He’s just Ken. But, Ryan Gosling and Mandy Moore, Jack Cole has a name too. 10

Dance · Film
Jack Cole (1911-1974) creator of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”
was so bad-assed you’d think people would show respect. Instead, one of American-dance’s most original creators was stolen from, even in his lifetime–and he knew it.

Nineteen million people watched, on Sunday night, when, at the 96th Oscar Award ceremony, actor Ryan Gosling, looking hot in hot pink (“Barbie pink,” as it has come to be known), sashayed onto the stage of the Dolby Theater, mike in hand, and charmed the room in a rousing round of Oscar-nominated song, “I’m Just Ken.”

Then he danced. Kind of. He moved with grace and confidence, waving his pink-gloved hand as he fit in among a gang of guys who slithered in sleek hip-hop unison stepping. The energy was high and while it was a bit of a mess to view via camera, the reaction in the Dolby audience left no doubt that, in person, the effect was electric.

Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” was uniformly called the runaway hit of the Oscars broadcast (The New York Times next-day headline: “How ‘I’m Just Ken’ Won the Oscars Without Winning an Actual Oscar”). Perspicacious viewers noted, in real time, that the number rested on several judiciously borrowed motifs and memes from Jack Cole‘s “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend,” itself the jewel in the crown of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). It also borrowed from Busby Berkeley in its use of an overhead shot with dancers scurrying around holding face masks of Barbie — quoting from “I Only Have Eyes for You” Berkeley’s number in Dames (1934) featuring the many heads of Ruby Keeler in Berkeleyesque patterns.

But back to “Diamonds.” Because that’s the problem. The name Busby Berkeley falls trippingly off tongues. Jack Cole’s does not.

The first giveaway was the staging of “I’m Just Ken” on a cropped pink staircase, as did Cole, using red, for “Diamonds.” Cole often used structures like staircases in his film choreography (others: ladders, ramps, boxes, even sliding boards) in order to exploit every inch of the film frame’s real estate.

“I’m Just Ken”‘s male dancers, like Cole’s in “Gentlemen,” wear red sashes as “Ambassadors.” The fact that the tuxedo-clad men surrounding Marilyn Monroe (there, I’ve said her name) are playing ambassadors was relayed to me by George Chakiris, who was one of them.

read the full story
leave a comment

Three ‘wows’ and ten years of arts leadership from Thor Steingraber 1

Architecture & Design · Dance · Ideas & Opinion · Music

ed. note: This story by arts journalist Debra Levine, commissioned by the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts, is printed with permission.

“Three wows” sold Thor Steingraber on The Soraya. Steingraber’s long interview process in the fall of 2013 and winter of 2014 to become top executive of Cal State Northridge’s newish theater culminated in a site visit. As he marks ten years as The Soraya’s executive and artistic director, he remembers this moment as his first “wow.” Driving toward the then-named Valley Performing Arts Center, Steingraber saw California sunlight refracting golden hues from the symmetrical structure’s glass walls. He was smitten.

Stepping into The Soraya lobby, he had his second “wow.” A high-ceilinged, airy space anchored in natural stone and tile, it evoked a church, on that day, equally as hushed. Under Steingraber’s aegis, a lively town square would evolve in the lobby, buzzing with community conversation before and after shows, and during intermissions. 

The third “wow” proved the dealmaker—it came in the auditorium itself. A longtime man of the theater having worked at two of the nation’s largest performing arts centers, Steingraber had also, for twenty years, directed opera in many a marvelous theater around the world. But sitting in The Soraya brought an epiphany. “I went up to the best seat in the house, Loge level center,” Steingraber remembers. “It is a full-on view—the sweet spot for a photograph. And I’m thinking, this place is incredible.” His purview encompassed a gracefully sloping, 1,700-seat concert hall in four tiers, with long opera boxes gracing both sides. Wall panels of stainless-steel mesh interspersed with curving wooden ribbons draw the eye toward the stage.

“It’s not a flashy building,” says Steingraber downplaying the simple beauty. “It’s just a building that got it right.” He lost little time in launching a torrent of performances: those appealing to broadly diverse audiences; those syncing with CSUN’s wide-ranging educational mission; and Steingraber’s greatest pride, top-notch original Soraya productions like DIAVOLO’s recent Existencia—more “arts happenings” than “shows.”  

