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 ...
William Eggleston straddles Wilshire Boulevard
Nov
9
2010
Artist Ed Ruscha called him “a blessed rascal.” He influenced filmmakers David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, and Sofia Coppola. But more than that, he totally changed the medium of photography, according to William Eggleston expert Carole Thompson in a gallery talk at Edward Cella Art + Architecture, right across Wilshire Boulevard from LACMA. Cella, relatively new to ...
Alex Ross: top critic, top halls, top tunes
Nov
8
2010
The music mavens in our group at the NEA Arts Journalism Institute for Classical Music & Opera were levitating into outer space after meeting a huge hero: The New Yorker‘s music critic, Alex Ross, the author of The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007) and Listen to This (2010). In a chat between ...
Robyn Gardenhire’s garden of riches
In the video, artistic director Robyn Gardenhire rehearses her wonderful troupe, City Ballet of Los Angeles, which just delivered a mightily entertaining evening of dance at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center in central Los Angeles. Gardenhire’s diverse dancers bring fine integrity to her vivid, high-energy dance works. She has two strong prima ballerinas: the ...
Angelin Preljocaj’s “Empty Moves”
I loved this thoughtful, high-quality dance work presented at the Irvine Barclay Theatre this week — found it smart and profound. Having sat through another entire dance concert since, I’m still pondering this one. Read my review in the Los Angeles Times.
A map of Ralph Lemon’s mind
Nov
4
2010
News! Ralph Lemon, choreographer, had a brain x-ray and we got an exclusive on the result! It’s a map of Ralph Lemon’s mind. It could come in handy when you go see How Can you Stay in the House all Day Long and Not Go Anywhere? at REDCAT next weekend. Here are explanations, courtesy of ...
Ornette was fantastic. Frances Davis was also fantastic. 3
“Miles liked Ornette,” said the restaurant hostess as though first-name-basis chatter about two jazz-world geniuses was the most natural thing in the world to do while seating customers. Adam and I were grabbing a bite at Hamburger Hamlet before what would be a wonderful Ornette Coleman concert at Royce Hall. Yes, that Miles. And this ...