"If dance only does what we assume it can do, it will expire. I keep trying to test the limits of what the word choreography means," says choreographer William Forsythe. Once described as the "antichrist of ballet", Forsythe is now one of the world's most iconic dance-makers, constantly contorting and warping traditional methods by pushing the boundaries of classic structural dance expectations. As a celebration of his last 35 years of international success, his challenging work bursts into London for a three-week bonanza. Consisting of nine events (all UK premieres and five are even free), you can expect 7,000 white helium balloons, 200 pendulums, 20 dancers and a giant video screen. Highlights include Nowhere And Everywhere At The Same Time (30/04), where 16 dancers weave through the Tate Modern's pendulum-filled Turbine Hall, City Of Abstracts (24/04 to 30/04), a travelling video screen which moves around London, capturing and manipulating images of passers-by and Additive Inverse (08/05 to 10/05), a video piece at the South London Gallery in collaboration with German video artist Philip Bussmann featuring a soundtrack by Thom Willems. Forsythe's intelligent and thought provoking work has changed the face of contemporary dance and this festival is the perfect opportunity to get more acquainted with this iconic choreographer.

NB: William Forsythe: Focus On Forsythe takes place all over London at venues such Sadler's Wells, Tate Modern, South London Gallery and Fabric and runs till 10/05.

Antoine, a surly Parisian waiter, loses yet another job as a result of his prickliness, just as his mother arrives from the countryside: dad has suffered a heart attack, and it is time for the prodigal son to return to help out with the family business. As a further look at rural France, Eric Guirado's film acts as a sort of companion piece for the documentary Modern Life, offering a complementary narrative look at small town life. Taking over the family's travelling grocery van route, Antoine (Nicolas Cazale) finds little joy or stimulation in his reluctantly assumed role, despite the wily and eccentric pensioners -- the majority of his customers -- who try to keep him on his toes. Only by luring a lively Parisian neighbour (the excellent Clotilde Hesme) along with promises of a quiet setting to facilitate her exam studies, does Antoine begin to very gradually find his place -- in the business, the village and within his own difficult family. Narratively and visually, the film is an elegiac, yet optimistic story of the rewards and difficulties of rural life.

NB: post screening Eric Guirado will be present for a Q&A. The Grocer's Son screens at the ICA from 24/04 till 14/05. Other films of note this week are Shifty and Werner Herzog's Encounters At The End Of The World.

Gomma mainstays WhoMadeWho returned to the spotlight this month with The Plot, a follow up to their oft-overlooked self-titled debut album. Whilst the critical reception has been mixed to say the least, it is live where the Danish trio excel, with the synth heavy mixture of no wave and punk funk being given added life, not to mention their penchant for interesting costumes and sneaky cover versions. Golf claps to heavyweight London promoting types Deadly People for curating their first This Is Not London party of the year around the release of The Plot. A live performance from WhoMadeWho is matched in the giddy stakes by a rare DJ appearance in London from Parisian edit don Pilooski whose repertoire goes well beyond that Franki Valli edit and a live set DFA/Supersoul act Moon Unit (made up of Paul Mogg, Xaver Naudascher and Rosalind) responsible for one of this year's best disco house crossover tunes in "Connections". Fans of music with guitars in it will no doubt be excited at the prospect of young upstarts frYars and Magistrates filling the music with guitars in it part of the line-up. Fans of female DJs will no doubt also be excited by the presence of the ever excellent and worryingly unpronouncable Nadia Ksaiba and P.i.X editor Hanna Hanra.

