We didn’t make it through all of Ovo, Cirque du Soleil’s sweet-spirited show now infesting the Santa Monica beach — in a good way! After awhile, the insect parade started to bug us out. Exiting early, a tad weary, we left behind 1,998 others still cavorting in the colorful carnival.

Opening night in the big tent, which is now spawning its own civilization next to the Santa Monica Pier, was a party. The Cirque-ites broke down our resistance by cramming us, not unlike foraging bugs, with hors d’ouevres, cupcakes, and champagne.

Stuffed to satiation, we ourselves were then crammed into the big tent. So much fun to sit with that many people oohing and ahhing at the dazzling display — clowning, acrobatics, and flying trapeze.  

My favorite number, a relatively simple one, the  red lady bugs with heads budding stamen, lying flat on their backs while juggling slices of kiwi with their paddling feet. Don’t ask. It works. So adorable, fun, such sweet energy, and a feast for the eyes.

[[Show as slideshow]]

Cirque du Soleil | OVO | Santa Monica Pier | thru March 20

It was a wild & crazy cruise. Robert Osborne, usually a pretty tamped-down guy, skipped the light fantastic through the casino with Eva Maria Saint in tow. In this amazing shot by TCM photog, Ted Pio Roda, Ms. Saint, one of the silver screen’s most enduring method actors, looks not one day older than when she co-starred with Brando in “On the Waterfront.”

Read my story about the folks who made TCM Classic Cruise happen — and those who signed on for it. Read it on The Huffington Post.

[The photo demonstrates why some photographers have a great eye. Click on it for detail.]

_{Photo credit: Ted Pio Roda/TCM}

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE-2JSwKvgs

Chatting recently with the great Tony Award-winning choreographer Donald McKayle (Raisin, Sophisticated Ladies, Dr. Jazz), a professor emeritus at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UC Irvine, McKayle let drop that he had worked with Michael Jackson on two occasions. And he remembered one funny detail.

“He taught himself to dance,” said McKayle. “He could spin only to the right.”

This got a chuckle out of McKayle. Trained dancers, of course, in their classes, have to practice combinations and steps on both the left and right sides. But the autodidact Jackson was spared this discipline! 

“I worked with him and his brothers on the Ed Sullivan show. I worked [for Sullivan] filling in choreography if the acts showed up without their own,”

Pausing, then again laughing, McKayle added, “I did a lot in my career.”

“I also did a piece for [Michael Jackson] when he was 14. It was a song for a [television] special with Roberta Flack, Free to be You & Me. They were in the window seat of an old brown stone; we had a trampoline in there where they could bounce around. It was very sweet.”

UC Irvine is planning an homage to Donald McKayle next March 8, 2012 to celebrate the establishment of the Donald McKayle Endowment Fund for Modern Dance.

Keep posted for more on that. Such a great guy and a giant of dance.

[nb., we ran into trouble on this post, McKayle told me MJ spun to the right, but on the videos I see him spinning left~! Doing our best here! Cheers, enjoy~!]

Like this? Read more:

• A dance critic’s manifesto on Michael Jackson
• A dancer’s shoes

Like this? Read more:

• Enjoy arts·meme‘s entire “West Side Story” thread

We’re attending the Pacific Symphony performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9, considered one of his greatest works, a sweeping musical exposition of the composer’s innermost conflicts — a profound, lifelong fear of death and a deep yearning for the joys of life. Mahler never heard it performed, he died instead, leaving behind a tormented work which finally resolves in life affirmation.

Preceding the 8 pm curtain at  Segerstrom Concert Hall, a special pre-concert “playlet” conceived and written by our friend and teacher, Joseph Horowitz. The Gustav and Alma Show rolls out at 7 pm.

“I Beg You to Be Truthful!” — The Marriage of Gustav and Alma Mahler: A Self-Portrait in Letters
Written by Joseph Horowitz, featuring actors Nick Ullett and Jenny O’Hara. Based on: Gustav Mahler: Letters to his Wife, edited by Henry-Louis de La Grange and Günther Weiss in collaboration with Knud Martner. Cornell University Press.

