Chillin’ with a ballerina by a babbling brook
Jun
18
2012
Diaghilev hung around Venice’s Lido Beach with Lifar. Balanchine cooked Sunday dinners for his favorites. Ballet impresarios need down time. If they genuinely enjoy their artistic charges, they hang around with them on their day off. Here’s the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet artistic and executive director duo, Tom Mossbrucker and Jean-Philippe Malaty, on a ...
Jack Cole’s magic for Mitzi Gaynor on view in rare screening of “The I Don’t Care Girl” by UCLA Film & Television Archive August 4. Gaynor to appear in-person. 7
I am very pleased to announce my participation in a truly wonderful celebration of dance on film at the Billy Wilder Theater In Westwood on Saturday August 4, 2012. It’s sponsored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. On that night, as a community, we will view the rare and out-of-circulation Twentieth Century Fox movie ...
Awake in a dream
I am very sorry this lovely video clip starts with a terrible commercial. I hope it is worth the wait for you.
Jacaranda’s garden party on fire 1
Jun
15
2012
Remember the old-fashioned garden party? Where proper ladies and gentlemen sipped, nibbled, noshed, chewed, grazed, and gabbed? Well, forget about that. Welcome to Jacaranda‘s annual garden-party fundraiser event. That’s where the smart Los Angeles contemporary music society will introduce its new season in plein-air. And don’t forget your sun hat. Because you may need to ...
Determined design discipline behind Diavolo’s daring dance-wheel
A group of Penn State Architecture and Engineering students spent the year designing and building the 12’8″-tall-by-17′-wide “Dance Vehicle-01” in an interdisciplinary studio built around a collaboration with renowned Los Angeles-based Diavolo Dance Theater. An exercise in the interplay of movement and devices, “The Secret Life of Public Spaces” studio resulted from a $251,670 grant ...
Peter Greenaway’s “Nightwatching” to enjoy Los Angeles premiere
Los Angeles FilmForum hosts the Los Angeles premiere of a Peter Greenaway film, “Nightwatching,” from 2007, at the Egyptian Theater on June 17. It’s the sister film to Greenaway’s “J’Accuse”; one is fictional, the other a documentary interpretation of Rembrandt and the painting “The Night Watch.” “Nightwatching,” Greenaway’s fictional foray into art-history detecting, was made ...
The Barn’s ready for its close-up, Mr. DeMille!
The events presented under the “Evenings @ the Barn” series are among my favorite in town — friendly, intimate and full of gossipy tidbits and info about Hollywood history. Here’s an event that focuses on the hugely historic building where the events take place — the Hollywood Heritage Museum on Highland Avenue across from the ...
Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers to raise their voices in Pasadena
Jun
7
2012
One of the world’s premiere choral ensembles specializing in African-American music, The Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers, will perform on June 24, 2012, at Pasadena Presbyterian Church in the Playhouse Arts District of downtown Pasadena. The program will focus on traditional and contemporary spirituals and gospels and works by contemporary African-American composers.
Oh la la! Jack Cole’s “Les Girls” from “Les Girls” (1957) 1
The (by then) hugely experienced dance-on-film man Jack Cole choreographed the brilliant dance sequences in “Les Girls,” a movie musical directed by George Cukor in 1957. “Les Girls” is included in the upcoming TCM broadcast “Choreography by Jack Cole” on Turner Classic Movies September 10, 2012. I will co-host the evening with Robert Osborne. “Les ...
Review: BodyTraffic at the Gindi 1
Did you feel the earthquake that rocked the top of the 405 Freeway near Mulholland Drive Thursday night? Oh, you missed it? It was the tremor of excitement when BodyTraffic, Los Angeles’s newest and best entry into the contemporary dance universe, shook the stage of the University of Judaism’s Gindi Auditorium. The ten-member troupe, co-directed ...