Lake Tahoe Dance Festival: dances for kids with baby on board!
Jul
28
2023
Lake Tahoe Dance Festival Opening Night Gala, July 26, 2023. photo by erin baiano When Founder Christin Hanna and her co-director Constantine Baecher of the eleven-year-running Lake Tahoe Dance Festival, now on in Truckee and Tahoe City, California, call their event ‘family-oriented,’ the community responds positively. Chatting after her successful Gala opening night, Ms. Hanna ...
In Tahoe, for Dance Festival 1
stephen hanna, photo: erin baiano “There will be bears in Tahoe,” Festival intern Summer Hatcher warned me — a dance writer who has never lived beyond a five-mile radius from a performing arts center. As we departed Reno Airport, she explained that I should wave arms at the creatures. Summer was navigating Interstate 80’s sweeping ...
Northward bound, for Lake Tahoe Dance Festival
It’s a well-kept secret, except for ballet aficionados. One of the most beautiful and natural environments in our nation, Lake Tahoe, California, the massive freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada straddling the border between California and Nevada, is home to an engaging dance festival that marked its tenth anniversary last year, and enters its eleventh, ...
New book links American teen culture of 50s/60s to local televised dance programs
Host and deejay Art Laboe, of The Art Laboe Show with Jerry Lee Lewis at the El Monte Legion Stadium in East Los Angeles, ca. 1958. Courtesy of the Art Laboe Archives. Ed. note: artsmeme is delighted to share with readers the first of three excerpts from an exciting new book by author Julie Malnig. ...
Virginia Johnson: an accomplished life in dance recognized by Bessie Award
Jul
18
2023
A highly respected, accomplished, and worthy woman of dance, Virginia Johnson, founding member and former artistic director of Dance Theatre of Harlem, will receive the 2023 Bessie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dance, announced New York Dance and Performance Awards Executive Director Heather Robles, who labeled Johnson “a pioneering woman in the arts.” Born in ...
Dancing with deer & birds: Dutch National Ballet’s ‘Frida’ at The Music Center reviewed
The deep fascination with the art and wrenching personal mythology of the great Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907- 54) found no better evidence than the fashion worn by the women of Los Angeles at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion this weekend for “Frida,” the bio-ballet choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa for the Dutch National Ballet. Donning ...
Magisterial: Neil Young at the Greek Theatre July 10 2023 6
It wasn’t a smooth performance. He hemmed and hawed, he paced. He ambled between an upright Steinway to a grand piano and then to a vintage pump organ. He swapped his harmonica — he had a bunch of them. That made loud clicks in the holder he wore around his neck, as it banged against ...
Pronounce Olga Preobrajenska 1
Jul
10
2023
Seen above (it’s a capture of a video, but does not spool) is dear little Olga Preobrajenska. Small in stature, mighty in reputation as a second ballerina with the Russian Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg. After her retirement, she became a famed instructor-in-exile, in Paris. She is also looooong in last name. Unpronounceable — until ...
New moves for Misty Copeland
Misty Copeland‘s name is included on American Ballet Theater‘s current roster of principal dancers during its Metropolitan Opera House season (through July 22). But she is not scheduled for any performances, and has not appeared onstage with ABT since before the Covid pandemic interrupted performances in 2020. But Copeland was present nearby at Lincoln Center ...
Let freedom ring, courtesy of United Ukrainian Ballet ‘Giselle’ at Segerstrom Center
Jul
2
2023
As evenings at the ballet go, it had a complex agenda. It was an event fueled by the philanthropic largesse of Orange County arts patron Elizabeth Segerstrom whose sensitive stroke was to give an American audience the opportunity to enter the July 4 weekend with concern for the freedom and independence of others. The performance ...