Bone up on your classic theater at The Antaeus Company

Theater
An intriguing program — offering casual exposure to great theater-art — is on offer in ClassicsFest 2012 this spring. The Antaeus Company, L.A.’s classical theater ensemble, presents staged readings of six classics in six weeks.

Earl Carroll’s beautiful construction site

Dance · Film
[click on photo for detail] Label reads: Earl Carroll’s theater-restaurant is famed not only for its “most beautiful girls in the world” but, also, for its unique construction. During the show, leggy ladies of the line paraded onto a huge circular, revolving stage. This photo shows Earl Carroll and some of his aides and chorus ...

Wherefore art thou, o Hollywood choreographer? 2

Dance · Film
[mouse over images for captions] Say you are a film producer, and you have a project that gets a green-light. There’s a dance sequence in the script and you need to hire a choreographer. Using the prime professional database of the film and television industry, IMDB Pro, you will be hard pressed to find one. ...

Classical Underground rocks

Music · Reviews
Clamor filled the central-Los Angeles industrial loft last Thursday evening, when the Russian expatriate painter, Alexey Steele, and his wife Olga opened their funky-junky, atelier-style home to the music lovers of Los Angeles. Amidst a clutter of books, art supplies, burning candles, and oversized classical paintings, propped onto surfaces or hanging from walls, habitués of ...

Turner Classic Movies launches pre-festival: Road to Hollywood

Dance · Film
The amazing, generous-spirited, movie-loving peeps at Turner Classic Movies are launching a fun nation-wide program of FREE screenings in ten cities across the country en route to the third annual TCM Fest in Los Angeles, April 12 – 15, 2012. There’s a centralized ticket reservation website and it is here.

William Forsythe recognized with Scripps/ADF award

Dance
In the course of a 35-year career based primarily in Germany, the American expatriate choreographer-designer, William Forsythe, forged profound, genre-bending advances in choreography for the classically trained dancer. This summer, Forsthye comes states-side to receive very strong recognition and an honor when the American Dance Festival (ADF) will award him with the prestigious 2012 Samuel ...

New live-performance hall for music in downtown L.A. 1

Architecture & Design · Music
Wonderful news,  there’s a new — that is, refurbished — 500-seat auditorium for music performances downtown. It’s called AT&T Center Theatre, and it’s located in the mid-century-modern classic skyscraper designed and built in 1965 by William Pereira, the USC architecture professor and founding partner of Pereira & Luckman (designers of the LAX Theme Building, and ...

Anthony Slide on Hollywood fanzine cover art @ Hollywood Heritage

Film
We enjoyed the book talk by Anthony Slide on the occasion of the publishing of his 70th Hollywood book, “Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine: A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers.” Slide, a veteran Hollywood-focused author, gave his presentation at the vastly historic Lasky-DeMille Barn, also known as the Hollywood Heritage Museum, as ...

Pauline Wagner’s fateful Santa Monica beach encounter with Marion Davies

Film
Photos show Pauline Wagner, 101, celebrating the birthday of Marion Davies. William R. Hearst constructed the faux-Georgian mansion, with rooms numbering 100, precipitously near to the ocean. This unnatural structure was mercifully demolished in 1969. Remaining is the estate’s refurbished colonial guest house, now operating as the Annenberg Beach House, a community arts center. §   ...

Cartoonist John Norment’s mid-century watercolors @ New Puppy Gallery

Visual arts
Opening this coming Saturday night — the first gallery exhibition since 1980 of watercolor paintings by John Norment, a prominent cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine. Over 40 unseen watercolors by the cartoonist and joke book editor/illustrator will be on view in the show, which is co-produced by New Puppy Gallery and Planet Glass. Norment ...