All hail Alan Johnson! 2
This montage of career-choreography by three-time Emmy Award winner Alan Johnson, created for his Lifetime Achievement recognition at the American Choreography Awards, features snippets from Mel Brooks movies, Johnson’s television appearances and stage and commercial work. The clips give evidence of the choreographer’s clean, classic jazz style, his smooth elegance and strong sense of line. ...
REVIEW: Aspen Santa Fe Ballet dancers shine at home
Tuesday evening at the Aspen District Theatre was an adults-only affair, in a wonderful way. Local heroes Aspen Santa Fe Ballet rolled out a three-part program of notable sophistication and artistic distinction. The attentive audience, fortunate to co-habit a beautiful Rocky Mountain city with a world-class ballet company, took it in thoughtfully—it’s something you feel ...
Meet Marilyn Meme•roe
From Wikipedia: Memetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from the popularization of Richard Dawkins’ 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Proponents describe memetics as an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. The choreographer Jack Cole, a creative genius, had the ability to perpetuate the meme ...
Hollywood ‘pioneers, dreamers & misfits’ delight Landis, Beauchamp
Pioneers, dreamers and misfits: this perspicacious trio of descriptors Hollywood historian Cari Beauchamp has selected to characterize the actors, artists, directors, and assorted fruits and nuts who arrived in early Los Angeles to populate the burgeoning film industry. Burgeoning may be an overstatement. This was a place where the welcome mat sometimes read, “No actors, ...
Miss Ruth strikes a Denishawn pose in “The Peacock” (1914)
A photographer’s dream model, the exotic Ruth St. Denis habitually struck a dramatic pose for the camera. Fifty years later, in the San Fernando Valley, she was doing the same thing. Ruth St. Denis, “The Peacock” 1914, photo by J.D. Toloff, Evanston, IL
David Hockney, choreographer of the canvas
Confronted by the astonishingly energetic recent output of artist David Hockney in “Painting and Photography,” on view at L.A. Louver Gallery, I was struck by how dancerly were the images, framed though they were in rectangles. The artist’s distinct consideration of bodies – and objects – arranged in space evoke avant-garde dance. In particular: a ...
Dance across the Pacific Isles with ‘Cinerama South Seas Adventure’
A cruise ship wending it way across the South Pacific, with visits to Hawaii, Tahiti, Tonga and Fiji, includes a film crew shooting footage of native culture. Camera-captured in 1958 in “Cinerama South Sea Adventure,” it sounds pretty colorful, doesn’t it? Now a legendary travelogue, “South Sea,” one of the great exercises in wide-screen projection ...
Clarion voice of songbird Judy Collins fills L.A. night sky 8
Yes, a songbird, thrush, warbler, coloratura, balladeer … she self-describes as a ‘troubadour.’ But who knew that folk-rock legend Judy Collins is also supremely entertaining, a raconteur spieling salty, even ribald stories all while innocently strumming her guitar? Tonight in a delicious free concert at Levitt Pavilion Los Angeles, Collins lulled her audience like a ...
Behave! or Isaac de Los Reyes will burn a hole in your soul
Jul
15
2015
We love ‘Forever Flamenco’ — whether in its grandstand production at the (now under renovation) John Anson Ford Theatre, or in its cozy Hollywood home, the 80-seat summer sweat-box of sensual Spanish stagecraft, aka the Fountain Theatre. This weekend, ‘Forever,’ produced by Deborah Lawlor and James Bennett, presents Isaac De Los Reyes — a special ...
Review: Under pink clouds, Music Center’s “Moves After Dark”
Dance critic Gillian Anne Renault contributes this review to arts·meme: As grey clouds turned pink Monday evening and a cool breeze dimpled the Mark Taper Forum pool, a powerful alto voice quieted the crowd for Moves After Dark, The Music Center’s inaugural, site-specific, mainly outdoor dance concert. The ambitious evening, well executed, proved a worthy ...