And the equally well-titled “The Radio Show” by Abraham.In.Motion, straight outta Brooklyn, spreads Kyle Abraham’s luscious moves over a four-night stretch at REDCAT downtown.

Read my piece about Kyle in this Sunday’s Los Angeles Times “Arts & Books” section.

Both recommended…

Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion | REDCAT | Wed Oct 19 – Sat Oct 22
Hofesh Shechter Company | UCLA Live | Oct 19, 20

_{Shechter photo: Italian Vogue
Abraham photo: Steven Schreiber}

Like this? Read more:

• Anna Halprin, Bill T. Jones, Hofesh Shechter
• Hofesh Shechter talks
• Kyle Abraham, Bessie awardee
• Kyle Abraham & Dancers @ Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival

Meanwhile, here’s a prior review from December…

*  *  * *  *

“Black Swan” got you down?

Then check out Barak Marshall’s “ROOSTER” — a bird of a different feather. Excerpts of the full-evening work will again be laying eggs at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles tonight, the final performance of the CalArts Winter Concert.

The Cal Arts dancers rip the wings off this richly creative dance-drama based on an I.L. Peretz shtetl tale. With great gusto they drill through Marshall’s signature beat-by-beat, nervous-tic dance-shtick. One tableau, a killer group dance for guys only, the Cal Arts men nail to the ground.

Adding inter-generational dimension and, frankly, blessing the proceedings with her presence, Margalit Oved, Marshall’s diminutive mother and a veteran powerhouse performer, joins the cast.

Highly recommended. Bravo, Barak! Everyone in the community is excited to see “MONGER” presented at UCLA this coming April.

The winter concert includes the restaging of Trisha Brown’s post-modern classic, “Set and Reset/Reset,” and other works. A very nice full bill.

Cal Arts 2010 Winter Dance Concert | REDCAT performance space @ Disney Hall | Saturday 8:30 pm

_{photo: Avi Avin, Dance in Israel}

	Barysh & the Merce’ites click for better view
Marisa Meets Misha click for better view
	Mark Murphy, Executive Director, REDCAT, Trevor Carlson, Executive Director, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Mikhail Baryshnikov, guest artist click for better view

photo credit: stefanie keenan

• merce misha mashup
• DANCE REVIEW: Cunningham’s “Roaratorio“
• Los Angeles Music Center co-commissions “Roaratorio”
• LA Observed writes about the event.
  

Popkin transforms a downtown Los Angeles performance space into an urban jungle of lush mystery in his marvelously inventive "There is an Elephant In This Dance." The hour-long piece is on tap for further REDCAT performances this weekend.

Popkin, a UCLA dance professor, credits the Hindu god Ganesh with the weird-and-wonderful foray of a plush-toy Babar into modern dance-land. But we spied the solid-torsoed choreographer's own fleshy, weighted movement quality, and his mournful gaze, transferred to great effect onto "Elephant"'s excellent cast of veteran dancers.

Kicking in to make this intriguing performance hum is cellist/composer Robert Een's polished musical accompaniment, and a b&w video projection that pleasantly totters between spooky and absurd.

Recommended.

Lionel Popkin: There is an Elephant in this Dance | REDCAT | this weekend

Modern-dance choreographer Yvonne Rainer wisely reminds us that the mind is a muscle. So, too, are the eyes.

The pedagogy behind eye-dancing was demonstrated well on Saturday at 24th Street Theater‘s long-running Explorer Series, which introduces the performing arts to families.

Shakti Dance Company director Viji Prakash tantalized a theater full of kids, visiting the cute Pico-Union theater, with her engaging lecture deconstructing the classical Indian dance form, Bharata Natyam.

§ § §

By contrast, the dancers’ disengagement from their audience was one reason Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet’s first of two performances at UCLA Royce Hall disappointed. Behind “Orbo Novo” is hot Belgian choreographer, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.

The dance opens with a man and woman reaching arms toward each other through a red-lattice movable structure that separates the two and dominates the stage. They don’t connect. This forms the key metaphor for Cherkaoui’s failure to connect to his audience through the theater’s so-called fourth wall.

The dancers’ averted gaze prevails through the piece, which is set to a repetitive and unremarkable string quartet by Szymon Brzoska (confusing program notes indicate live players; I thought it was a tape). Cherkaoui’s squiggling, spineless, accent-free choreography noodles around the red jungle gym, mostly low to the ground. The dancers dance with backs to the audience, making us disengaged voyeurs, a tough slog following a long work week.

Modern dance fans are used to this treatment. One viewer explained to me that “the dance is very internal.” Because my taste in art hinges on humanity, communication, and connection, the work passed me by. Dark lighting design further dampened its proceedings. Here, have a look for yourself.