As the more hype-concerned clubbers keep flocking to all things disco, the Capital's options for the now increasingly dismissed sound of commercially viable house continue to decline. However, some things are frankly beyond trend-influenced opinion. So whether you're now strictly all about hush-hush, Italo disco parties in Stoke Newington lofts or not, there is still no question over what the biggest line-up in town is this weekend. To celebrate their 14th Birthday, MN2S bring three of dance music's forefathers over for a bill you'd be lucky to find in balmy peak-season Ibiza, let alone a chilly April evening in Greenwich. David Morales is widely accredited for Brooklyn's transition from disco to house in the early-'80s, whilst fellow New Yorker Todd Terry often takes the honours for defining the genre's sound several years later. UK bigwig Joey Negro is a DJ used to taking the headline slot. On this occasion he steps back for the near-mythical presence of Danny Krivit, and with over 35 years of DJ experience to compete against, we guess he can't argue. So if you're interested in the roots of dance music, then maybe give another night of space boogie edits in Dalston a miss, and catch three true originators under one roof instead.

NB: also of note at matter but on Saturday is Saved with Theo Parrish and Will Saul along with DJ Sneak and Derrick Carter who will doing a four hour back to back set.

Whatever the rivalries among those vying to be the heir to the latest revival in disco -- be it New York's DFA-inspired beat bands, Scandinavia's chugging psychaedelia or the thud of Italo -- all converge around the idolisation of the late Larry Levan. The producer and DJ's status was cemented at the Paradise Garage but his uncompromising character, often dragging crowds towards his point of view, makes him an embodiment of the approach and sheer gusto to which most so-called tastemakers aspire. It's a short documentary on him in this case, buffeted by a longer documentary on West End Records' Mel Cheren, in terms of the development of disco as a scene no less no less important than Levan but strangely not revered to the same extent now -- outside of New York at least. This film will surely be welcome context to the latest crop of adherents to "nu disco". Plus since like any revival this one is running the risk of getting seriously watered down -- hopefully it will help to underline to the new disciples that disco got its life from being an underground, rebellious genre and not from the platforms and glitter balls pastiche that has been peculiarly preserved in most mainstream accounts of its so-called history.

NB: after the films catch Kenny Carpenter (Studio 54) and Disco Bloodbath who will be DJing in the bar.

Morality, modesty, exactitude, perseverance might have been the rubric of the Venerable Bede but, according to this exhibition, they were also were the guiding principals of Le Corbusier: architect, theorist, humanist, artist, publisher and general-purpose guru for successive generations of modernists. Le Cabanon, which has been remade inside RIBA's stylish galley/restaurant, was Le Corbusier's tiny wooden cabin on the French Riviera, a monk's cell with an infinite sea view attached to his favourite restaurant (it had no kitchen). Climb inside it when no one else is there and it's like a confessional with a spirit of invention. In a space the size of an average American family car, he's woven all the elements of the most basic living environment, but sadly nowhere for the fishing rod or the surfboard. This was the place he built to do his holidaying and thinking. It's the smallest structure by the world's biggest architect and the only one he designed for his own use. Le Corbusier was a super-hero. He changed reality and ran circles round traditional architecture and this is where all his grand theories for living came home to roost.

NB: runs till 28/04. Make sure you also see Le Corbusier - The Art Of Architecture at the Barbican which runs till 24/05. On 23/04 (6:45pm) catch Farshid Moussavi (Foreign Office Architects) when she discusses Le Corbusier's legacy.

Finally, the stripes are here! In his fourth exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ, hip artist / party boy and 2005 Turner Prize nominee Jim Lambie incorporates his trademark Zobop floor. Brighter than ever, the fluorescent vinyl op art like Strokes swirl and twirl and swallow everything in sight -- chairs made out of metal belts, the architecture and your sense of perspective. The usual suspects are also there -- the disembodied eyes, bits of smashed mirror and record sleeves, reminding us of his musical roots, aka The Boy Hairdressers. Evidently, the fuchsia tangerine colour clashing floor steals the limelight as his free standing sculptures appear more contained. More attention is given to wall pieces which take the form of mix media still-lifes of flowers (something your nan might like) painted over portraits of rock stars. Together, it is a proper jazz ensemble, setting the stage for the kind of perfectly immersive playground which we love him for. A true master of borrowed aesthetics, Lambie knows how to make an impact. Here is postmodernism without the intellectual jargon.

