Rebecca Bruno’s walk around time at the Norton Simon Museum

Dance · Fashion · Visual arts
I like costumes and coifed hair on dancers. Big thumbs up. That’s only one reason I so enjoyed dancer/choreographer Rebecca Bruno’s solo outing, “Unfinished” at the Norton Simon Museum last Saturday afternoon. The intriguing hour-long work set to cool music by Sam Widaman and atmospheric scenic design and lighting by Yann Novak also came equipped with ...

Michael Vlatkovich’s unpredictable musical universe @ the Hammer

Music
by 
Michael Vlatkovich’s idiosyncratic music balances the meticulous writer with the laissez faire bandleader. The trombonist/composer has the uncommon luxury of convening seven pieces at the Hammer Museum’s free JazzPOP series this coming Thursday night. Drummer Chris Garcia, who has played with Vlatkovich since 1991, recalls a tour. “We had a new bass player,” Garcia says. ...

At Central Opera House, Cole choreographed ‘Bonanza Bound’

Architecture & Design · Dance
The former Central Opera House at 205 East 67th Street in New York City, pictured above. Here Jack Cole labored to create dance numbers for a notorious Broadway bomb, Bonanza Bound (1947). The turkey, however, had top talent behind it. A very rare musical flop by  Comden and Green. After their astonishing rise from cabaret ...

The sound of America, courtesy of MUSE/IQUE

Dance · Music
Enough of politicians yammering about being American! Let’s experience our national spirit in a much more intuitive manner, through art. Chamber-music series MUSE/IQUE is here to help. Established in 2011 by artistic director Rachael Worby (at left), the Pasadena-based MUSE/IQUE presents a three-concert summer lawn-festival across a dizzying array of genres — classical, ballet, jazz. ...

“Phantom Limb” group show @ Narzarian’s

Visual arts
Trenton Doyle Hancock, The Referee, 2014, Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 66 inches x 108 inches. Courtesy of Hales Gallery, London This vivid and jam-packed work in acrylic paint part of an intriguing-looking new group show at Shulamith Nazarian gallery in Venice. Phantom Limb include works by the prolific Houston-based Trenton Doyle Hancock, as ...