Fare-thee-well, glorious Kathak dancer Chitesh Das 2
Jan
7
2015
Saddened to hear news of the departure from Planet Earth of the great San Francisco-based Kathak dancer, Pandit Chitresh Das, whose brilliant cultural ambassadorship for his native art form extended to a eye (and brain)-popping performance at Grand Performances last September. [arts·meme loved and reviewed the show here] We also saw Chitresh hit the floorboards, hard, ...
Finessing Fosse’s furious, filigreed dance style
Jan
6
2015
New Yorkers can sign on — hey, Angelenos may like to fly east — for a rare opportunity. It’s January’s installment of a monthly master-class series that seeks to preserve a classic American jazz-dance vernacular: the angular, syncopated dance jive fostered by choreographer Bob Fosse. A good sampling of Fosse’s house-style is on view in ...
Cleopatra enters Rome, courtesy of Hermes Pan 1
Excerpted from John Franceschina’s recent Hermes Pan biography, On 10 May 1961, Pan worked out an agreement with [“Cleopatra” producer Walter] Wanger in which he would provide choreography for the film at $2,000 a week, guaranteed for no less than fifteen consecutive weeks. In addition, he was guaranteed credit as “Choreography by Hermes Pan” on ...
Around the movie world in five days: Golden Globes foreign-film screenings
Jan
3
2015
It’s that time of year. Buck up, buckeroo. Sweat out your holiday cocktailing and get back to business. In Los Angeles, fortunately, “business” takes the form of “pleasure,” as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the American Cinematheque buddy up for annual screenings of the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film award in advance of ...