Welcome Beatles 1964 fifty years later @ Levitt Pavilion
Celebrate 50 years of the Beatles in the U.S. this weekend at Levitt Los Angeles with a unique Beatles retrospective featuring the Omega String Quartet, the same outstanding group that brought the largest show in the history of Levitt — the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon Retrospective last summer, 2013. A psychedelic ...
The jazz strata of Ave Pildas 1
If you receive photographer Ave Pildas’s weekly e-blasts, you know the prolific nature of his work. His street snaps can be quirky, straightforward, unpredictable, ironic, reverent, whimsical, iconic, or just plain fun. He has an eye for the beautiful and the surreal but the transmissions often time to current events or seasonal observances. They show ...
Review: Ate9 Dance & Fleck a pithy pairing @ REDCAT
“It’s the second night of the third week of the 11th year of the New Original Works festival,” announced Mark Murphy, executive director of REDCAT performance space Friday night in a pre-show greeting of his audience. Surveying the full house of folk who track with emerging performance art, Murphy’s flickering smile seemed to convey, “But ...
Lil Buck pays back James Brown
JB’s immensely funky riff from 1973, “The Payback” given exceptional dance interpretation today — first by the quicksilver Lil Buck, then by a less brilliant partner Jon Boogz. While Boogz dances, Lil Buck upstages him by leaning against a wall. Then he cycles through for a second round at video-end.
Nude ballet photos! Herman Cornejo, Ivan Vasiliev in near buff
Yes, budgets are tight. So we’re seeing our biggest ballet stars come on stage wearing less and less clothes! In this case, it’s no huge punishment. We are talking about two of the loveliest, most talented — and beefiest — guys in ballet today. Pictured at left, Herman Cornejo, who commenced the “Diana & Acteon” ...
James Brown’s rhythm-ecstasy, Paris 1971
Aug
6
2014
In the video: Fifteen minutes of free-form, ecstatic rhythm-rumination from the great James Brown performing at the Olympia auditorium in Paris in 1971. A re-creation of this amazing historic concert forms the high point of “Get On Up,” the touching James Brown bio-pic we saw tonight.
Pardon our French, but we’re loving “Hollywood Exiles in Europe” @ UCLA Film & Television Archive
Aug
5
2014
Whose good idea was this film series? One person, Rebecca Prime, author of the recent Hollywood Exiles in Europe: The Blacklist and Cold War Film Culture, certainly inspired it. Working with UCLA Film & Television Archive, Prime has co-curated a line-up of works by Jules Dassin, Joseph Losey, Cy Endfield, Ben and Norma Barzman, and ...
Live it at the Levitt! Boco do Rio @ MacArthur Park Saturday
Aug
5
2014
Okay, guys we’re in it, it’s official, it’s on. It’s August! Summer 2014 is a happening thing; you could call it a “fait accompli”! Or, of greater concern, soon to wane! So the time is right for the swinging samba rhythms that always sound good, but somehow better on a sultry summer evening. Which brings ...
Jack Cole’s “Hindu Swing” revisited by Namita Kapoor
Aug
5
2014
We have been delighted to be in touch with fellow Jack Cole fantatic Namita Kapoor, a talented American dancer/choreographer and graphic designer who has found cultural connection in an odd (but awesome) phenomenon of nightclub culture from the late 1930s – 1950s. That is, Jack Cole’s mash-up of classical Indian dance with American jazz rhythms. ...
Mozart @ 18 in Glyndbourne’s “La Finta”
Haven’t heard of La Finta? Not to worry, few people have. Written when the composer was but 18 years old and very (very) rarely performed, the anonymous text is primarily to blame: The Podesta (Mayor) is in love with his new gardener Sadrina, which is too bad for the servant Serpetta who more than fancies ...