MoMA announces ‘All That Jack (Cole)’ films 2
It’s historic. Never before has the brilliant Hollywood choreographer’s cinema output been compiled in a single, curated exhibition. The rare opportunity to grasp and assess the entirety of Cole’s talent and influence is in store for New York audiences from January 20 through February 4, 2016. Over the course of two weeks, 18 films (most ...
Classical Underground in holiday mood
Dec
9
2015
Classical Underground, the highly personal and pleasantly renegade performance series housed in an loft in the industrial heartland of Los Angeles, has a cozy evening of chamber music on tap Monday night. Sakura, an ensemble of five cellists — Jonathan Dormand, Michael Kaufman, Yoshika Masuda, Peter Myers, and Sarah Rommell — attributes its name to ...
‘Hopscotch’ing through the Bradbury Building
Photographic memories of “Hopscotch,” a rolling (literally, in cars), city-wide site-specific opera performance that in one of its home bases — the regal Bradbury Building of downtown Los Angeles — dancers scampered ’round audience, even in a wrought-iron caged elevator. Intermingling in the photo with crew from The Industry are the dancers of Ate9 Dance ...
Infectious holiday fun: “Salsa Navidad” at VPAC
Oscar Hernandez came of age in the burgeoning New York Latin music scene of the 1970s and ‘80s, when the Fania label recorded many of the greats canonized today: Willie Colón, Bobby Valentín, Pete Rodriquez, Johnny Pacheco, Cheo Feliciano, Larry Harlow, Hector Lavóe, Ray Barretto, Luis ‘Perico’ Ortíz, and Papo Lucca among others. It was ...
Eerie time-and-space travel by photographer George LeGrady 2
Nov
30
2015
This intriguing work based upon nostalgic family snapshots from the ’30s and ’40s allows photographer George LeGrady to activate his personal past by use of a lenticular imaging process. It essentially culls a kinetic experience from static photographic imagery, activated by the viewer’s vantage point. Known for ambitious interactive installations, photography and data visualization projects, ...
Jack Cole’s “Down to Earth” recast as Kenny Ortega’s “Xanadu”
I like this freewheeling, highly cinematic dance number for nine women, “I’m Alive,” choreographed by Kenny Ortega for Xanadu (1980). Its hyper-realism, fresh swapping of perspective, and other charming trickery prove what the camera can do with dance that’s not possible on stage. Smooth editing and special effects enhance the number. “I’m Alive” and the ...
Art to accompany your Metro descent, by George LeGrady
Nov
26
2015
You’d think a leaning 18′ x 24′ concrete wall above a staircase and escalator unit at a subway station would be a pretty challenging place to envision art, much less install it. And yet, George LeGrady responded to a 2006 commission from Metrorail with this vivid piece of public art at the entrance of the ...
Reading tap 1
Dancing, like writing, is a craft before it is an art. Rare is the professional who excels at both; the thousands of hours of practice necessary to make an artist rarely allow time for rigorous training in another genre. Somewhere between the craft and the art, though, lie scholarship and criticism, and the world is ...
Jack Cole’s pinnacle, “Ladies in Waiting” 3
Mitzi Gaynor, at right above, in a sotto voce-hiss to Kay Kendall in Jack Cole‘s brilliant “Ladies in Waiting” dance sequence from LES GIRLS (MGM, 1957), delivers bad news. Their friend, Angele (Taina Elg) will soon be exposed to her fiancé and his proper family as a tawdry chorus girl. The number, full of drama ...
The subtle art of the New Yorker cartoon in an HBO documentary
Whether they leave readers amused, inspired or baffled, the iconic single-panel cartoons in The New Yorker magazine have been a cultural touchstone over the past 90 years. They power not on a laugh out loud, but on a brain-tickling smile. VERY SEMI-SERIOUS, a film directed by Leah Wolchok that glimpses the process behind publishing the ...