REVIEW: Garth Fagan Dance @ the Nate Holden
In the photos, captures from “So You See,” a stand-out work in the rich program presented by Garth Fagan Dance at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center last weekend. Choreographed in 2015 by longtime Fagan dancer Norwood Pennewell, to a jazz score by Marc Carey and Vijay Iyer, the work enjoyed two outstanding performances by ...
Denishawn could not hold her down, Louise Brooks
Actress/dancer/flapper-provocateuse Louise Brooks made her Denishawn company debut in 1922, when the company had already relocated from Los Angeles to New York. Brooks was shown the door by company matriarch Ruth St. Denis and after playing dozens of bit parts in Hollywood movies, hit it big as bad-woman “Lulu” in G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box in ...
March means chamber music
Feb
23
2016
Well, Jacaranda. The blossoming bushes that seduce with the color purple reinvented as a cutting-edge contemporary classical music presentation series. On monthly Saturday nights in Santa Monica, there convenes the cognoscenti, a considerable who-is-who of Los Angeles’s serious music universe. They meet, greet, and eat (cookies served during the break). The thirteen-season-running series, a labor ...
When Martin met Lewis
Feb
21
2016
… hair was king. The story of this wildly successful comedy pairing — their youthful energy reenforced by Brylcreem — will be told in film clips, home movies, and kinescopes in the opening program of MoMA’s upcoming Jerry Lewis retrospective. photo courtesy Bob Furmanek The Birth of Martin and Lewis | The Museum of Modern ...
Zsigmond’s “McCabe” cinematography revisited
Feb
19
2016
Pauline Kael memorably described Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller as “a beautiful pipe dream of a movie.” This poetic, revisionist Western is set in the Northwest at the turn of the 20th century and stars Warren Beatty and Julie Christie (Oscar-nominated for her performance). The screening is presented as a tribute to Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond ...
Valentine to “All That Jack (Cole)”
A Valentine to all the super-talented folks who contributed, by way of interviews and film introductions, or just by being there, to renewed appreciation for a great American choreographer. Thanks, all, for participating in “All That Jack (Cole)” at The Museum of Modern Art, Jan 20 – Feb 4, 2016. Below: director/choreographer Rob Marshall introduces ...
MoMA plots Jerry Lewis movie-birthday-bash 1
Feb
7
2016
Jerry Lewis turns 90 on March 16, 2016. That provides Museum of Modern Art film curator Dave Kehr with a solid reason to honor this most American of cinema artists with a career retrospective. Lewis’s best movies, all presented in rare 35mm prints, will be amped by special features: outtakes, screen tests, home movies, and ...
Thank you, New York! It ended with THE I DON’T CARE GIRL 4
A force stronger than Jack Cole — Mother Nature — caused the rescheduling of snow-cancelled programs, giving a new finale to “All That Jack (Cole)” at The Museum of Modern Art. The closing picture was THE I DON’T CARE GIRL, a “B” movie musical whose titular dance number, as I wrote on MoMA’s “Inside/Out” blog, ...
Life is sweet: “La Dolce Vita” turns 55 1
Feb
6
2016
Laemmle Theatres celebrates one of the first foreign films to figure prominently in the Academy Award voting. La Dolce Vita earned four Oscar nominations in 1962, including Best Director Federico Fellini and Best Original Screenplay and it won the Oscar for Piero Gherardi’s elegant costumes. Fellini’s sardonic epic about the decadence of modern Rome was ...