By 1916, ballet dancer Theodore Kosloff was a vaudeville veteran 1
Nov
23
2013
From the Mariinski to the Bolshoi to the Ballets Russes … and then, across the pond, to Onion the Trick Pony … Theodore Kosloff was a trouper in American vaudeville. HIs first steps on the vaudeville stage occurred in 1910. A tour on the premier “circuit” — the ‘Keith-Orpheum’ circa 1916 — brought him to ...
Sokurov’s astonishing bargain with “Faust”
The Faust legend is so absorbed into the culture that any artist can make it their own. Alexander Sokurov, a director who always makes any story his own (“Mother and Son,” “Russian Ark,” “Alexandra”), took on the legend as the finale of a tetralogy on power which began in 1999 with the astonishing Hitler movie, ...
We like Louie
Nov
22
2013
Louie Cruz Beltran, that is, who is among the premier congueros in southern California — with a repertoire that spans world-class jazz and Latin jazz, R&B and pop classics. Beltran has two supper-club gigs on offer before Thanksgiving, the first at Spaghettini in Seal Beach, just south of Long Beach in Orange County. That happens ...
Made in Germany (Stuttgart Ballet @ Sadler’s Wells)
While The Taming of the Shrew, their John Cranko party piece, was allotted three of their five-night run, it was the Stuttgart Ballet’s “Made in Germany” program that put hardcore balletomane bums in seats. Thirteen offerings, old and new, split into three segments. At three hours running time, not for the faint of heart and, ...
George Chakiris, Sally Forrest perform “Night and Day” in 1956
Nov
20
2013
At Saturday’s “An Evening with George Chakiris,” at UCLA Film & Television Archive, we enjoyed footage of a vintage live television broadcast, “CBS ‘Ford Star Jubilee: You’re the Top, A Salute to Cole Porter'” which aired on October 6, 1956. Among other great entertainers on the 90-minute live broadcast (Louis Armstrong, Dolores Grey, Shirley Jones, ...
“An Evening with George Chakiris” passes beautifully @ UCLA Film & Television Archive
Prior to a screening of French director Jacques Demy’s auteur-masterpiece, “Les Demoiselles de Rochefort,” in which the dancer-actor-singer appears prominently, UCLA Film & Television Archive honored George Chakiris with clips from his many appearances on television variety shows and an interview that touched on both his singing and his dancing career. The full-evening event took ...
Rokia Traoré brings Malian magic to the Luckman
Though Rokia Traoré began her genre-, culture- and gender-bending incursion into the international music scene in the late 1990s, I didn’t encounter her until Peter Sellars’ 2006 New Crowned Hope Vienna festival, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. Reconceiving the composer as a griot traveller between Paris and Mali’s capital of Bamako, Traoré’s glorious ...
Koehler Clips: Iranian filmmaker featured @ REDCAT
Among its countless ethnic/national communities, Los Angeles has Irangeles, the sprawling Iranian diaspora that extends from Encino to south OC and amounting to the largest group of Iranians outside of Tehran. Yet the city curiously seldom sees visiting major Iranian filmmakers. REDCAT is helping counter this odd pattern Monday with the presence of the country’s ...
“Nebraska” tries too hard to be loved
As written by Bob Nelson and directed by Alexander Payne, “Nebraska” is a movie couched in two attitudes—warmth and stubbornness. The former is meant to soften the latter, the latter meant to put some edge on the former. Like Lee Marvin’s Walker in “Point Blank” who goes after the mob for the $93,000 he’s been ...
Shechter, Cherkaoui @ Sadler’s Wells
The big kahuna of London dance, the temple, is Islington’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre. A place of entertainment for 300 years, dance became Sadler’s priority in 1928 when Old Vic manager Lilian Bayliss convinced Ninette de Valois to present the performances of what would eventually become the Royal Ballet (the English National and Birmingham Ballets started ...