After darkness falls at 7.45 sharp, the voice of Miranda Richardson, in character as the titular white witch of "Lily" from 1993's The Red Shoes, recites Vedic imprecations from the centuries-oldGayatri Mantra ("O thou who givest sustenance to the universe, from whom all things proceed, to whom all things return, unveil to us the face of the true spiritual sun hidden by a disc of golden light, that we may know the truth and do our whole duty as we journey to thy sacred feet...") and that song's almost hip hop beat thumps and bumps out into the auditorium, the living, breathing Kate Bush – and yes, this is only the first time that you pinch yourself in disbelief that you're actually seeing her as a flesh and blood human being, and it won't be the last – sashays in from the wings at the head of a casual quasi-conga formed by her backing singers.
A whole mountain of covertly misogynist bollocks has been written in the run-up to the Before The Dawn residency, with much snickering about whether at 56, and inevitably fuller of figure than her willowy 'Wuthering Heights' self, she would still be pulling those Lindsay Kemp-tutored interpretive dance moves. One dinosaur even wrote that to do so would be "unbecoming".
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