Summer salsa ‘stravaganza swarms Music Center
There’s quite a bit of ‘competition’ out there. Los Angeles has performing arts centers in abundance–in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Long Beach, Costa Mesa, Northridge, and Malibu. But there’s only one mothership, and that is the Los Angeles Music Center, a cultural anchor in our city since 1964. Home to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Ahmanson ...
Happy Queen’s Jubilee from the Commonwealth’s indigenous artists
Jun
21
2022
Vincent Namatjira. Elizabeth and Vincent (on Country), 2021. Acrylic on linen. 48 x 60 inches. © Vincent Namatjira/ Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort A vibrant-looking, good humored show from an unusual clutch of artists — Vincent Namatjira, Kaylene Whiskey, and Tiger Yaltangki, three leading members of the indigenous Indulkana Community in the northwestern region ...
Al Hirschfeld draws a dancin’ man
Everyone knows that arts journalist Al Hirschfeld, whose theatrical caricatures accompanied Sunday New York Times feature articles about Broadway openings, was a genius. But The Line King‘s rendering of Bob Fosse in 1978, on the occasion of the opening of his no-book, all-dance musical Dancin’, got my attention. I can’t stop looking at … … ...
‘Garden of Alla’s theatrical delights
Jun
17
2022
Alla Nazimova, nee Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon, as Camille, and at the Garden of Alla in Los Angeles Joni Mitchell, a resident in nearby Laurel Canyon, said it best: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” She was referencing, in song, the demolition of a 2.5 acre property at the south-west corner of ...
‘Apples’: clever Greek film probes universal pandemic experience
Who among us has not suffered mal-effects of isolation and removal from normal public existence in the aftermath of a two-year pandemic shutdown? Episodes of confusion, mixing the days of the week, forgetting appointments, losing and misplacing objects. These obfuscations are happening way too often as we reconstitute our lives prior to COVID-19. The profundity ...
Grotesqueries courtesy of Spanish performance artist Marta Carrasco
photo: david ruano An intriguing woman artist from Spain is being presented in multiple performances by the Latino Theater Company at the L.A. Theater Center downtown. It’s the dancer, choreographer and performance artist Marta Carrasco, in a show with an equally intriguing title, Perra de Nadie (“Nobody’s Bitch”). Well, that’s a nice girly name. [We ...
Love as a one-way street at the Panorama
Jun
6
2022
She won’t stop writing to me — e-mails, letters, texts, cards — but it’s not merely because I hardly know her that I no longer reply. It is the increasingly demanding tone, and the fact that a romance is gaining momentum without my needing to be involved.-Unrequited Love, by Gregory Dart You’ve heard of a ...
‘Pride month’ salutes film producer Harriet Parsons at UCLA Film Archive
Jun
3
2022
louella, harriet parsons, 1959 Along with Virginia Van Upp at Columbia Pictures and Joan Harrison at Universal, Harriet Parsons (1906-1983) was one of the very few women to make her mark in the industry as a feature film producer in the 1940s. Parsons got her start at Columbia creating myriad uncredited newsreel-like “documentary” shorts in ...
So good! Classic cartoons on Hollywood Legion Theater big screen
Jun
1
2022
WE’RE ON OUR WAY TO RIO (1945, J. Tyler/I. Sparber)Popeye and Bluto, on shore leave, visit Rio and fall in love with a bewitching Samba dancer, in this beautifully produced musical cartoon. Her name? Olive Oyl. So good! The 10th edition of the Alex Film Society’s The Greatest Cartoons Ever! to spool at the most ...
‘Mozart of Modern Dance’ visits Santa Monica’s Broad Stage
Jun
1
2022
It is problematic calling yourself “the Mozart of …” anything. And yet, that’s how the choreographer Mark Morris, in his press materials, chooses to frame his creativity — as the “Mozart of Modern Dance.” Morris, 65, whose 42-year-old Mark Morris Dance Group will present four performances of his 2006 creation, “Mozart Dances,” at Santa Monica’s ...