Make sure you pop round the back for Frank Benson's uncanny sculptures. Replicating a street performer pretending to be a statue, it recalls the double-take of last year's Chocolate Fountain. But this double entendre on realism is denied (or increased, depending on your point of view) by the wacky surrealism of his tortoise (with hands instead of limbs). The deadpan subtlety of his bronze works hits like a cold shower. Is this heightened realism a conceptual ploy, or is Benson the new Freud? Only time will tell...

NB: both shows run till 25/04.

With the exception of Enimem's hip hop, Detroit's gold standard for musical innovation dates right back to its influential blues scene in the 1920s. As if providing a base for Motown Records wasn't enough to give a city a cultural pass for the next 200 years, Motor City took another chapter in the history books by giving birth to techno in the mid-'80s. Three generations on, the majority of new-wave Detroit techno now nods back to the city's heritage of soul music and bares a much closer resemblance to deep house than Europe's more aggressive interpretation of the genre. Tying in nicely with the laid-back feel of their down-tempo soirees, London's Need2Soul have been flying Michigan's third generation of producers across the Atlantic for a while now. Taking the two top spots this weekend are Rotating Assembly members Rick Wilhite and Marcellus Pittman, who also form one half of the production super-group 3 Chairs alongside Theo Parrish and Moodymann. Backing up the Americans with his modern interpretation of vintage Chicago Jack is the much hyped newcomer Wbeeza (aka Warren Brown). Signed up by Third Ear Recordings in early 2008, the South Londoner will perform his first live show to date, which coincides with the recent release of his excellent New Skank EP.

NB: also of note on Saturday is Saved at matter with Theo Parrish and Will Saul along with DJ Sneak and Derrick Carter who will doing a four hour back to back set.

Part of Beyond The Wall: New Music From China, this showcase promises an exclusive glimpse into the nether regions of the currently exploding Chinese music scene. Yan Jun, a mainstay of the Beijing avant-garde, is featured in a joint performance with guqin (zither) player Wu Na, combining its traditional sound with feedback, loops and found voices to make absorbing electronica. White, consisting of Shou Wang and Shenggy, are another acclaimed outfit at the forefront of this movement, making "cosmic noise" by mixing guitar, theremin, toys, synth and tape. FM3 have become notorious for being the inventors of the enormously popular gizmo the Buddha Machine, a "loop box" which is a lo-fi antidote -- certainly in appearance as well -- to the iPod, selling thousands of these devices world wide. Their table-top live performances can appear like a game of chess, utilizing the Buddha Machine to create quiet, meditative, soundscapes, that blend folk elements with synthetic glitches. Finally, Xiao He completes this line-up with his experimental approach to traditional Chinese music, colourfully combining acoustics with a modern sensibility. A snapshot of an intriguing emergent music scene.

NB: Beyond The Wall: New Music From China runs till 16/05.

Unexpectedly heartwarming and funny, this would-be thriller focuses on the complexities of various relationships (friendship and family) and fundamentally human qualities like pride, ambition, loyalty and sense of betrayal. Following the events of a single day in the life of a young drug dealer Shifty (Riz Ahmed), the viewer bears witness to what will ultimately be the fight for Shifty's soul. The sudden visit of old friend Chris (Daniel Mays) forces the two men to face the demons of their past and make some serious choices about their future. The tension is wound up gradually and culminates unexpectedly. The colourful supporting characters (especially Shifty's veritable parade of odd-ball customers) and witty dialogue keep the film light and airy while the compelling script (written by and based on the real life observations of director Eran Creevy) combined with excellent acting by the entire cast truly deliver the underlying message. As one of the first two inaugural projects of the Film London Microwave project, which challenges London-based filmmakers to shoot a full-length feature film on no more than £100,000, Shifty exemplifies the true potential of a micro-budget film. Creevy has a background in promos and commercials but his first feature clearly proves that he is someone to watch.

