Dance

Gathered Together 22, Tramway, Glasgow, July 6-9

After a two year enforced break, inclusive dance organisation Independ-dance returns to Glasgow with its four day mini-festival featuring a range of performances, workshops and film screenings. Independ-dance’s Young 1z and its adult company both perform, Barrowland Ballet’s Wolfpack undertake a piece called Monument and in a packed programme there are further performances by companies from Taiwan, Colombia and Germany. The closing night features former Scottish Ballet principal Eve Mutso performing with paraplegic dancer Joel Brown. Their piece is called 111, the number of vertebrae the pair have between them.

Gig

Courtney Marie Andrews, July 5, Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh

Ahead of autumn’s new album Loose Future, the Grammy-nominated singer has been showcasing new work which takes her away from her country-tinged Americana roots and into more textured and experimental work. Sounds interesting. Here she rounds off a seven date UK tour – the sort people like to call ‘whistlestop’ – with a date at Edinburgh’s atmospheric Voodoo Rooms.

Book

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, out in paperback July 7 (Penguin, £9.99)

Possibly one of American literary fiction’s best kept secrets, Boston-born Amor Towles is the author of just two previous novels, 2011’s Rules Of Civility and 2016’s A Gentleman In Moscow. The second, set against the background of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Stalinist Terror which followed, took Towles to the sort of bestseller status which soon has film producers circling – which is exactly what happened. In this case it was Kenneth Branagh, who was reported to have signed on for a mini-series. Novel number three also has a historical setting: the year is 1954, 18-year-old Emmett has just finished a prison term and is setting off with his brother Billy to find their mother. Of course things don’t go quite to plan.

Cinema

Brian And Charles, out on Friday

This leftfield mockumentary was a hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and stars occasional Ricky Gervais sidekick David Earl as Brian, a shambling-but-loveable inventor living in rural isolation in Wales. He builds strange contraptions such as a belt that doubles as an egg carrier, but they always fail because they are utterly useless. Almost always, anyway. One that does work, against all the odds, is a robot Brian builds from a discarded washing machine and the head of a mannequin. He calls it Charles and, as Charles learns English and becomes obsessed with cabbages, an unlikely friendship forms. The director is first-timer Jim Archer and also in the cast is Louise Brealey, aka Molly Hooper from Sherlock.

Festival

TRNSMT Glagsow Green, Glasgow, from Friday

Glasgow’s three-day festival of music returns, with weekend tickets and some single day tickets still available. Friday’s headliner is local boy Paulo Nutini who’s joined on the bill by Sam Fender, Nile Rodgers And Chic and The Bootleg Beatles among others. Headzlining the King Tut’s stage is Beabadoobee, who limbered up for TRNSMT with a storming set at Glastonbury. Further down the bill but well worth a watch is up-and-coming local artist kitti.