Boss talk on Strip in ’60s by Priore
Culture historian Domenic Priore, author of Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Last Stand in Hollywood, promises a “boss” time at his upcoming talk on the “Sixties on the Sunset Strip” on February 8. The illustrated lecture, free to the public, targets a specific moment between 1965 and 1966 when West Hollywood absorbed, then advanced, ...
Fierce women of dance featured in UC Santa Barbara conference
We all heard Meryl Streep tell it like it is at the Golden Globes awards. Yes, we did. A courageous woman. We are similarly slated to hear from a group of courageous women of modern dance — they talk with both brain and body. In August 1960, Anna Halprin, at right, taught an experimental workshop ...
Get good weather in a painting @ Pasadena Museum of California Art 1
Jan
5
2017
It’s crappy and cold and rainy out and I don’t even recognize the weather in L.A. anymore: the whipsawing temperature, the nasty edge we rarely felt even in rainy season. That is your arts·meme weather report. Whiny. One solution might be In the Land of Sunshine: Imaging the California Coast Culture at Pasadena Museum of ...
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 ...