NB: Shifty is released in London 24/04. Other films of note released on the same day are The Grocer's Son and Werner Herzog's Encounters At The End Of The World.

While the fathers of sci-fi Jules Verne and HG Wells made the improbable seem possible, Werner Herzog travels to the furthest fringe of the possible, and then captures it on film. Predictably, Encounters At The End Of The World is a film about extremes. Journeying to the earth's southernmost continent, the director explores Antarctica armed only with cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger and a camera, to record the scientists, divers, and spiritualists wandering the frozen desert plains. With only seven weeks to conceive and complete the project, Herzog often met his interview subjects only minutes before he began shooting them. "I know that deep inside you are a poet" he says to an iceberg geologist, "Tell me about the iceberg, and tell me about your dreams". Here, strangely, scientific reality is the stuff of dreams; seals are bagged and "milked", cell biologists stage a music concert on ice, and a lone penguin marches to certain death. Naturally Herzog's presentation of his subject is more lyrical than technical, but this aside there is just something about a massive great iceberg that gets even the empiricists in the gut. Visually stunning and characteristically eccentric.

NB: Encounters At The End Of The World is released in London on 24/04. Other films of note released on the same day are The Grocer's Son and Shifty.

Once upon a time there were three little boys... One day -- in July of 1981 to be precise -- they went to the cinema and their lives were changed forever; and, no, they didn't meet someone called Charlie! Instead of just playing at Indiana Jones, Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb loved Raiders Of The Lost Ark so much that they agreed to remake the movie shot-for-shot. It only took seven years. Get this straight, this is not like Gus Van Sant remaking Psycho (1998), this is three boys, in their spare time (i.e. avoiding homework), in their own back yard, in the Mississippi, with their pocket money, lovingly going far beyond the call of fan-duty. It's all there, the boulder rolling after Jones, the ark, even Belloq. Don't you wonder how they're going to get the sub, the bit with the snakes or the famous fight scene with the truck? Oh, and Steven Spielberg, no less, has been inspired by it. If you're a fan of things lo-fi and homemade, not to mention Indy fans, then this may satiate the thirst that Crystal Skull didn't. Now even the fans will have fans... We just wonder what their mom's thought? And did they get their homework done on time?

This work was originally presented in The Place Prize 2006 as B For Body, receiving the Audience Vote and winning over judge Brian Eno, who claimed that it was the only time he'd found contemporary dance funny. A Southbank Centre commission resulted in the development of Dear Body, a wry and satirical examination of our fixation with body image. Luca Silvestrini's award-winning company, Protein, have tackled many modern neuroses during their 10-year assault on the contemporary dance world, from binge drinking in Publife (2002) to consumer greed in Big Sale (2005). They have earned a reputation as a slick ensemble, presenting innovative choreography and darkly humorous works. One of the highlights of Dear Body is the presence of Sally Marie, who was shortlisted for Dance Europe's Best Female Performer in 2007. Playing the central role of an insecure woman searching for the body beautiful, her enigmatic and eccentric performance is both roaringly funny and achingly tender as she is put through gruelling exercise regimes and bizarre beauty treatments. With video animation by Rachel Davies and additional amateur performances from a community group, this multi-faceted work is engaging and effortlessly watchable.

NB: Dear Body is performed on both 28/04 and 29/04. Also of note in dance is William Forsythe: Focus On Forsythe which runs all over London from now till 10/05.

