Expect the unexpected from the boundary-pushers making it new on both sides of the Atlantic. Dirty Projectors' frontman, Brooklynite David Longstreth, hitches polyrythmic Eastern beats to dissonant harmonies in the manner of a modern day Frankenstein, and this is no blue-collar alchemy -- less monster mash, more finely-tuned melee. The outfit's 2007 offering Rise Above was actually a song-for-song re-imagining of Black Flag's '80s punk release Damaged, a favourite of the adolescent Longstreth, though he wrote and edited his record without listening to the original. The result is extraordinary, if unsettling, with Longstreth's ageless strung-out warble, equal parts spectral muezzin and Mariah, straddling decades and genres. It's a concept album in the best possible sense. British Jazz quintet Polar Bear, led by lion-haired drummer Seb Rochford, are flying the flag for woozy post-jazz, eclectic post-bop, post-rock percussive post-ness. Whatever it is, it's Mercury-nominated and swinging. It's all touch, look, listen for Californian duo Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara, pioneering participatory art and music along with all the other Lucky Dragons (that's you). Indecipherable murmurs, woodland percussion, and dial-up chirruping, immaculately stitched together via laptop, hit on something gloriously lo- and hi-fi. Oh, and it's cool to bring your colouring pencils.

Anyone with an interest in Indian classical music, from casual acquaintance to full-blooded passion, should immediately make a diary note of this exceptional three (full) day (the performances start in the morning and continue till late!) festival, which has gathered a reputation for being the best of its kind in this country, and one of the best outside India. Top-class musicians representing the many different forms of Indian music -- largely split between Hindustani (North Indian) and Carnatic (South Indian) -- will be assembled in this packed programme, allowing for an intermixing of diverse musical worlds (both Hindu and Muslim) not often brought together in this way. There are three concerts a day, with the morning sessions including a form of discussion/presentation. Genres of singing from the ancient form of Dhrupad (a style of Hindu devotional singing, rarely heard) to Carnatic music (look out for the great Aruna Sairam); solo instrumentalist recitals by flautists, violinist duos, sarods, and the great tabla (North Indian drum), as well as lesser-heard instruments such as the rabab and the jori. Highlights include performances by the legendary tabla player Pandit Kumar Bose (accompanying the great Dhrupad singer Ustad Faiyaz Wasifuddin Dagar). Expect an extraordinarily intense and almost mystical atmosphere to descend on the Southbank Centre.

NB: runs from 03/04 till 05/04.

21st century modern life has seen an almost universal mood shift from the corporate and industrial towards the traditional and personal -- particularly in terms of lifestyles. Life seems so complicated now -- couldn't things be simpler and more natural? Living on a farm would be perfect... French documentary director Raymond Depardon grew up in a remote area of rural France, and after starting out as a photojournalist (a member of Magnum for 30 years) a move into film naturally led to documentary. Modern Life (La vie moderne) is the third in a trilogy of films (Profils paysans) that Depardon has made during the last decade, chronicling a group of smallhold farmers from his native Haute-Garonne region of France, and witnessing the reality of living on the land. Intimate, sympathetic and highly empathetic, the film is anchored around a series of farmhouse kitchen interviews. Made over a year, a mixture of farmers -- some young, many elderly -- relate family stories, discuss jealousies, regrets and philosophies and muse on the future of life on the land. Slowly paced, the long takes and extended silences focus attention on the craggy faces of the interviewees, of whom many give a new definition to reticence. Lyrical, visually poetic and undeniably melancholic.

NB: also of note also are the special Q&A screenings of Let The Right One In (with Tomas Alfredson) on 07/04, The Third Part Of The Night (with Andrzej Zulawski) on 05/04 and Cool Hand Luke (with George Kennedy) on 21/04.

Do you often find yourself hanging round East London on a Friday night, looking for something exciting to do but generally quite short on cash? If the answer is "yes", and you're a fan of techno from Sweden, then follow the crowds to Cargo, where you'll be able to find a free showcase from one of Kompakt's most lauded artists, The Field (aka Axel Willner). Building on the success of gorgeous, sample-snipping and skipping full-length debut From Here We Go Sublime (2007) and praised to the high heavens, Willner has assembled a touring band (percussionist Dan Enqvist and multi-instrumentalist Andreas Soderstrom), and is set to road-test new songs from his forthcoming album Yesterday & Today (released in May). Cargo seems an ideal place for his peculiar brand of techno -- sparse, distant and intelligent, yet still retaining a warm feeling -- it will be interesting to see whether his new release is informed by the exuberance or the solipsism that his past work seems to have inspired in his listeners. Support comes from Luke Abbot and Allez Allez DJs.

