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Previews: Basketball with spin!
metromagazine19/ 5/2006
BASKETBALL legends the Harlem Globetrotters will showcase their
impressive skills at the MEN Arena this weekend.
For seven years, the exhibition squad has toured the world, taking
on teams with their own brand of athleticism, comedy and
gravity-defying basketball.
The Globetrotters began as a serious competitive team in the US in
the 1920s, made up of African-American players, but gradually
fine-tuned its comedy routines until they became known more for
entertainment than sport.
Over the years, it has put on more than 20,000 exhibition games in
more than 100 countries.
Expect lots of slam-dunks, spinning balls, no-look passes and
incredible balance and co-ordination.
The Harlem Globetrotters will be at the MEN Arena tonight
(Friday). Tickets are priced £12.50-£30.
TAKE That wear white suits in the promo pictures for their
current reunion tour, right, which sort of gives the impression
they have risen from the dead.
In a way they have. Back in 1996 when they broke up, things had
been going quickly downhill. Robbie had left six months before and,
while popular among teenage girls and on Canal Street, the other
band members were generally treated as figures of fun and disdain
by the rest of the population.
The Samaritans set up a helpline, but there was the feeling that
their time had passed. Now, a decade later, everyone loves them
again, even without Robbie, and tickets to the new tour sold out in
nanoseconds.
So what has changed? Well, two things. Firstly, their success
spawned hundreds of imitators that were, unbelievably, twice as bad
- making Take That seem quite good. Manufactured pop stars have now
become the norm. Secondly, the band is now seen through the
rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia.
Teenage girls were to blame for their rise to fame, but it's the
30-somethings they have become who will be screaming at the MEN
arena.
Take That The Ultimate Tour is at the MEN Arena tomorrow (Saturday), Sunday and Monday. They are at the City of Manchester Stadium next month.
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