BALLET is no longer something to be seen only in London - and not just because the famous companies now tour.

Regional groups have been established in the last fifty years so that lovers of the dance can indulge an interest restricted formerly to music or infrequent trips to the UK capital.

Independent Ballet Wales is making a name for itself as a modern interpreter of the classics with such favourites as Sleeping Beauty, which it brings to Abergavenny Borough Theatre on Friday and Saturday, June 4 and 5, at 7.30pm (box office 01873 850805).

Look out, too, for Northern Ballet Theatre's Swan Lake at the New Theatre, Cardiff, from June 15 to Jun 19 (box office 02920 878889).

Touring by musicians mostly operating in and around London has brought the capital's famous names to the rest of Britain, not least saxophonist Art Themen, who appears at the Congress Theatre, Cwmbran, on June 12 with Bluesy Susie (box office 01633 868239).

Themen is much-travelled along the M4 corridor, having done a lot to invigorate the SE Wales jazz scene as he does with distinction in London in such bands as Stan Tracey's.

Writer Helene Hanff did the impossible in making a play about a secondhand bookshop, normally a place in which the most dramatic happening is the sight of the scarf-clad owner spilling tea over a first edition.

Her autobiographical play 84 Charing Cross Road is about the romance she shared with a London bookseller, most of it conducted by transatlantic letters in the best bookworm tradition.

Directed by James Roose-Evans, who has adapted the original from Hanff's book, it comes to Cardiff New Theatre for a week from June 8, starring Rula Lenska and William Gaunt.

On June 10, Monday drama workshop students - all adults - at Blackwood Miners Institute present the fruits of their exertions with a performance of Teechers by John Godber, an hilarious peek at a typical last day of term at school (box office 01495 227206).

An exhibition by famous Greek artist Alecos Fassianos has been wowing visitors to St David's Hall, Cardiff. Many of the fifty works on paper combine the imagery of antiquity with the lines and broad colour areas of Matisse. The show on Level 2 (admission free) hangs till June 12.