Planet Mu is hosting a massive night down at Corsica Studios this Friday. The event, "Filth", takes its name from the title of the new Venetian Snares album, and will serve as a launch party for the release. Whilst his intense, rare live shows are a big draw, it's by no means the sole attraction, by a long stretch, in fact. Also on the bill is Neil Landstrumm; whose live set is blistering in its own right, plus Boxcutter, Starkey, Ikonika, iTAL tEK, Shitmat, Raffertie, Legion Of Two, Mrs Jynx, Remano Eszildn and Planet Mu head; Mu-ziq aka Mike Paradinas. Huge. It's testament to the label's freshness that they can showcase such a varied and exciting line-up comprised only from direct affiliates -- not bad at all after 11 years in the game. Advance tickets for this one have sold out so it's a case of get down there early if you want to snap one up on the door.

Dance music is often derided for the quality of its live performances. In many ways this is justified, but also overlooks the point of much dance music, a genre that at its best is all about community -- finding, or indeed losing, yourself within a mass of sweating bodies rather than paying homage to the ego of a performer. Still when bands do get it right it can be an exhilarating experience and few acts do live dance music quite as well as these two. Red Snapper, reformed and back in action after a four year break, were quite simply one of the best dance acts of the mid '90s, ripping apart jazz forms and reassembling them for a crowd more used to epic techno breakdowns. Back with an acclaimed album, their recent sold-out gig at Cargo would suggest they've lost none of that fire and will be well worth checking out. The Bays on the other hand have been a permanent fixture on the dance scene for much of the past decade. Never releasing their music, living only for the moment, this is dance music at its mostly wildly improvisational and frankly at its best. Together they should provide a masterclass for any dance act wishing to break beyond the self-imposed limitations of the genre.

As the Champagne-Mojito Massive continue to flood into a changing E2 in the search of prompt table service in leather and chrome clad bars, the noticeable migration of Shoreditch's tech-house scene continues to creep further up Kinglands Road. Set-up by two South Africans, the Sud Electronic label have been running their operations out of London since the turn of the century. Throwing regular parties to support their output, Sud have always been very good at bringing in-vogue Germans over, with past guests including Efdemin, Pantha du Prince and Shed. Having recently justified his ever-increasing popularity with a killer remix for the excellent Prime Numbers stable, Heidelberg's David Moufang (aka Move D) headlines the bill with the promise of a live and three-hour DJ set. Quite an enticing little prospect we're sure you'll agree. Sud co-founder Bodycode (or Portable as he sometimes likes to be known) will be supporting with a sneak preview of tracks from his forthcoming album on Spectral, whilst the excellent Valero Doval lays on the evening's visuals. The doors open at 10pm and Sud are limiting the capacity to 300 people, so be sure to get there early.

The Whitechapel Gallery's renovation is firstly an invisible expansion. The existing galleries stand as they were, and have been innocently doubled by the absorption of the 1892 Passmore Edwards Library next door. The facades betray little of the newly intimate connection. There is no flamboyance in the planning. But soon the "finger work", as architect Paul Robbrecht of Robbrecht en Daem calls it, shows emphatic prints; the roofline, the top floor gallery that sportively uses the Victorian roof structure to house frosted rooflights, and the vigorously dirty brickwork that looks back at you through new windows and rooflights. Authority and amusement play in the building; expressive moments are subsumed within order. Rachel Whiteread contributed, and her signature inversion of negative space is visible in the skylight thrusting into a gallery, creating a portal to heaven when you stop beneath it. This is thoughtful architecture outside the "white cube".

The gallery's first show, an Isa Genzken retrospective, confirms the Whitechapel's commitment to divisive work. Genzken plays between modernism and conceptualism, centred on the relations between art, architecture and social reality. Central to this is a fascination with assemblage, and an almost haphazard hybridisation of material. It is no surprise that the qualities of multiplicity and openness that her work represents have been chosen to stand for the gallery's rebirth. Next door -- in one of the stunning new spaces -- Goshka Macuga has installed the original, life-size tapestry of Picasso's Guernica, together with a mass of documentary material related to the Whitechapel show of Guernica in 1939. As a landmark event in the gallery's history, this latest foray of Macuga into the relation between art and archive -- perhaps a little limited conceptually -- couldn't be more timely or well chosen.

