Flying high! Luminario Ballet’s aerial dance-art to The Wallis

Dance
An exciting occasion for one of Los Angeles’s most fun and resilient dance companies is its debut at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Arts, aka The Wallis, in mid-February. Luminario Ballet of Los Angeles. is a repertory ballet, aerial, and modern dance troupe founded in 2009. A hearty crew, it has trod all channels ...

Lewitzky doc to open Dance Camera West at Barnsdall Art Park

Dance · Film
I was delighted to learn that the annual DANCE CAMERA WEST festival will take place this year, the weekend of January 19, in the cozy underground theater of Barnsdall Art Park, one of the truly happy places of our fair city. The urban-rustic setting fits well with the California theme of the Festival’s opening film, ...

Time to reassess Lewitzky? 1

Dance
photo: frances chee That was my takeaway after viewing Luminario Ballet‘s wonderful performance, Sunday June 23 at the Skirball Cultural Center, of two absorbing works by choreographer Bella Lewitzky. Pictured are excerpts from “Inscape” (1976). The work is driven by its marvelous costumes — stretch “duotards” designed by Rudi Gernreich, who, prior to his vigorous ...

Rudi Gernreich stunner: ‘The Swan’ for Lewitzky Dance in 1976

Dance · Fashion
We’re just starting to dig into the rich content of “Fearless Fashion: Rudi Gernreich,” the exhibition now up and running at the Skirball Cultural Center, with its stimulating mix of design, gender, fine art, and social issues. All those elements came crashing together, in a sixties kind of way, in the work of the adventurous ...

Luminario Ballet soars into March

Dance
Choreographer/founder Judith FLEX Helle’s high-energy, vivid show-womanship in her eighth season at North Hollywood’s El Portal Theatre strikes us as a perfect kick-off to March. In one work alone, she takes on issues as wide-ranging as equality, drug addiction, betrayal, Black Lives Matter and the Women’s March, all while stretching, gyrating, and revolving midstream above ...

Luminario Ballet’s festive winter’s tale at the California Club

Dance · Music
For those who have loved and lost. For those for whom great art can assuage life’s forays into the forlorn. For those who love wine, a great meal, live chamber music and dance in a singularly splendid setting: the Luminario Ballet Viennese Winter Gala is the thing. Good cheer, live art and companionship go far, ...

Rocking the aerial ballet: Luminario’s ‘LedZAerial’

Dance · Music
Let’s sound that out: led-zair-ee-yall. Otherwise entitled LedZAerial, Luminario Ballet‘s massively fun ballet-and-aerial dance pageant which throbs to the music of Led Zeppelin, including the ever popular Kashmir. Kind of the Ravel Bolero of our time. Luminario artistic director Judith FLEX Helle clearly takes instructions from the rock world’s seminal heavy-metal band literally. She’s created a ...