We look forward to listening with ears, hearts, and minds to what Mahler, and Joe, want to tell us. 

Like this? Read more:

• Love Among the Geniuses

Like this? Read more:

• (round one) The line-up of geniuses behind “West Side Story”
• “West Side Story” cast goes to the bar. The ballet barre. 
• arts·meme‘s “West Side Story” thread

[click on image for better view]

The Nixon Theatre was the top game in town — the place where circa 1971 I saw naked people writhe on stage in “Hair.” Not surprisingly, the hard working Jack Cole once pounded its floorboards, playing a Hungarian gypsy in “Venus in Silk” in 1935.

I’m guessing that this operetta, a precursor to American musical theater, was a schmaltzy little nostalgia for the good ‘ole Austro-Hungarian empire …

There’s Jack, as Raki the gypsy, listed at the bottom of the roster. Well cast. To put it mildly, Cole, who picked up the habit from his time with Ruth St. Denis, was an early dance “internationalist.”

The name of Cole’s nightclub partner, Alice Dudley, whom he met in the Humphrey-Weidman troupe, appears right above his. Dancers? Are you getting this? Jack Cole and Alice Dudley danced in 1) modern dance, 2) night club and on 3) Broadway stage. There were no categories… they did it all!

The Internet auctioneer calls “Venus” a “rare flop” reflecting that the show opened in Pittsburgh on  October 1, 1935 as an out-of-town tryout and closed the following week in Washington, D.C., failing to arrive on Broadway.

The operetta had only had its debut in Zurich in 1932 — tough times in Europe for itsJewish composer Robert Stoltz. A timeline of Stoltz’s amazing career here. I remember my Hungarian boyfriend complaining about the  heavy diet of saccharine operettas he grew up on in Budapest. This must be the stuff he dreaded.

I do love how “Venus in Silk” is called, on the program, a “gay musical.” I bet it was.

Like this? Read more:

• Nijinsky danced in Pittsburgh
• Say a dance prayer for Gene Kelly in Pittsburgh
• Choreographer Kyle Abraham remembers Pittsburgh radio station (Los Angeles Times)

It’s the restaging at the Odyssey Theater in West Los Angeles of the one-woman show, “A Conversation with Edith Head.” Ms. Head, who was petite, loomed large as a cinema costumer. She first dressed actors in Wings (1927) and her swan song came in 1982, with Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. She is not about the share the stage with anyone.

Ms. Hedren, still gorgeous, will be in the audience watching. And what a wild time it will be because Head, the real gal, dressed the great Hitchcock blonde, both in The Birds and in Marnie (at right).

[Hey! Head, Hedren, Hitchcock, high Hollywood, what the heck...?]

The show, two tons of fun (we saw it last season at the El Portal in North Hollywood), is a labor of love, co-written by two creative women: arts·meme friend Paddy Calistro (it’s based on her Edith Head biography) and the Phoenix-based actress Susan Claassen.

In her six decades of costume design, Edith Head worked on over eleven hundred films; dressed the greatest stars of Hollywood; received 35 Academy Award® nominations, and won an unprecedented eight Oscars®.

A Conversation with Edith Head | Odyssey Theater | Oct 28 – Nov 13

_{thank you for the marnie photo, dr. macro}

Like this? Read more…

• Read up on Travis Banton, Edith Head’s boss and mentor at Paramount Studios. Banton’s arts·meme thread here.
  

World, could’ja please take it easy tomorrow?

Like this? Read more:

• What a guy! Harry Houdini.
• Following in Houdini’s penchant for the “site specific,” Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre has an outing in a parking lot in Glendale next weekend.

_{Photo courtesy of The Skirball Cultural Center from their superb Houdini: Art & Magic show (now closed)}

_{The Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Photo by RMA Photography, Courtesy SCFTA}

On California’s huge map, Costa Mesa forms a relative pinprick. But for the past 25 years, the Orange County city has been a beacon of international ballet, as world-class troupes perform at the House that Henry (Segerstrom) Built 45 miles south of L.A.

Read my story in Dance Magazine.