NB: the Whitechapel Gallery reopens to the public on 05/04; Isa Genzken's retrospective runs till 21/06; and the Goshka Macuga's runs till 18/04/10.

With a larger following in France than in Britain (no doubt assisted by his French ex-wife Sophie Marceau) Polish director Andrzej Zulawski's work has recently been reappraised by critics here. After beginning his career as an assistant to Polish "director general" Andrzej Wajda, at the start of the '70s he began directing his own films in Poland. However, when his films began to get banned at home, he headed for the more liberal and cine-literate screens of France. The Third Part Of The Night, Zulawski's debut feature, is an early example of his somewhat maverick and flamboyantly controversial style. Not one for emotional subtlety when he can offer apocalyptic symbolism instead, the film tells the story of the guilt and psychological turmoil a young man suffers when he is the only survivor of a massacre of his family during Nazi-occupied Poland. Zulawski will introduce the film, and end the screening with a Q&A on his work.

NB: also of note is the release of Modern Life (03/04) and the special Q&A screenings of Let The Right One In (with Tomas Alfredson) on 07/04 and Cool Hand Luke (with George Kennedy) on 21/04.

Alison and Peter Smithson are central and controversial figures in the history of 20th century British architecture: famed on the one hand for innovative and stylish projects such as their 1958 House Of The Future and the Economist Building, infamous on the other for the well-intentioned but disastrous Robin Hood Gardens housing development, where they implemented their utopian ideal of "streets in the sky" only to create one of the most crime-ridden estates in London. Opinionated, ambitions and uncompromising the Smithsons may have been -- but they were never dull. After graduating from the Royal Academy and winning a competition to design Hunstanton Secondary School, the couple set up a practice together and became key figures of the avant-garde, socialising and collaborating with the critics and artists such as Reyner Banham and Eduardo Paolozzi who met at the ICA during the 1950s and subsequently became known as The Independent Group. Their output was never large, but many of their works have become iconic, and as part of the RA's The Architects Who Made London series, Maxwell Hutchinson will assess their legacy on the city -- both theoretical and architectural.

NB: the last talk in this series is Chamberlin Powell and Bon on 20/04 (6:30pm).

Re-using and renewing old material is very fitting in the current climate, but it's heartening to see a "best of" programme from an artist with a genuinely outstanding body of work to draw on, rather than a cash cow compilation from a one-hit wonder... Russell Maliphant is a unique performer and choreographer, his collaborations have been awarded accolades such as a South Bank Show Award (2003) and an Olivier Award (2006), and the quality of his work is evident in performance, as well as on paper. The upcoming performances at the Coliseum will not only showcase some of his best work to date, but will feature renown performers such as Dana Fouras, Agnes Oakes and Ivan Putrov. Maliphant's dynamic and elegant style draws on yoga, classical ballet and contact improvisation, achieving a distinctive and articulate flow of movement. His partnership of over 15 years with acclaimed lighting designer Michael Hulls has also produced some groundbreaking results, achieving a transformation in the way that artists are able to manipulate movement, light and music. Now That's What We Call... a good compilation.

NB: runs from 07/04 till 11/04.

Swedish duo Mariam Wallentin and Andreas Werliin add up to far more than the sum of their parts. Despite taking home the Jazz In Sweden Prize in 2008 with debut album Heartcore (their sophomore album, The Snake, is out in a few weeks), Wildbirds & Peacedrums do not sit comfortably in the classic, or even avant, jazz bracket. This is music stripped down to its barest bones (she sings, he drums) with the occasional appearance of glockenspiel, handclap or zither. Only the strangest of birds could beg comparison with the likes of PJ Harvey, Nico and Mary Margaret O'Hara, but there's just something about Wallentin. Her little-girl vocals, wanton blues, African voodoo, and folksy siren melodies slip effortlessly over Werliin's searing skin-bashing, crafting a sound at once rapturous rain song and unearthly lullaby. Live, the back and forth between the two is blinding -- decidedly erotic, and arresting to the point of cardiac. When it comes to Chicago born Volcano!, "rock trio" is putting it simply. With frenetic guitar, synthed-up basslines and jazzy drums, 2008's Paperwork skips through the same clanging sonic playground frequented by Deerhoof and Black Dice. On new single "So Many Lemons" (out 06/04), vocalist Aaron With marries Thom Yorke drones with Eminem beats (and is that a calypso?). Easy listening this is not.