Following a very successful turn at the Pompidou Centre earlier this year, the Timothy Taylor Gallery has revealed new work by master industrial designer Ron Arad, while a few clicks away the Carpenters Workshop Gallery shows some of his more familiar pieces in a survey exhibition of his earlier career. In his Pompidou retrospective No Discipline Arad's skill as a designer across a multitude of forms, shapes and spaces was clear as he completely modelled the graffitied space with form, text, audio-visual installations and light, engulfing visitors in a world of architectural and industrial design from his celebrated innovative seating to architectural commissions. The retrospective travels to MoMA later this year, returning to Europe in 2010 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

While the selection at Carpenter's Workshop Gallery serves as a good reminder for Londoners of Arad's most celebrated designs, the focus is strictly on his ergonomic seating. At Timothy Taylor, Arad's new work is a mix of his latest experimentations in seating as well as new forms of function friendly avant-garde design. Arad preserves his signature elegant balance between sturdy function and precarious form with the juxtaposition of Drunk Bodyguards and Bodyguards, a seemingly super-modern version of his curved chairs that either stay rooted or sway "to the lightest of touches". The showpiece however is undoubtedly Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends, a shelving unit in the shape of the United States, complete with state-line divisions. At the opening reception the unit was left empty, leaving the polished surface as a stand-out beautiful object in its own right. Unless they've filled it again, see it here to get a feel for the piece's function too.

NB: the Timothy Taylor show runs till 09/05 and the Carpenters Workshop show runs till 02/05. On 29/04 (7pm) at Timothy Taylor catch Ron Arad in conversation with Antony Gormley (tickets are available on the door and on a first-come first-serve basis).

Most girls are familiar with the pleasures and pitfalls of female friendships, including artists and firm friends Daisy de Villeneuve and Natasha Law. For their first joint exhibition, they examine the highs and lows of feminine camaraderie. Law uses household paint on aluminium to produce glossy, seductive nudes with a linear edge and a polished pop finish reminiscent of Gary Hume's door series. Plus Law's first close-up portrait, OK, Alright (2009), is exhibited with a new series of cut-outs on glass. Law illustrates personal anecdotes of female friends, including a study of a girl being sick in the toilet, which brings to mind Toulouse-Lautrec's intimate studies of Femme a sa toilette. De Villeneuve, whose graphic illustrations you may recognise from Top Shop or London Fashion Week or Absolut Vodka, has produced a series of delicate Indian ink drawings of a fictional character and her accessories including an extravagant gold ring, Sex In The City's famous cocktail the cosmopolitan, and a charm necklace with a broken heart inscribed with "Best Friends". De Villeneuve's drawings recall the fashion illustrations of the pre-pop Andy Warhol, and they make an irresistible combination with Law's depictions of the noughties woman.

NB: runs till 02/05.

If one word sums up Jack Strange's exhibition at Limoncello, it's creatures. We are creatures, says Strange, but there are other ways of being creatures. On three video monitors, individuals repeat the same monologue, drunkenly struggling through an existential set of ideas about inside and outside, living and speaking, the burdens of humanity. Strange has also collected all his toenail clippings and arranged them so they look almost like birds or fish scales in a piece called Keep Going, Keep Growing, Keep Cutting, Keep Swimming (2009); he has also chewed through comic books and chucked them at the ceiling so they stick and smeared his blood on the windows. He has made a yeti-like creature from shredded paper, who appears to look at a piece of artwork with its baby in a piece called: "Hey, see that?! Yeah that's what I reckon as well" (2009). In The Pines is a weird show about a playful place we don't fully understand. But we want to go there. And, sorry, we just can't resist mentioning it -- such a good name for an artist.

NB: runs till 02/05.

Ellen Gallagher's paintings are disquietingly handsome objects, emerging out of a murky sea of paint, historical reference and collage. Swimming in this algae green water are often mutant sea creatures, half-fish half-human, which Gallagher has previously imagined as the watery souls of black slaves who died during sea transport. These creatures sometimes appear to have been attacked by a kind of afro funk, a delicious raging power, although most often appear morbidly and woefully eerie. Many of Gallagher's works on paper at SLG of delicate drawing, intricate lace-like cut-out sections and paint, are displayed in glass cases, so you can walk around and see paint bleeding through the paper on both sides, a creeping, seeping force. An Experiment Of Unusual Opportunity (2008), from which this exhibition takes its name, is based on a number of documents relating to the shockingly recent Tuskegee Experiment (1932 - 1972), in which 399 black, male syphilis sufferers died in clinical trials, because they were experimented on instead of cured. Like Gallagher's imaginings of slaves who died at sea, this painting holds its subjects in a dark soupy limbo. An all round shivery experience.

