Michael Hayden neon sculpture to pop once more on Pershing Square 1
Generators of the Cylinder , 1982, Michael Hayden. 270′ x 11′, Cylinders: 4′ x 4′ x 2′, Infrared sensors, holographically etched polycarbonate, stainless steel panels and neon lights Michael Hayden’s iconic light sculpture, “Generators of the Cylinder,” an ultra-bright neon rainbow, will be re-lit for the first time in nearly a decade during a special ...
Classical music meets Burmese art courtesy of Jacaranda
A beautiful fundraiser had an unusual focus when Jacaranda, the decade-old Los Angeles contemporary classical music series, hosted an exquisite program of chamber music in a super-cool private home on a recent autumnal Sunday. Rarely viewed works of contemporary Burmese art lent visual, cultural, even political, impact to the event. Jacaranda board chairman Thomas Aujero ...
Ted VanCleave’s tough photographic vision of Los Angeles 2
I deeply respond to photographer Ted VanCleave’s recent “Concrete Porn ~ Buildings & Bridges” series, a visual homage to that most unyielding of building mediums, concrete. “My love of concrete architecture began when I visited the Pantheon in Rome. I was in awe of the beautiful, massive concrete dome which is still the world’s largest ...
Review: Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre’s “Dancing at Dunbar” 1
“It’s site-specific work, so feel free to walk around so you can see,” offered choreographer Heidi Duckler at the outset of Saturday night’s “Dancing at Dunbar” performance by Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre. In doing so, she encouraged her audience to remain active during the site-driven dance event. A full spectrum of Duckler fans and curiosity-seekers ...
Good God, Universal! Save Stage 28.
Does anyone have extra space in their basement or attic? Universal Pictures has something it needs to store … It’s the ornate set replicating the interior of the Paris Opera House (Palais Garnier) which now sits like a big immovable rock in Universal’s Sound Stage 28. The set, constructed in 1924 for filming silent-movie classic ...
Los Angeles (architecture) in the looking glass
Jul
21
2014
An interesting architecture talk on tap this week at LACMA concerns seventies-era reflecting glass architecture as it developed in Los Angeles, and then became a corporate vernacular through the 1980s. In the 1960s and ’70s, Los Angeles was home to an era of experimentation and new advances in art and technology. The Light and Space ...
Italian choreographer Dewey Dell’s “Marzo” smartly advances dance
At long last, something new, thank God. It took a cluster of young Italians to inject pop and sizzle into dance’s tired traditional proscenium-arch format, creating a “screen” within the frame, replicating the tiny rectangles into which most audience members gaze much of their day. And I think “Marzo” (Italian for “March”), a super flamboyant work ...
Phoenix arisen: visiting Venice’s historic La Fenice opera house
So thrilling to tour Teatro La Fenice, the historic opera house that sits at the center of the Italian arts city … and then to attend a wonderful, rocking Baroque music concert by the Festival Baroque Orchestra, performing under vigorous direction by violin virtuoso, Stefano Montanari, in one of the theater’s lovely music salons. Group ...
Steve Paxton lionized in Venice 3
In an incredibly generous and appropriate act of recognition, the International Dance Festival of the Venice Biennale last week honored American modern dancer Steve Paxton with one of the art world’s greatest accolades: the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Dance. The Biennale dance division, under the directorship of Virgilio Sieni, offered the following in praise ...
Biennale Dance Festival finds new humanity for art form
Venice’s enchanting waterways have given rise, lately, to political discord, when on June 4, Mayor Giorgio Orsoni and 30 fellow government officials were charged with corruption related to flood-control project Mose. But the converging Po and Piave Rivers will soon revert to a more customary role – acting as a fluid crossroads for a vanguard of ...