REVIEW: Sara Mearns’ deep dance-dig at the Pillow
Sara Mearns in Christopher Williams’ excerpt from “Daphnis & Chloé” Being present for the career arc of a singularly distinctive and memorable dancer is a wonderful privilege. And it’s been a privilege to observe the initial 15 years of Sara Mearns’ career on our dance stages. Primarily, she is a leading light of New York ...
The games people play, according to Martha Graham’s ‘Secular Games’
Secular Games (1962) choreography by Martha Graham Saturday night’s across-the-board brilliance encompassing both classic and contemporary modern dance at the Younes & Soraya Center for the Performing Arts, aka The Soraya — an evening of nearly ecstatic, unwavering quality by the Martha Graham Dance Company — had Secular Games, dating from 1962, as a standout. ...
Weather report: It’s raining female artists in Los Angeles
Feb
15
2019
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova in live performance with PussyRiot at The Broad Stage, photo by Ben Gibbs We’ve had some crazy tumultuous storms lately in Los Angeles, a weather pattern augured to continue as women are seizing the stages of the city’s performing arts centers. For a mighty wind of female fabulousness — and fury — has ...
Stuart Hodes’ ‘balancing act’ with Dances for a Variable Population
Nov
7
2018
It’s all a balancing act according to former Martha Graham dancer Stuart Hodes, who in the video above shares the joy and wisdom of continuing to move, move, move into his senior years. This is the premise behind the wildly popular Dances for a Variable Population led by artistic director Naomi Goldberg Haas, a veritable ...
Dance-trance at Lincoln Center 2
Everyone has the right to respond to our crazy age as best they can. And who am I to say that the eighth annual staging of “9/11 Table of Silence Project,” a “prayer for peace and healing” choreographed by Jacqulyn Buglisi for 100+ dancers, is not a valid expression of grief and anguish in still-traumatic ...
Patricia Morison remembers … Martha Graham, Kiss Me Kate, more 6
We so enjoyed a charming conversation with Broadway and Hollywood doyenne Patricia Morison at her Los Angeles home July 6, 2017. The originator of the role of “Kate” in Kiss Me Kate, still vivacious and chatty at age 102, shared happy memories of her career. She took special care to describe the role that dance ...
Martha Graham Dance Company to live music from Wild Up
She was in her fifties during the forties — maybe that’s why this by-then mature artist was creating a litany of masterworks, nearly all to commissioned scores that got live delivery in performance. In an honoring of that dance history, the Graham Company will perform a fully loaded program of three Graham ballets — you ...
Dance scholars recognized with awards in New York
Two of our smartest and best … and nicest … dance scholars are being honored in New York City this fall. On November 21, the Martha Hill Dance Fund will grant a Lifetime Achievement Award recipients to author/critic Deborah Jowitt at the Manhattan Penthouse in New York City. Journalist/critic Deborah Jowitt began to write a regular ...
Stellar dance company keeps Martha Graham forever young
Apr
20
2015
Wow, Martha Graham. Your excellence, exactitude and relevance entered a new era as the vigorous and beautifully trained dancers of Martha Graham Dance Company simply shined in a well-selected repertory evening, Saturday, at Valley Performing Arts Center. Onto the generous and beautifully lit VPAC stage, before a notably rapt, sold-out audience, paraded the latest crop ...
The great Graham’s California roots
Apr
15
2015
In my “pre-talk” prior to Martha Graham Dance Company‘s performance at Valley Performing Arts Center this Saturday night, I make the case that the impact and duration of Graham’s career start-up in Los Angeles has gone woefully under reported. Here Graham poses with her first partner, Ted Shawn, in “Malaguena” (1921) — in a California ...