The eyes had it in John Jasperse Company’s recent performance at REDCAT. When Jasperse’s dancers take the stage, they plant themselves firmly, looking straight out, and hit it hard with fulsome dancing. I also love the sequence in Joffrey Ballet of Chicago’s highly coherent production of Sir Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella, in which young Cindy descends a flight of stairs on her high pointes, her rapturous expression beaming onto the audience. This full-on presentation of the human face takes courage and it sticks in the memory — unlike much of what happened on the Royce Hall stage Friday night.

§ § §

I’m a latecomer to Indian dance —  but better late than never. So I’m looking forward to an upcoming performance at Barnsdall Art Park, an L.A. treasure looming above funky Hollywood Boulevard.

A visit to Barnsdall is always excellent. Home to Hollyhock House, one of the three Mayan-inspired, textile-block residences Frank Lloyd Wright built in our town, the extended art park includes grassy picnicking area, galleries, and the FLW. It was all the passionate project of arty oil heiress Aline Barnsdall in the 1920s. The view gives out to the Hollywood sign, and the hilltop patch of real estate devoted to creativity fosters a tremendous sense of well being. Recommended.

Chitresh Das Dance Company | Rina Mehti, Kathak soloist | Barnsdall Art Park | Sunday May 16, 6 pm

Which is … that of the many wonderful outposts for dance in Los Angeles, REDCAT is the most happening. Chances are high you’ll leave this venue satisfied, with a belly full of top-notch contemporary dance.

To translate into L.A. terms, a dance performance at REDCAT merits the drive downtown.

Highlights of the REDCAT dance season included the re-staging of Anna Halprin’s “Parades & Changes.” Dance maker Rosanna Gamson then kicked in more theatrical gorgeousness with her multimedia “Tov,” for which REDCAT was reconfigured into a long dark underground tank.

For Jasperse’s two-act evening — the first half couched in black, the second dazzlingly reversed-out in white (this itself a neat reversal of Swan Lake’s white-then-black color schema) — the open-sided box well accommodated his sexy, taunting and provocative quartet for two men and two women.

[The pink bathing beauty scenario shown in the photo is from the black act.]

Jasperse’s work rolls out at a pretty unhurried pace — it’s full of posing, slow-motion, freeze-frame, fade-ins-and-outs much like a challenging art film. It tours through the choreographer’s eclectic sensibility with audience-friendly touchstones like marvelous scenic and costume design, kooky cinematic scoring which is later trumped by live-on-stage chamber music, and the quartet’s great cut bodies pouring forth Made-in-New-York dance technique.

Viewers of all sexes will admire the languid voguing of Jasperse’s excellent women, Eleanor Hullihan and Erin Cornell, both fabulous lady dancers who pretty much carry the show.

Jasperse claims his dance is about truth, but he hides somewhat as an artist behind ironic distance — most blatantly when donning a black cat suit and cowl, and prowling the stage like a shady terrorist. Or, in its white version, with faces hidden beneath doily helmets that evoke lampshades. Is that his truth? But modern dance audiences, inured to obscure choreography, can power through it.

This fun, challenging, and smart-looking performance is recommended.

John Jasperse Company | REDCAT performance space @ Disney Hall | on through the weekend

Lipman focuses his experimental films on urban decay as a marker of modern consciousness.

"The detritus of civilization tells us no less about our current epoch than an archeological dig speaks to history," he notes. "Urban ruin is particularly compelling because it tells of the recent past, and reminds us that our own lives and creations will also soon pass into dust."

Thank you for that reminder, Ross!

The above image is of New York City's High Line, the abandoned elevated freight rail running through Manhattan's west side that has been reconfigured into an aerial public park. Lipman explored this verdant wasteland when it was inhabited by taggers, wanderers, and cops only.

A preview of KEEP WARM, BURN BRITAIN!,Lipman's intriguing filmed memoir of a squatting community in East London's Docklands, reveals his skillful maneuvering of visual language — a precise but mysterious journey thru time and space. Recommended.

Tuesday March 30, 8:30 pm | RedCat @ Disney Concert Hall | information

Lou Reed is a very tough minded, talented, and uncompromising artist. The music (two extended pieces lasting 1.5 hours) invaded our senses, sounding alternately like avant-garde rock, ambient noise, and the dark side of the moon. It was angry, relentless, merciless, and fascinating. Lou Reed hunched over his electric guitar, barely glancing up as he twanged and plucked its strings, while his two partners screeched on saxophone and keyboard. He didn’t say a word, only growling the occasional instruction to his band while denying us the pleasure of hearing his great singing voice.

An amazing legend.  Lou Reed.