As Resident Company at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, Random Dance have a reputation to uphold not just their own artistic standards to the highest quality but that of the one of the most high-profile dance venues in the world.  Led by Wayne McGregor, the name Random Dance has become synonymous with crossing contemporary dance with film, visual art, science, computer technology and biological science.

Their latest production is FAR.  Working with cognitive psychologists to innovate a new choreographic language agent (is the simplest way that I can describe it), this piece has some of the most strikingly choreographed practices that has been seen on the stage recently.  In point of fact, all of the elements of FAR are individually striking - the lighting, the score, it all leads to a crash-bang-wallop of contemporary dance.  It certainly is dazzling.

There is no questioning McGregor's ability as a choreographer, and FAR is the perfect example of how a talented dance troupe can execute the most anticipated of steps.  Each point is played to perfection and each body moves into each step knowing how it will end up in three or four steps time.  This is the language of dance.

FAR opened at Sadler's Wells, London on 17 November and is on a national and international tour.

Sportspeople hold a unique place among the pantheon of contemporary household names.  It is difficult to imagine with today's overpaid and overexposed nouveau riche starlets but there was a time when a sportsperson could embody the very spirit of the nation.  In 1936, a 22 year old Joe Louis was knocked out in round twelve against the German Max Schmeling, hero to the emerging National Socialist regime and Aryan poster boy.  At that point Louis was still an undefeated challenger (in fact he would only be knocked down two further times in a career lasting another fifteen years).

Louis symbolised the liberated negro to the US at the time.  His sober, embattling style of boxing was an antithesis between the flamboyance of Jack Johnson (who became the first African American heavyweight champion in 1908) and Muhammed Ali of the 1970s.  His family were hit hard by the Great Depression and Louis grew up in near poverty.  The son of emancipated slaves, he suffered from a speech impediment, his father was committed to a mental institution and the family were routinely ambushed by the Ku Klux Klan.

Louis's hard-working, clean-living and generous style led to a softening in the mass media of his ethnic background and, at the time of the Schmeling fight, was the personification of a nation modestly picking itself up after the nationwide recession.

The USA has always been a strong boxing country, the embattled fighter representing the American Dream.  The Schmeling fight was seen as an anomaly and a great upset.  In 1938, one year to the day that Louis became heavyweight champion and with war looming, he fought in a rematch with Schmeling.  The fight was said to have the largest single audience for a radio broadcast with an estimated audience of seventy million.  There would be no stopping Louis, and Schmeling was knocked out three times - the last for good - in the first round.  With Hitler's armies marching into Austria only months previously, Louis was the American omen.

He died in 1981 a pauper.  I don't have the space to tell you about his career or his multiple affairs with stars including Lana Turner and Lena Horne, his war days or how and why his funeral was paid for, anonymously at the time, by Frank Sinatra.  Truly, both a direct symbol and enigma.  Historian Randy Roberts has fashioned from this rags to riches to rags story something truly memorable, and a fitting piece for a great man.

Joe Louis: Hard Times Man by Randy Roberts (2010) is published in the UK by Yale University Press.

What can you say about a composer, musician, multi-instrumentalist, civil rights campaigner, human rights activist and politician?  Inspirational seems a little inadequate but is right on the money to describe FELA!, recently opened at London's National Theatre, having transferred from Broadway with three Tony Awards, an Obie for our devoted lead, and rave reviews, including one from the New York Times' Ben Brantley proudly proclaiming that "There has never been anything like this."

Which may or may not be true.  Hair, recently closed after a West End revival had Sixties audiences dancing in the aisles (calm down, it was part of the plot) had similar superlatives thrown at it - but that is not to deny that FELA! is a magical musical experience.

Fela Kuti lived a colourful life, made music that shook the world and a political activism that resulted in his very own communal compound within Nigeria called Kalakuta Republic.  There is his arrest, persecution, the murder of his mother by soldiers in a midnight raid and dancing - lots and lots of dancing.  Fela, played extraordinarily by Sahr Ngaujah who also sings, dances and plays the trumpet and saxophone, has a charisma that it is near impossible to shake yourself from, especially with an Afrobeat soundtrack that is as visually and aurally affective as it is infectious.

This is a musical revolution, an onslaught that breaks traditional barriers between the stage and audience.  Turner Prize and Cannes-winner Steve McQueen is following up his debut feature Hunger with a big-screen adaptation of FELA! for release next year.  I find it very difficult to find a true definition of the word 'sensational', but I know it when I see it and this is it.

FELA! opened at the National Theatre, London, on 17 November and will be broadcast live to selected cinemas nationwide on 13 January 2011.