice hanging curtain-like in front of the window (Amande In), Until It Makes Sense creates an animated and vigorous conversation, engaging with drawing as a process for seeing, understanding and memorialising the artist's surroundings and the "everyday". A small paint splashed step-ladder stands in the middle of the space. This is Susan Collis' The oyster's our world, 2004, a piece that reveals itself to be a beautiful deception. On closer scrutiny the paint splashes and marks are delicately constructed using shell, coral, pearls, opals and diamonds. Collis imbues this everyday object with a new preciousness and invokes in the viewer a replication of the artist's compulsive gaze.

NB: runs till 10/06.

Tal R may well be the Slavoj Zizek of painters. Not that the Israeli-born Dane is a Lacan-reading, film-speaking circus, but, like the Slovenian, is very much a high energy, accumulative, one-man band! The detritus of life has provided him with much inspiration for his very fecund visual objects, however if you're expecting direct translation from life to art, forget about it... Hot on the heels of his highly successful, salon-style, floor to ceiling hang of small paintings in Dublin and Berlin last year, House of Prince, the Copenhagen-based one is back, this time with large-scale paintings. Without his usual tricks of high-density collage and fewer simple abstract shapes, his paint slinging is as if he were channelling in Twombly scratchings with an Alfred Jensen intensity. "Bad", scratchy drawing seems to form the core for his creativity this time round, and picture postcard scenes -- Venice, pyramids, city plazas -- provide his source imagery. What Tal R's enigmatic, meandering figuration inspires is a sense of the haptic; today he's one of the few image-makers who seems to be guided by touch, where picture-making is the impulse rather than organising imagery around narrative. A Tal R painting is an event!

NB: runs till 25/06. Tal R will also be giving an informal talk on his latest work at the gallery on 08/06 (7:15pm). Places are limited and going fast, RSVP to bryony@victoria-miro.com. If you're in Berlin this week you can also catch a series of his sculptures at Contemporary Fine Arts (till 03/06).

KultureFlash is a free, weekly newsletter covering contemporary culture in and around London. Each week we track down some of the more unusual and interesting events taking place in the capital and deliver them straight to your inbox. Featuring art, gigs, films, talks, clubs and more -- we are committed to bringing you an eclectic mix of the most stimulating events in London.

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