The George & Barrie show at the Barn
We call it “The Barn.” Only in Los Angeles could a barn occupy dead center of a huge city! It’s the home of Hollywood Heritage, the esteemed group of film aficionados who gather in the historic structure where Cecil B. DeMille and his partner, Jesse Lasky, shot Hollywood’s first feature film, “The Squaw Man” circa ...
At Dances for a Variable Population, ‘Movement Speaks’ 6
Jan
4
2017
Remember “Bend and stretch … reach for the stars?” the guiding anthem of kindergarten class? Well guess what. You haven’t graduated kindergarten yet. Moving your body and staying physically active is a lifelong occupation, not just the task of six year-olds. As the population ages, and many of us pass our days glued to a ...
Dance & film co-mingle for a happy 2017
We’re ringing in a Happy New Year with a movie friend, Rudolf Nureyev, who stars in the Ken Russell biopic, “Valentino” (1977). Nureyev looks smart, doesn’t he, in his tuxedo pictured (above) alongside his festooned co-star, actress Carol Kane. But I also enjoy seeing Rudi sans tux — casbah-style — putting the iron grip on ...
Thank you, New York!
A big bravo to Manhattan, Mecca of the Arts, where I have been in residence since September — aka The Season! I joined the furious tour of the performing arts, hitting the ground running, while on a Fellowship from The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. Forays to Lincoln Center, the Joyce Theater, Brooklyn ...
Seeking Jack Cole at the Rainbow Room
It was a lovely holiday event, a swellegant affair. First Republic Bank of New York, generous supporters of myriad arts organizations, threw a reception at the Rainbow Room high atop Rockefeller Center. Rocking the Room were the Fat Afro Latin Jazz Cats, whose youthful big-band sound boomed beneath the clatter of cocktailers while the crazy ...
Busby Berkeley brings it to Bette Davis in ‘Fashions of 1934’
A great dance movie starring Bette Davis. Who knew? Apparently Film Forum director of repertory programming, Bruce Goldstein, did. He programmed FASHIONS OF 1934, smart and smashing in a 35mm print and preserved by Library of Congress, as part of Film Forum’s recent nine-day Busby Berkeley festival. It’s a really good movie, well acted and ...
Very now, very Pam-Tan
Watching it, it has the feeling of today: choreographer Pam Tanowitz’s “thunder rolling along afterward,” an emotionally fraught, 20-minute-long work fashioned for a sleek tribe of Juilliard School dance majors. Along with contributions by John Heginbotham, Katarzyna Skarpetowska, Matthew Neenan, Tanowitz’s “thunder” comprised the Juilliard School’s annual showcase, “New Dances: Edition 2016.” What is that ...
Horses for courses, from The Lucinda Childs Dance Company
Dec
5
2016
My favorite work of the first program (“Lucinda Childs, A Portrait 1963-2016”) of a two-part Lucinda Childs retrospective now on at the Joyce Theater was Radial Courses (1976), a hugely fun, tongue-in-cheek, pretzel-puzzle of a dance. Promenading at a clipped pace, four tidily attired male dancers circumscribe a large oval shape. As the British love ...
Ticket to dance, courtesy of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
During the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater‘s winter season in New York, ticketed dancegoers should hang onto their ducats! For 60 days following the Ailey performance you attend, your stub will be good for one free class at the Ailey Extension program. Those classes happen in the company’s glam, window-walled, mid-Manhattan building. You’ll get to ...