Commemorating George Balanchine who died 30 years ago 1
Apr
30
2013
Thirty years since he left us, we are still in his thrall. Here’s a wonderful historic photo of the great Russian-born choreographer-genius George Balanchine, provided to us by the chief archivist of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Norton Owen. In this beautifully composed photograph, Balanchine instructs Mary Ellen Moylan. Photo credit: Hans Knopf, 1942, Jacob’s Pillow ...
Paul Taylor’s gorgeous, sprawling “Brandenburgs” on PBS
Apr
29
2013
“This piece is meant to be very dancey, but it has a theme. I would say it’s about gallantry. The men are gallant towards the women. The women are more playful. Each of the women has a distinct personality. There’s a leading man, too. His relationship to the women, it’s gallant, but it’s not a ...
We love the women of TCM Classic Film Festival 2013
Apr
28
2013
This was our fourth year attending the marvelously programmed, super well-organized TCM classic film festival right in the center of our city. The Festival opened with a bang — a screening of Barbra Streisand’s powerhouse film debut in FUNNY GIRL (1968). It continued through the weekend, highlighting many admirable women of the classic Hollywood community. ...
Hollywood royalty, the Fonda family
Apr
28
2013
Concurrent to her own hand-and-foot print ceremony at the erstwhile Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, now called TCL Chinese Theatre, Jane Fonda and her brother Peter paid a visit to their Dad’s sidewalk square. Fonda père cemented his Hollywood legacy with an enduring note to the theme-theater’s original owner/developer: “To Sid, A Great Guy, Henry ...
TCM Fest: writer Robert Benton on “Bonnie & Clyde” 1
Apr
27
2013
“You couldn’t grow up in Texas without knowing about Bonnie and Clyde. They were folk heroes. Kids would dress up as Bonnie and Clyde for Halloween,” said filmmaker and writer Robert Benton, a Waxahachie, Texas native, speaking before a screening of his highly influential 1967 movie at TCM Fest. Benton, who went on to direct ...
Streisand’s “Funny Girl” on Grauman’s big screen 2
Director William Wyler’s “Funny Girl,” TCM Fest 2013‘s opening-night film, vividly restored and splashed across Grauman’s huge screen, proved a tour de force beyond our memory of it. In her motion picture debut, Barbra Streisand performs in every possible context: she’s sings in comic numbers and torch songs; she sings while dancing and amidst love ...
MOCA’s Jeffrey Deitch reflects on Boston violence
Apr
25
2013
We enjoyed briefly chatting with MOCA‘s Jeffrey Deitch at a press preview of the colorful Urs Fischer installation in the museum’s main building on Bunker Hill. The exhibit extends at a second MOCA facility, the Temporary Contemporary in Little Tokyo. The colorful scene is from the whimsical yet melancholic installation at MOCA by Swiss born ...
Dancers, meet the museum world. Museums: consider dance.
This weekend, the Hammer Museum presents Dancing with the Art World, a two-day symposium that convenes artists, choreographers, curators, and historians to reflect on the interface between dance and art, consider its historical precedents, and debate its effects on artistic and institutional practice. Dance has long intersected meaningfully with the visual arts. But in recent ...
Preeminent dance movie posters @ Barnsdall
We’re super looking forward to touring through a wonderful installation of dance movies posters now on display at Barnsdall Gallery Theater. We already saw it once, but it’s so fabulous that repeat viewings are called for. Twenty distinct pieces in varying sizes and rarity comprise GOTTA DANCE!, the majority dating from the golden age of ...
Strong female film characters on parade @ COL*COA
French actress Jeanne Moreau, platinum blonde and wrapped in a feather boa, poses in vast ennui in BAY OF ANGELS (1963) written and directed by Jacques Demy. Moreau plays a bored upper class housewife on an existential bender in the south of France. She gloms onto a young drifter, Jean, first by his pocketbook and ...