Let ’em dance: Bobby Fuller Four recalled
The Hollywood Renaissance of the 1960s didn’t need the Bobby Fuller Four. That unique conflagration of bands, managers, impresarios, producers, studios, engineers, session players, record labels and executives, radio stations, deejays, and TV shows incubated the Byrds, Sonny & Cher, the Mamas and Papas, Love, the Mothers of Invention, Paul Revere & the Raiders, the ...
USC’s Ruth Weisberg honored with esteemed printmaking award
Mar
20
2015
Very pleased to share news that Ruth Weisberg, who is professor of Fine Arts and former Dean at the University of Southern California Roski School, and currently the Director of the USC Initiative for Israeli Arts and Humanities, is 2015 recipient of the SGC International Printmaker Emeritus Award. The SGC International is the largest print ...
To Bozeman, with Bernardo
It’s Bernardo, Anita, Riff, Tony and Maria gone waaay west. Looking forward to sharing the ultimate of urban movie-musicals, “West Side Story,” in an unusual location — on America’s real West side, Bozeman, Montana. The Academy Award-winning musical will screen at the historic Ellen Theatre, a vintage vaudeville house dating to 1919. The restored theater ...
Gone fishing
Mar
18
2015
A lot of chatter, lately, amongst dance geeks on Facebook about the great classical ballet pose the “fishdive” which, according to pundits was not part of the original Petipa choreography (way too athletic and upside down for that era) but seems to have been introduced in the 1946 version of “The Sleeping Beauty.” This notwithstanding, ...
Choreographer Alan Johnson takes center stage!
On a delicious Saturday afternoon last September, a bunch of dance devotees gathered at The Paley Center for Media to fete one of their own: the witty, prolific, tart-tongued choreographer Alan Johnson, an industry veteran of theater, nightclub, television, cinema and any-dance for the camera. “I had been thinking lately [about my career] wondering, ‘What ...
What a woman! Josephine Baker struts her stuff in “Bananas”
Just in time to celebrate Women’s History Month, the great Josephine Baker, as channeled by vivacious actress Sloan Robinson — whose pet project this is — will again rule the roost in “Bananas.” The award-winning production (it garnered the NAACP Theatre Awards in 2009) recounts La Baker’s rise from the slums of East St. Louis ...
Choreographer Leonid Yakobson’s Soviet struggle detailed at USC Conney Conference
Our good friend, the Stanford University-based dance historian Janice Ross, has written an important new biography about a seminal choreographer in the Soviet Union whose name does not have much recognition in the U.S. Few outside Russia know of Leonid Yakobson, a contemporary to George Balanchine and the leading modernist — and only Jewish — ...
Pure Petipa, courtesy of American Ballet Theatre
Mar
9
2015
In this great portrait by dance photographer Gene Schiavone, American Ballet Theatre principal dancers Marcelo Gomes (Prince Desire) and Diana Vishneva (Aurora) pose in “The Sleeping Beauty” the full-evening ballet that just had its world premiere at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. ABT resident choreographer Alexei Ratmansky’s restaging of original choreography by Marius Petipa may ...
A triumph for ABT, Ratmansky’s “The Sleeping Beauty”
American Ballet Theatre celebrated its 75th anniversary last evening at Segerstrom Hall with its sublime new “The Sleeping Beauty” staged by Alexei Ratmansky using original choreography by Marius Petipa interpolated with contributions of his own. The sheer beauty of the production and the revelation of how fresh and compelling the Petipa language positions our national ...
‘ghosts’ waft cooly amidst Clare Graham curios
The weather was dark and dismal last Sunday evening for the opening of Stephanie Zaletel‘s spooky site-specific “ghosts,” a dance performance that took place in one of L.A.’s most happening art lofts. While the rain fell on York Avenue in Highland Park, a nice crowd found cozy respite by cramming into moryork gallery’s many nooks ...