DV8 founder member Nigel Charnock worked with 20 young artists in Poland last year, hothousing their improvisation and creative skills. Despite being a seasoned performer, known particularly for his fearless solos and unguarded improvisation work, he has been so impassioned by this experience that he seems to have rediscovered, or reconnected with, his love of dance. He returned to Poland to make a new work with nine of these dancers, the resulting project will have its UK premiere at The Place in their Spring Loaded season. Happy has generated a great deal of interest -- Charnock has been creating work for 25 years, begging the question: what is it about these performers that has re-ignited his passion to such an extent? Through movement, music and text, the work examines desire, pleasure and pain, explores 20th century Polish history and throws in a generous measure of vodka. Expectations are high, but "the mad dance dinosaur from England" is likely to deliver an uplifting experience.

NB: Happy is performed on 07/04 and 08/04 (part of The Place's Spring Loaded season which runs till 16/05).

Only in Sweden. Contrary to word on the street, Tomas Alfredson's slow-burning hit is not a horror film. It is not a vampire movie (despite the vampire protagonist). It is not fantastical. It is, filmed in remotest snow-blanketed North Sweden, characterised by emptiness, silence, space -- the absence of things, what is not seen, or said. Our enduring preoccupations -- friendship, loathing, loyalty, revenge -- all get an airing. That these are explored through a love story, between two 12 year olds, is what sets this one apart. Schoolboy Oskar, pale as a plant that never sees the light, is tormented by the most sadistic of bobble-hatted school bullies until an ebony-haired girl child Eli moves in next door and teaches him to hit back. Eli sleeps in the bath, flies and eats blood. Sweets make her vomit. Feeding off the horror of the everyday, these naturalistic details, together with the wholly unaffected performances of the leads, Alfredson's economical storytelling, the heart-stopping stillness of each shot and the blinding whiteness of the starkly framed landscape, cumulatively paint a concretely believable world, but one in which real-life poetry is possible. Alfredson's is one head we'd definitely like to get inside.

NB: post screening catch Tomas Alfredson in conversation with Dave Calhoun (if you cannot make this screening you can also catch Alfredson at the Curzon Soho on 06/04). Let The Right One In is released in London on 10/04. Also of note is the release this week of Modern Life (03/04) and the special Q&A screenings of The Third Part Of The Night (with Andrzej Zulawski) on 05/04 and Cool Hand Luke (with George Kennedy) on 21/04.

Like TS Eliot, who worked as an editor when Faber and Faber was founded by Geoffrey Faber in 1929, many great writers have reached a wider audience through this independent publishing house. Now, to celebrate its 80th birthday, the literati's favourite bookshop, the London Review Bookshop, invites three writers to read from and talk about their first works. Prize-winning author Sarah Hall discusses her debut novel Haweswater, in which she focuses on the rural tragedy experienced by a community of Cumbrian hill farmers after the construction of a reservoir in the 1930s; Gordon Burn takes his cue from the colourful sport of snooker for his 1980s book Pocket Money; and Clare Wigfall searches for meaning in the light of something missing through each of the short stories that make up her dark debut collection The Loudest Sound And Nothing (last year her story The Numbers won the BBC National Short Story Award). This promises to be an intellectually intriguing evening.

NB: also of note is Geoff Dyer's talk in conjunction with the release of his new book Jeff In Venice, Death In Varanasi at the Southbank Centre on 06/04 (7:45pm).

Nikolai Gogol's world is, in his own words, "at once funny and appalling". His famous short story, The Overcoat, is re-imagined here by Gecko for the stage, far removed from the experience of reading but true to both the humour and the horror. The story is made-over as a drama for clowns: rather than worryingly interpreting language, Gecko shows the body convulsed by desire, dreams, dejection and, ultimately, death. In this world people can walk vertically as well as horizontally; family portraits are living, gossiping worlds of their own and furniture expresses states of mind. All of which makes the choice of The Overcoat perfect for them. While undoubtedly Gecko's inexhaustible artistic director, Amit Lahav, takes centre stage, the performance is a joyous ensemble work. The music, lights, set, and make-up all mutually integrate with the performers to create the space of the story as, precisely, theatre -- rather than each element being applied to one another as so often (and so boringly) can happen. While the performance has perhaps yet to find its own pace and rhythm, there is a wonderful show in the making here -- catch it while you can!

