The valleys are alive with the sound of gibberish, courtesy of artist Paul McCarthy

Dance · Film · Ideas & Opinion · Music · Theater
Maria, pictured above and played by Julie Andrews in the syrupy Hollywood movie-musical, The Sound of Music (1965), delivers her iconic hilltop anthem, but in a bizarro version created by visual artist Paul McCarthy, her scale runs do ti la so fa mi re do. McCarthy created cisuM fo dnuoS ehT / The Sound of ...

Ford Theatre’s magical August dance-weekend adds intimacy

Architecture & Design · Dance
Unicorns and moonbeams! That magical stuff will spool at the Ford Amphitheatre when the beloved outdoor stage winds toward summer’s-end 2018. Lending unusual piquancy in a special dance-weekend are full-evening works by up-and-coming choreographers: Marjani Forté-Saunders (Aug 24, 25) and Stephanie Zaletel (Aug 26 only). To accommodate the intimate, experimental nature of these dance performances, ...

Makarova/Godunov triumph in molasses-tempoed Don Q pas de deux 1

Dance
Both are Russian-born-and-trained sensations: she of the Kirov, he of the Bolshoi. Both were Soviet defectors. I never saw him dance in person, but he fascinates me. I saw her dance many times, with American Ballet Theatre. I worship her. Note his one-armed lift (of her) at 0:53. Note her turns — every one of ...

Bob Fosse, dancer, at UCLA Film & Television Archive

Dance · Film
We’re all familiar with Bob Fosse, choreographer, and Bob Fosse, film director, right? And if we aren’t, UCLA Film & Television Archive is giving us a great opportunity to catch up as it celebrates a key influencer of modern cinema in “Fosse, Fosse, Fosse!” Fosse was a rarity … he advanced from dancer to choreographer ...

Osipova in premiere as Isadora Duncan at Segerstrom

Dance
by 
How will the California-born Isadora Duncan be remembered 50 years from now? As the woman whose barefoot, Greek-vase inspired abandon birthed the modern dance movement? Or for her shocking, free-love lifestyle in Europe and Russia and early tragic death – decapitated by scarf while riding in a Bugatti sports car? To the uninitiated, and by ...

Tarantino’s dream: the Pussycat meets the Bookshop 2

Architecture & Design · Film · Ideas & Opinion
Women around the world are beside themselves with joy to see movie director Quentin Tarantino bring back the sleaze old days of the late sixties, when XXX-rated porn movies spooled at the bygone Pussycat Theatre. Admittedly, even I miss rolling by this colorful (ahem, it was the color purple) ediface of screaming architecture on the ...

Pavilion ‘Levitt-ates’ our city, says Mayor Eric Garcetti

Architecture & Design · Music
I love the Levitt Pavilion Los Angeles. But don’t listen to me. Listen to Mayor Garcetti, who calls it a “spark” and a “community asset” whose “vitality is a model of urban revitalization.” According to Garcetti, “We can have all the best clean-up in the world, but if there’s nothing in between that keeps people ...

‘Monsters’ invade Burbank!

Dance
It’s hardly a new way of moving; it’s been around for, what, thirty years? But what’s new about hip-hop is that it has become a teachable, replicable, and codified dance technique. And it holds an electric grip, especially, on young aspiring commercial dancers for whom it is the fresh, evolving, go-to dance language. I enjoy ...

Review: Dogged drills by Djordjevich @ REDCAT’s NOW series

Dance · Reviews
An interesting time, last weekend at REDCAT, watching “CORPS,” a work by post-post-minimalist choreographer Milka Djordjevich featured in the second week of the theater’s well established New Original Works (NOW) series. As a young woman in New York, I performed in the dance company of second-generation minimalist Grethe Holby, an alumnus of Laura Dean’s original ...

Excuse me, Mr. Lipschitz’s sculpture, could you kindly move over?

Architecture & Design · Dance · Theater
You walk your dog, right? And you lug your groceries from the market to the car. So why shouldn’t the Los Angeles Music Center, as part of its $40 million Plaza renovation project, take its Jacques Lipschitz “Peace on Earth” sculpture for a little stroll as well? It’s been sitting in the same spot since ...