I just love the guy: John Lennon
Nov
27
2010
It’s not his song writing or performance that grabs me, although I like and admire that too. It’s his total artistic nature, flamboyant personality, troubled personal journey, and his bonding with a really wacky Japanese artist that endears him to me. Yes, bonding; John and Yoko were a deeply bonded couple, for better or for worse. LENNONYC, ...
Jack Cole’s modern-dance roots at the Pillow
Norton Owen, Director of Preservation at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the Berkshire Mountains, initiated a celebration of the jazz choreographer, Jack Cole in August. In the video below Owen, joined by dance historian Maura Keefe and southern California’s own Larry Billman (at 8:17), discusses Cole’s early career and clarifies his connection to the place ...
From Rio con brio: Musica Angelica returns to Los Angeles 1
Nov
23
2010
I’m looking forward to a marvelous performance by Musica Angelica, the L.A.-based baroque chamber orchestra, just back from a tour of South America, primed to let ‘er rip in Santa Monica and Pasadena performances next weekend. The 20-piece baroque band’s versatile music director, Martin Haselboeck, in a previous concert, conducted while singing, balancing on his ...
Meet Natalie Portman’s evil twin, body double Kimberly Prosa 2
I enjoyed my chat with dancer Kimberly Prosa, one of two body doubles for actress Natalie Portman in Darren Aronofsky’s BLACK SWAN. The film, a psychological thriller with dazzling special effects, opens nationwide December 3. Reports Prosa on her amazing and unexpected first-ever movie experience: “I went to audition at an open call looking for extras to ...
Merce and the midgets 2
Nov
20
2010
Researching Merce Cunningham Trust trustee and former Cunningham dancer, Patricia Lent, I came across this post-911 story — a sweet tale so well written in the New York Times by Jennifer Dunning. The story concerns a class of P.S. 234 third graders taught by Ms. Lent, then a school teacher. She takes her kids to ...
A heady evening with Hedy Lamarr 2
Nov
16
2010
While he was growing up in Ottawa, Illinois, the film writer Stephen Shearer’s mother told him that in 1939 she and a girlfriend went to the local cinema to see Charles Boyer in “Algiers.” Co-starring with the Frenchman was MGM’s latest European import, Hedy Lamarr. In her first appearance in the film, cinematographer James Wong ...
ROA wrangles the rats of Los Angeles 2
Nov
15
2010
All-Los Angeles materials — gnarly wooden boards, found rubble, discarded t.v. sets, sheet metal — form the foundation for the visiting Belgian artist ROA’s between-the-cracks, garbage-dumpster-at-night art show at the cool New Puppy Gallery. On these outsized flat surfaces, ROA paints precise portraits of critters and vermin. No, not the denizens of the L.A. art ...
The ABCs of being Eli Broad
Los Angeles is blessed with a surfeit of alphabet-soup acronyms for its world-class museums, famously, LACMA and MOCA. Both derive from the mother of all art-museum acronyms, MOMMY, er … MOMA. In a Huffington Post blog item, bad-boy Coagula Art Journal editor Mat Gleason posits options for Uncle Eli’s swank new warehouse of contemporary art. ...
Madam Mayor, aka Heidi Duckler, occupies City Hall 1
I’m looking forward to seeing Heidi Duckler | Collage Dance Theatre‘s “Governing Bodies,” a wild event in which the choreographer takes over Sergeant Joe Friday’s favorite digs: Los Angeles City Hall. Joe’s proud LAPD badge (number 714) bore the emblem of City Hall, once L.A.’s proudest architectural beacon — it’s certainly still iconic — and for ...
Jack Cole & Marilyn Monroe reunite at Jacob’s Pillow
It was my great honor to join a panel at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival on Saturday, August 14, 2010, to honor the peerless jazz choreographer Jack Cole, whom I revere and about whom I have written. As a former Denishawn dancer, Cole had a distinct history at “The Pillow.” Here I contribute a snippet about Cole’s choreography for Marilyn Monroe ...