Chicken dinner for Rudi
Nov
30
2013
Excerpted from Nureyev: The Life, by Julie Kavanaugh (New York: Vintage Books), 2007: “He was also finding it hard to accustom himself to traditional English cooking, although it was two weeks before he confessed to hating cold roast beef. Beef — preferably in the form of an entrecôte steak — had to be thick, blue, ...
Nijinsky’s costume for “Spectre” was ‘sixties’ pink
For our Thanksgiving post, no turkeys; instead, a spectre; a sixties-pink spectre of the rose. The precious togs at right were worn by Vaslav Nijinsky in the infamous Ballets Russes production of the Michel Fokine ballet circa 1911. Now they hang on display at the Vaganova Ballet Academy Museum. They come to arts·meme courtesy of Lorin Johnson, who snapped ...
“La Passion Noureev” to premiere in Los Angeles for Dance Camera West
The beautiful and moving documentary, La Passion Noureev, a labor of love by Fabrice Herrault, a filmmaker who is also a respected New York City dance instructor and himself the product of the French ballet academy, will have its American premiere in Los Angeles on Thursday December 5, 2013. The film was previously screened in ...
“Russian Los Angeles” dance exhibition opens in St. Petersburg
“Russian Los Angeles: Stravinsky, Innovation and Dance,” an exhibition co-curated by Lorin Johnson, an associate professor of dance at California State University, Long Beach and Mark Konecny, Associate Director of the Institute of Modern Russian Culture at the University of Southern California, has opened in St. Petersburg at the Russian State Museum of Theatre and ...
By 1916, ballet dancer Theodore Kosloff was a vaudeville veteran 1
Nov
23
2013
From the Mariinski to the Bolshoi to the Ballets Russes … and then, across the pond, to Onion the Trick Pony … Theodore Kosloff was a trouper in American vaudeville. HIs first steps on the vaudeville stage occurred in 1910. A tour on the premier “circuit” — the ‘Keith-Orpheum’ circa 1916 — brought him to ...
Sokurov’s astonishing bargain with “Faust”
The Faust legend is so absorbed into the culture that any artist can make it their own. Alexander Sokurov, a director who always makes any story his own (“Mother and Son,” “Russian Ark,” “Alexandra”), took on the legend as the finale of a tetralogy on power which began in 1999 with the astonishing Hitler movie, ...
We like Louie
Nov
22
2013
Louie Cruz Beltran, that is, who is among the premier congueros in southern California — with a repertoire that spans world-class jazz and Latin jazz, R&B and pop classics. Beltran has two supper-club gigs on offer before Thanksgiving, the first at Spaghettini in Seal Beach, just south of Long Beach in Orange County. That happens ...
Made in Germany (Stuttgart Ballet @ Sadler’s Wells)
While The Taming of the Shrew, their John Cranko party piece, was allotted three of their five-night run, it was the Stuttgart Ballet’s “Made in Germany” program that put hardcore balletomane bums in seats. Thirteen offerings, old and new, split into three segments. At three hours running time, not for the faint of heart and, ...
George Chakiris, Sally Forrest perform “Night and Day” in 1956
Nov
20
2013
At Saturday’s “An Evening with George Chakiris,” at UCLA Film & Television Archive, we enjoyed footage of a vintage live television broadcast, “CBS ‘Ford Star Jubilee: You’re the Top, A Salute to Cole Porter'” which aired on October 6, 1956. Among other great entertainers on the 90-minute live broadcast (Louis Armstrong, Dolores Grey, Shirley Jones, ...
“An Evening with George Chakiris” passes beautifully @ UCLA Film & Television Archive
Prior to a screening of French director Jacques Demy’s auteur-masterpiece, “Les Demoiselles de Rochefort,” in which the dancer-actor-singer appears prominently, UCLA Film & Television Archive honored George Chakiris with clips from his many appearances on television variety shows and an interview that touched on both his singing and his dancing career. The full-evening event took ...