NB: runs till 03/05. Also of note at SLG is the UK premiere of William Forsyth's Additive Inverse, which is part of Sadler's Wells Focus On Forsythe season which runs till 10/05.

The biggest pain of private views is the kind of conversations one finds oneself having; every one is serious or earnest, but you never know if it's real. How to appear serious? Just catch our politicians at work. But if you wish to consider the appearance of seriousness, then head to North London. Partly inspired by the ideas of Gavin Butt, and despite this show's subtitle, "exploring sincerity", playful seriousness or serious playfulness seems to be the underlying trait of this collection of cool videos. First, we are confronted by Haorld Offeh trying hard to maintain a smile over 34 minutes -- it seems more the result of rigor mortis than pleasure. In the rear, Oriana Fox's dresses in all her clothes Joey-style, strolls through Marseille, and undresses at the top of a hill. Katie Davies' film is a stand-up comedian being not very funny. Contributions from Juneau Projects, David Blandy, among others, touch on different aspects of "sincerity". For video, this is both light-hearted but intensely serious; yet Arts Depot is situated over a bus depot, now take that seriously...

NB: runs till 03/05. On 02/05 (7pm) catch a talk with some of the participating artists.

A stunning cast, led by Ken Stott as Eddie Carbone, adeptly highlights the revulsion and inescapable tension that Arthur Miller's writing inspires. The main thrust of the play, whilst predictable, is beautifully teased out by Stott and Hayley Atwell, who plays an occasionally overtly naive Catherine. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio vibrates with repressed torment as the humiliated Beatrice and Harry Lloyd is resplendent as Rodolpho, marrying vivacious boyishness with a knowing sense of his own appeal to both sexes. Gerard Monaco is the perfect foil as Marco, lending a heavy sense of gravity to the production. It is Stott, however, who rightfully steals the show, as the audience plays horrified observer to his infuriating and dogged self-destruction. Director Lindsay Posner has sensibly focused attention on the onstage action rather than the staging. The bleak Brooklyn street gives little impression of the community that will ultimately condemn Eddie Carbone, but is nonetheless expertly manipulated to display the shabby house extolled for its luxury by the Sicilian immigrants. This is a play in which it is vital that protagonists are drawn as keepers of their own fate; and this is a production which achieves precisely that.

NB: runs till 19/05.

Having recently bottled the visages of the politically correct with its production of England People Very Nice, the NT continues to brandish its artistic licence with Rufus Norris' production of Nobel-Prize winning Wole Soyinka's play, Death And The King's Horseman. Equally scattered with racially contentious elements, the play includes the so-called "whiting up" of members of the all-black cast playing white colonials. Set in 1940s Nigeria and based on a true story, we follow the king's horseman, Elesin, and watch as the colonial response to his intended ritual suicide in honour of his king's death threatens the survival of his tribe. Dealing with the delicate complexities of cultural interference, the play bolds and italicizes the plague of post-Iraq Britain -- is the Westerner, in an act of cruel kindness, saving an ill-educated barbarism, or is our intervention ill-educated interference, an attack on a culture that we simply don't have the vocabulary to understand? Expertly choreographed by Javier de Frutos, the production is a melange of stirring story, song, and dance performed by a passionate ensemble that show you Africa through Africa's eyes.

NB: runs till 17/06.

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.

If you want to tell us about an upcoming event please do so by sending an email to: events@kultureflash.net. We receive many emails and thus please realise that sadly we cannot reply to all of them. Every single email receives attention and we will contact you if we need anything further. Please note that KultureFlash is not a listings ezine and we do not receive any payment from venues, artists, managers or promoters.

Please send all press releases, invites, books and CDs to:

KultureFlash Ltd.
52 Cranmer Court
Whitehead's Grove
London SW3 3HW