Female choreographers to receive ‘guidance and feedback’ from ABT 11

Dance
It’s become a meme: “You can’t make this stuff up.” That was my reaction to American Ballet Theatre’s late-in-the-day scramble, yesterday, onto the #metoo bandwagon. The company’s bumbling response to being called out for nearly 30 years of institutional sexism resulting in the marginalization — if not exclusion — of women from the artistic and ...

Review: Twyla Tharp’s 50th, reminder of a revolutionary

Dance · Reviews
by 
photo: Sharen Bradford, New York Times Watching Twyla Tharp’s 50th Anniversary Tour performance at The Wallis in Beverly Hills was like taking a trip down memory lane with an old friend. (The Wallis co-commissioned the tour with four other presenters including The Joyce Theater in New York.) The old magic was there in Tharp’s juxtaposition ...

Robin Williams’ “eclectic celebration of the dance” in “The Birdcage” 2

Dance · Film

‘She asks me why, I’m just a hairy guy’ 2

Dance · Film · Theater
HAIR has roots in Hollywood, and we don’t mean hair roots. We mean theatrical roots. In 1968, the West Coast premiere production opened on Sunset Boulevard, just two blocks from the Pantages, about six months following the production’s Broadway opening. The Aquarius Theatre, re-named in honor of one of the show’s hit songs, would be ...

Twyla Tharp’s “Aquarius” in Milos Forman’s HAIR 1

Dance · Film
Preparing to interview Karole Armitage for an L.A. Times print edition tomorrow concerning her choreography for “HAIR,” I re-watched Twyla Tharp’s “Aquarius” from Milos Forman’s 1979 movie. Armitage wasn’t too keen on Tharp’s version. She told me so when we chatted. I like it a lot, however. arts·meme reader Gina Buntz, the dance chair of ...

Twyla, Laura, and me 7

Dance · Reviews
When American women demanded, and then seized, social and sexual liberation in 1970, I was an intense 15-year-old high-school girl in suburban Pittsburgh. Feminism hit me hard and it formed me. I entered young womanhood with the lovely delusion that life would deliver every achievement and pleasure I sought. Five years later, having already burned through ...