Barrie Chase to reminisce about her favorite dance partner 1
Oct
30
2012
We would never miss the upcoming event at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences this Thursday evening when the elegant, long-legged beauty, Barrie Chase, appears in person for a fun screening and panel discussion. Clips from four of the Emmy-Award winning television specials Chase made with Fred Astaire in the late 1950s and early ...
Musical message from Moscow … 1
Oct
30
2012
… will be hand delivered when the members of the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble performs in a free concert at UCLA’s Popper Theater. The program will focus on recent works by living Russian composers Galina Ustvolskaya, Edison Denisov, Leonid Desyatnikov, Pavel Karmanov, Sofia Gubaidulina,and UCLA music professor David S Lefkowitz’s “Berceuse” for violin, clarinet, and ...
Heidi’s healing happening in Elysian Park 2
In her most recent escapade, the skyscraper-topping “Cleopatra CEO,” Heidi Duckler ramped up her audience with an heady dance cocktail mixing corporate and sexual politics. This past weekend, the pied-piper choreographer, having transformed us into alpha men, led us to a forested glen in Elysian Park, one mile outside downtown Los Angeles. There on the ...
Ballet dancer, movie star Marc Platt’s “Culture by the Mile” 2
A marvelous Columbia Pictures publicity photo from 1947 features a rare creature: a ballet dancer who became a movie star — Marc Platt. And he’s still alive, with us, nearly 100 years old. Bravo Marc Platt, a beautiful American dancer! The touching, slightly potboiler “verso” text (posted below the photo) was written by a Columbia ...
Wayne Shorter blows his own horn at L.A. Jazz Society tribute
At a swank do at the Universal Hilton Hotel Sunday evening, the Los Angeles Jazz Society, for the past 29 years the labor of love of Flip Manne (she’s the surviving widow of drummer Shelly Manne), honored saxophonist Wayne Shorter as its 2012 Jazz Tribute Honoree. Movie maven Leonard Maltin, also a jazz lover, smoothly ...
Paul Taylor garners prestigious arts award
Oct
21
2012
New Yorkers gathered on October 3 to honor legendary choreographer Paul Taylor at a State Dinner at the iconic Lotos Club, founded in 1870. Mr. Taylor received the Medal of Merit, the Club’s highest honor given to leaders in the arts and cultural worlds. Past recipients include Gilbert and Sullivan, Ulysses S. Grant, Samuel Clemens, ...
Alice in La-La Land 3
Oct
21
2012
We were delighted to see that on her day off the lovely National Ballet of Canada ballerina, Sonia Rodriguez, who with her pristine arabesque did her best to lend sparkle to Christopher Wheeldon‘s lumbering three-act ballet, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” took a tour of our Wonderland-on-the-Pacific. Welcome to life through the looking glass, Sonia. The ...
Jerry Beck & the fine art of classic animation on TCM
Expert Jerry Beck defines classic animation as “theatrically-released studio or independent animated shorts and features from 1906 through roughly 1976.” The fun, arty fodder is getting its due this Sunday, October 21, with “Rare Animation,” a six-hour broadcast on Turner Classic Movies. Jerry, who blogs at cartoonbrew, co-hosts the evening with Robert Osborne. I had ...
Lurch on, Universal monsters!
Oct
17
2012
There have been frightening happenings at the film world’s Halloween Headquarters, also known as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — and they’re still going on. “A Monstrous Centennial,” the Academy’s month-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of Universal Pictures, screening 13 classic horror classics, has reach mid-point. The series is augmented by ...
Sleaze as art: ‘Camera Night at the Ivar’ @ Drkrm Gallery 5
Hollywood’s Ivar Theatre — notorious, low-life, sleazy — presented crude peep shows, images of which I have interspersed in the slide show with ballet photography by renowned dance photog, Gene Schiavione. The images all feature the female body on explicit display. The Ivar strippers, and the men who clustered at the Hollywood theater to photograph ...