Temptations paid off

I've been tempted to see some wonderful visual and performing art this month - not my usual choices - and loved it all. As well as the relatively traditional Manet exhibition at the Royal Academy, brought vividly to life as ever by a Friday night curator's tour,  I was invited to the 'Dancing with Duchamps' season at the Barbican. It wouldn't have been my first choice but a friend, Margaret Leng Tan was playing Duchamp's friend and contemporary John Cage's 'White Walls' one evening so I definitely didn't want to miss that. Viewing the unexpectedly intriguing exhibition whilst listening to the eerie piano music made for a memorable time, as well as the bonus of a Merce Cunningham dance performance on the flat, white stage at the beginning of the evening.

And on the dancing front, a friend and I were lucky enough to have snapped up tickets to see Edward Watson at The Linbury at Covent Garden. He crawled and twisted his way through ' The Metamorphosis' in a quite extraordinary way. We didn't know quite what to expect but by the end of the just over an hour's performance, both the audience and the dancers, were totally exhausted. The smell of treacle, which was mixed with water to form the black and disgusting goo that spread all over him and the stage, was oddly sweet and homely, by contrast to the bleak tension of the performance.

And on the bleak tension front, I took my godson to see 'In the beginning was the end', performed at night, deep in the vaults and old basement  offices of Somerset House by that  inventive company, Dreamthinkspeak. As a site-specific production, it perfectly matched dusty and dark or blindingly lit corridors and corners with a story of obsessive, man- made creative world domination . We just had to have a drink afterwards to calm our nerves.

And on the calming front, where better to escape to than across the road to the new ME Hotel, to the rooftop bar which overlooks the whole of the South Bank. Another new experience and this one definitely to be repeated.