NB: runs till 11/04.

Tonico Lemos Auad has come a long way since pricking a face on a bunch of bananas. Born in Brazil and trained primarily in London, his work sutures together some kind of "magical" Brazilian realism (think -- at a tangent -- Cildo Meireles) with the British conceptualism engendered by the YBAs. Like the fruit and carpet fluff of yore, here cloth has been metamorphosed into boats and vessels (ie pots). A gallery wall, Reflected Archaeology, is decorated with Brazilian charms is covered with a scratch card surface that viewers are invited to reveal -- every one's a winner! A bronze cast of air vents, Basement, reveals a space in which technicians seem to store materials. Is something being magically unveiled? Ultimately the result is a sort of fleeting melancholy laced with an Arte Povera poetry. Auad's work is a combination of seriousness and whimsy, of playfulness and possible conceptual insight.

NB: runs till 17/04.

Seekers of sensual stimulation, fans of postmodernism and lovers of the absurd look no further -- Tabu will dazzle and bamboozle with quirky sights, sounds and smells, and bits of pop corn and rizzla rain. Brilliantly mad in every sense, this acrobatic troop is not quite made up of the usual vivid colours and flamboyant costumes, which one might expect to see at a circus. Here, the world functions at low voltage and is almost asleep as characters lurk, fly, skip and hula-hoop around in muted shades of grey, twisting and bending to the energetic rhythms of a very entertaining band. Their circus is their music and disharmony seems to be the new order. Throw in a bit of a rowdy Sicilian family get-together, a Mad Hatter's party, glimpses of Black Cat, White Cat and a Dada night at Cabaret Voltaire, and you might get the picture. Expect some sudden stunts, intensely close cast-audience encounters and ladies, wear comfortable shoes.

NB: runs till 19/04.

Co-authored by a convict, Cool Hand Luke was a film born in the context of a world under the strong spell of a non-conforming hippie subculture and, via its anti-establishment antihero, Luke Jackson, truly echoes the zeitgeist of the time. The classic stars the much-loved, much-missed Paul Newman as Luke, a prisoner, and focuses on how his fatal refusal to submit to any discipline system inspires and gives hope to a group of otherwise down-and-out inmates. Now preserved in the United States' National Film Registry, BFI brings you a screening of this significant commercial and critical accomplishment, alongside a Q&A with Dallas actor, George Kennedy. Now in his eighties, Kennedy, one of the last remaining voices of the film will offer first-hand knowledge of what it was like to work on Cool Hand Luke and answer questions on the Academy Award-winning role, Dragline, that made him famous.

NB: also of note is the release of Modern Life (03/04) and the special screening of The Third Part Of The Night with a Andrzej Zulawski Q&A at the Renoir (05/04).

Alexander Rodchenko and Lyubov Popova were key figures in the avant-garde Constructivist movement that accompanied the tumult of the Russian Revolution, and as this densely-packed exhibition demonstrates, they quickly transferred their initial exploration of the Constructivist aesthetic in paint to a wealth of other media: constructions, theatre designs, fabric patterns, posters, advertising, photography, furniture, cinema and books. It's a lot to take in, but the sheer extent and variety of the objects on display forcefully conveys the fervour and the excitement -- artistic and political -- that fuelled their project to connect art with life. Although the show is somewhat stolen by the early canvases crammed with dynamic interlocking geometries, including Popova's Pinaterly Architectonic (1930), there are smaller gems to be discovered later on, such as Popova's beautiful fabric designs, and the fascinating adverts produced when Lenin backtracked on communism and opened up the markets to restricted capitalism. As the exhibition progresses, Lenin's image, and that of an excitable Trotsky haranguing the masses, introduce a tang of sadness, a reminder that the revolution's rhetoric of liberty belied the actualities of the political situation, and that Constructivism would itself become yet another casualty of the Stalinist era.

NB: runs till 17/05.

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