Key ingredient in Ebony Rep’s STEW? Family!

Theater
She’s equal parts Mildred Pierce, Julia Child, and Danai Gurira. She’s in her muu-muu with house slippers. Her hair is wrapped, and she’s cooking. She’s Greta Oblesby, playing “Mama,” in a marvelous, alive production of Zora Howard’s Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted play, STEW. Newly produced by Ebony Repertory Theater and directed by Jade King Carroll, it’s now ...

From Fahey-Klein, Agnes Varda photography

Film · Visual arts
Cuba, Men on Skates, January, 1963Silver Gelatin Photograph, Ed. 2/513 1/16 x 19 15/16 inchesSigned, stamped, titled, dated, numbered, Signed by Estate Executor, Estate stamped versoSigned by Agnes Varda La Terrasse du Corbusier, Marseille, France, 1956Silver Gelatin Photograph, Ed. of 10Signed by Agnès Varda, titled, dated, numbered, Signed by Estate Executor, Estate stamped verso11 3/4 ...

The many modes of Chita Rivera

Dance
Let’s watch this great dancer/entertainer, Chita Rivera (1933-2024), do her thing in her 2005 show “The Dancer’s Life,” in which she pays homage to her choreographers, Jack Cole, Peter Gennaro, Bob Fosse, and Jerome Robbins. It is a brilliant montage impeccably performed. Rivera found this luminous path to continue to share her gifts well into ...

Dance of death and renewal by Pina Bausch at The Music Center

Dance
How would you dance, if you knew you were going to die? This is the central question the late choreographer Pina Bausch (1940-2009) asked of her dancers in 1975 when she created her seminal work The Rite of Spring. The work examines an unyielding ritual in which the sacrifice of a “chosen one” changes the ...

Big music by Sánchez/Alexa for big ‘Existencia’ choreography at The Soraya

Dance · Music
Ed. note: This story by Debra Levine was commissioned the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts. The spasms of explosive percussion that jump off the screen of Birdman, the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 2014, are the work of a brilliant and innovative musician: the Mexican-born drummer Antonio Sánchez. In the decade since that ...

‘Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad’ with Barrie Chase in person 1

Film
It’s a macabre but nonetheless resolute fact — and it came directly, unprompted, from Chase, a friend of artsmeme (F.O.A.M.). (She is also one of artsmeme’s favorite subjects.) Barrie Chase, one of Hollywood’s most precious jewels as a dancer, now 90 and fit as a fiddle, admitted it herself. Speaking of It’s a Mad, Mad, ...

Splendid early film choreography by Jack Cole for ‘Kismet’ (MGM, 1944) 2

Dance · Film
This YouTube bundling of two lengthy harem numbers choreographed by Jack Cole for KISMET (MGM, 1944) displays the young choreographer’s mature grasp of his craft in staging, and in creating beautifull and unusual framing of dance for the eye of the camera. The first sequence has rare footage of The Kraft Sisters, in particular Beatrice ...

Susan Jaffe presents: casting for ABT ‘The Nutcracker’ two-week run opening at Segerstrom tonight

Dance
Appointed to her post as artistic director of American Ballet Theatre over a year ago, Susan Jaffe is very much in the drivers’ seat. A transition ensued following the 30-year tenure of Kevin McKenzie with whom she danced in the course of her 22 years as among the company’s most sparkling principal dancers. Seguing into ...

FILM REVIEW: ‘Eileen,’ a movie to haunt you on a cold night

Film · Reviews
by 
One of the rewards of watching Eileen, directed with a pitch-perfect noir sensibility by William Oldroyd (Lady Macbeth) and presented by Neon, is embracing the unknown. Are we watching a prison break film with an unlikely accomplice? A repressed lesbian love story set in the 1960s? Or is it a violent revenge fantasy fueled by ...

An omelet with Juliette Binoche: ‘The Taste of Things’ 2

Film
Juliette Binoche is a film goddess. That we know from her 86-plus movie credits in which her luminous presence — think Garbo — is but a point of departure for a vast range of fascinating performances. But did you know she makes a mean omelet? You’ll learn that while watching La Binoche, as Eugénie, an ...