In a New York state of mind … with Henning Rubsam 1

Dance · Fashion
This New York/New York anecdote comes from our Facebook friend, Henning Rübsam, the artistic Director/Choreographer of SENSEDANCE: Back in NYC. Last night at the MET watching ABT … “Are you in fashion?,” the old lady sitting next to me started the conversation. “Always in fashion. But professionally I am a choreographer,” I answered. “My nephew ...

Chillin’ with a ballerina by a babbling brook

Dance
  Diaghilev hung around Venice’s Lido Beach with Lifar. Balanchine cooked Sunday dinners for his favorites. Ballet impresarios need down time. If they genuinely enjoy their artistic charges, they hang around with them on their day off. Here’s the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet artistic and executive director duo, Tom Mossbrucker and Jean-Philippe Malaty, on a ...

Jack Cole’s magic for Mitzi Gaynor on view in rare screening of “The I Don’t Care Girl” by UCLA Film & Television Archive August 4. Gaynor to appear in-person. 7

Dance · Film
I am very pleased to announce my participation in a truly wonderful celebration of dance on film at the Billy Wilder Theater In Westwood on Saturday August 4, 2012. It’s sponsored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. On that night, as a community, we will view the rare and out-of-circulation Twentieth Century Fox movie ...

Determined design discipline behind Diavolo’s daring dance-wheel

Architecture & Design · Dance
A group of Penn State Architecture and Engineering students spent the year designing and building the 12’8″-tall-by-17′-wide “Dance Vehicle-01” in an interdisciplinary studio built around a collaboration with renowned Los Angeles-based Diavolo Dance Theater. An exercise in the interplay of movement and devices, “The Secret Life of Public Spaces” studio resulted from a $251,670 grant ...

Oh la la! Jack Cole’s “Les Girls” from “Les Girls” (1957) 1

Dance · Film
The (by then) hugely experienced dance-on-film man Jack Cole choreographed the brilliant dance sequences in “Les Girls,” a movie musical directed by George Cukor in 1957. “Les Girls” is included in the upcoming TCM broadcast “Choreography by Jack Cole” on Turner Classic Movies September 10, 2012. I will co-host the evening with Robert Osborne. “Les ...

Review: BodyTraffic at the Gindi 1

Dance · Reviews
Did you feel the earthquake that rocked the top of the 405 Freeway near Mulholland Drive Thursday night? Oh, you missed it? It was the tremor of excitement when BodyTraffic, Los Angeles’s newest and best entry into the contemporary dance universe, shook the stage of the University of Judaism’s Gindi Auditorium. The ten-member troupe, co-directed ...

Dirty laundry courtesy Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre

Dance
Dance maker Heidi Duckler, who shakes us out of our passive theater-going habits and drags us around our own city, brings her landmark site-specific work, Laundromatinee, to the La Brea Coin-Op. These shows come on the [dirty] heels of Duckler’s ambitious Cleopatra CEO, a baroque corporate-opera set in the ghostly but seventies-resplendid executive offices of ...

Traffic getting heavy near Mulholland Drive. BodyTraffic on board!

Dance
In flagrant disregard of its own name, BODYTRAFFIC, the Los Angeles contemporary dance company, is racing ahead. So we wrote in the Los Angeles Times about Southern California’s sleek repertory dance ensemble. Indeed our local dance troupe BODYTRAFFIC will transfer a slate of cool contemporary choreography across the country to the Joyce Theater — the ...

Gene from Pittsburgh 1

Dance
I’ve  been spending a lot of time with Gene Kelly for the past week. It’s a good feeling. We’re from the same home town. Kelly was a huge movie star. The only other dancer to reach that level was Fred — not from Pittsburgh. Read my story on The Huffington Post.

Happy 100th Gene Kelly! Love, Oscar 2

Dance · Film
A parade of Technicolor-tinged dance sequences enchanted a full house at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater Thursday night. “A Centennial Tribute to Gene Kelly,” the first of a two-part event hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored the beloved dancer-choreographer-director in this most effective manner — by screening his sensational dance clips. ...