Thus, the youthful, Chicago-born, Indiana University and Harvard-educated Steingraber—plugged-in, high-energy, exacting—took a job he seemed destined to fulfill. His mantle includes programming (with Justin Souza of his staff), as well as instilling the intricate web of management systems that makes a fine theater hum. That part of the job has been very demanding: “The building was only three years old,” he says, “and I had to create all the business functions from scratch—the parking, loading dock, security, concessions, backstage operations, front-of-house operations, ticket operations, hospitality, marketing, every aspect of it.”  Only the strong would survive. “It was a daunting task,” he admits, “and that feeling has almost never left.”

Steingraber shepherded the venue’s name change in 2017 when philanthropists Younes and Soraya Nazarian and the Nazarian family, in recognition of the worthiness of programs and audiences served, endowed the future of the venue with a seventeen-million-dollar gift.

read the full story
leave a comment

Key ingredient in Ebony Rep’s STEW? Family!

Theater
She’s equal parts Mildred Pierce, Julia Child, and Danai Gurira. She’s in her muu-muu with house slippers. Her hair is wrapped, and she’s cooking. She’s Greta Oblesby, playing “Mama,” in a marvelous, alive production of Zora Howard’s Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted play, STEW. Newly produced by Ebony Repertory Theater and directed by Jade King Carroll, it’s now ...

Spend National Women’s Month in the dunes

Film
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Oscar-nominated erotic drama, Woman in the Dunes, to be screened in multiple Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles. Actually, the film was nominated in two separate years. In 1964, when it won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, it was one of the ...

REVIEW: Chilly Nimoy night warmed by jazz duo Goldings & Koonse

Music · Reviews
by 
photo credit: bob barry It’s a quiet Saturday night on Westwood Boulevard, and all that’s left of the latest rainstorm is a light mist. The Nimoy Theater marquee is the brightest thing on the street, and it draws some people inside. Organist Larry Goldings and guitarist Larry Koonse are playing jazz duets tonight, under the ...

From Fahey-Klein, Agnes Varda photography

Film · Visual arts
Cuba, Men on Skates, January, 1963Silver Gelatin Photograph, Ed. 2/513 1/16 x 19 15/16 inchesSigned, stamped, titled, dated, numbered, Signed by Estate Executor, Estate stamped versoSigned by Agnes Varda La Terrasse du Corbusier, Marseille, France, 1956Silver Gelatin Photograph, Ed. of 10Signed by Agnès Varda, titled, dated, numbered, Signed by Estate Executor, Estate stamped verso11 3/4 ...

‘A Week of French Language Cinema’ is a good week!

Film
Some call it “Francophonie.” Others call it “la belle langue.” All we know is it just feels nice on the world-weary brain to allow the dulcet tone of francais into your ears — if only for a few hours. For the fifteenth year straight, in collaboration with the Consulates General of Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, France, ...

The many modes of Chita Rivera

Dance
Let’s watch this great dancer/entertainer, Chita Rivera (1933-2024), do her thing in her 2005 show “The Dancer’s Life,” in which she pays homage to her choreographers, Jack Cole, Peter Gennaro, Bob Fosse, and Jerome Robbins. It is a brilliant montage impeccably performed. Rivera found this luminous path to continue to share her gifts well into ...

TCM: Turner Classic Mishpocha

Film
At the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel a cocktail reception celebrating 30 years of Turner Classic Movies: TCM. A classy affair with a real family feeling. Mishpocha, in Yiddish, means “family.” One was struck, in attending Turner Classic Movies‘ 30th anniversary gathering, January 12, 2024, at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel, that, beyond the ...

Musica Angelica to honor Richard Colburn with mighty Bach St Matthew Passion performance

Music
Last month we visited the welcoming campus of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles for a rousing and very spiritual rendition of Yuval Ron’s “Rumi’s Wedding,” an inspiring mashup of Jewish, Christian and Muslim music and dance. Now the esteemed church will host a performance of the life-affirming Baroque music-masterpiece, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, ...