A hillside wonderland: John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in transition
Jun
1
2015
We recently spoke to our friend Kim Glann, Productions Marketing Manager at the beloved John Anson Ford Theatres, managed by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. We learned that the landmark amphitheatre is closed, closed, closed for renovations this summer. Warning: if you go there by mistake, you’ll have to carry your picnic basket across ...
Anton Dolin, a rapturous partner to Irina Baronova
May
31
2015
Not sure how others are coping, or not, with the lack of meditative time to peruse books — it’s pretty obvious that staring at an electronic screen (thank you for reading arts·meme!) is not remotely the equivalent. One place I read is on an airplane. Thus it was my pleasure to board United Airlines last ...
This was Denishawn
May
31
2015
We’re looking forward to spending an evening — picnic and free music concert — at outdoor-amphitheater Levitt Pavilion Los Angeles in MacArthur Park on June 12. Does everyone know the rich dance history of that neighborhood, whose prior name “Westlake” derived from the beautiful urban lake that the park surrounds? Read this, first, from the ...
Do the La Gelosia … with Catherine Turocy
May
29
2015
Our favorite Baroque dance expert is offering a rare class on early ballet pantomime and expression that is open to all levels of experience. Catherine Turocy will guide students through the “passions” inspired by descriptions of 18th century ballerina Marie Sallé. Turocy will teach her choreography based on the music of La Gelosia from Handel’s Terpsichore in ...
Bass-ic instinct
May
24
2015
How low can you go? Woodwind players Yoon-Hee Jung and Eric Jacobs gave that question a resonant response on bass flute and bass clarinet, respectively, with their sonorous underpinnings at “Fits & Starts.” The concert of stimulating contemporary classical music, much of it avant-garde, was presented by Jacaranda at the Villa Aurora on May 16. ...
“Big Shot” skewers THE GODFATHER @ Bootleg Theater
“That’s my family; that’s not me.” So Michael Corleone assures his blue-blooded girlfriend, Kay, in one of his character’s persistent moments of self-denial. First expressed in Mario Puza’s pulpy popular novel, a mega best seller published in 1969, the line was famously recycled in (then) newbie director Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic movie in three installments, ...
arts•meme at seven: confident, independent
May
19
2015
Well wishes go to arts•meme, the fine arts blog, on her seventh birthday, May 24, 2015. The little mademoiselle is pictured on her tricycle-ramble ’round town, collecting memes to dispatch in the daily gazette. A special thank-you to our advertisers. Thank you for working with us! Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, Segerstrom ...
Roman Polanski, film curator
Cineaste Roman Polanski has conceived a new documentary for the Prada Foundation, whose spawling new arts facility in Milan includes a Cinema building — so fitting for Italy the bastion of great 20th century filmmaking. The doc, directed by Laurent Bouzerau, considers Polanski’s auteur-inspirations by analyzing some of the films that have most influenced him. ...
Bill Graham, Ziegfeld of Aquarius 1
We pay over a hundred dollars for a decent seat at a Staples Center rock show without thinking twice, but it wasn’t always so. There had been rock events here and there as early as the late 1950s—Elvis at the Pan-Pacific Auditorium and the Beatles at Dodger Stadium—but they were occasional. Bill Graham (1931-1991) made ...
Chris Burden’s elegaic floating sculpture @ LACMA
May
13
2015
Beginning May 18, for four weeks, Chris Burden’s Ode to Santos Dumont a kinetic airship sculpture inspired by Brazilian-born pioneer aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, will be on view at LACMA. Burden, the noted conceptual/performance artist, completed his plans for the LACMA exhibit before he passed away May 10. Santos-Dumont, considered the father of aviation in France, flew ...