Moira Shearer in Ashton’s Cinderella 1
Jan
13
2010
I’ve been researching “Cinderella,” Frederick Ashton’s fairy tale ballet for adults choreographed for Sadlers Wells Ballet (precursor to the Royal Ballet) based on Prokofiev’s score. The Joffrey Ballet is bringing its production of this gem to Los Angeles at the end of January. “Cinderella” was the first full-evening ballet Ashton, or any British-born dance maker, created. He made the work ...
Hitler’s emigres & exiles in Southern California 1
Prominently marked in my calendar for February 16 is a book talk at the L.A. Central Library’s ALOUD series by my friend Dorothy Lamb Crawford. Dorothy, a musicologist whom I met at the Ballets Russes centenial celebration in Boston last year, writes about the brilliant gathering of composers, conductors, and other musicians who fled Nazi Germany to ...
Rambova’s Aztec costume for Kosloff 2
Ballets Russes dancer Theodore Kosloff and his protegee Natacha Rambova pose at left, costumed for their Aztec dance number on the Keith Orpheum vaudeville circuit. Kosloff brought to the stage the role in which he made his cinematic debut — Guatemoco, the Aztec prince, in Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Woman God Forgot” in 1917. Here’s a ...
Life is good …
Dec
26
2009
… now that there's a new Pedro Almodovar film, "Broken Embraces." Highly recommended. The maestro strikes again. Vive Almodovar! Read A.O. Scott's inspired film review.
Say a dance prayer for Gene Kelly in Pittsburgh 2
Come on, home town! What’s this I hear about twenty years of fruitless effort to erect a statue of dancer Gene Kelly — in a city where bridges, steel mills, skyscrapers, and sports stadia get built with ease? In a recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, retired entertainment columnist Barbara Cloud gripes that she’s grown despondent waiting ...
Now that Macheath’s back in town …
Dec
17
2009
Reading Terry Teachout’s biography of Louis Armstrong and loving it.
Not the Nutcracker 1
Dec
17
2009
By now many of you will have seen the film from which this marvelous image is plucked — a mash-up of mesdemoiselles pounding the floorboards in Frederick Wiseman’s ballet documentary “LA DANSE.” They’re Paris Opera Ballet dancers hoofing it in Rudolph Nureyev’s version of Tchaikowsky’s “Casse-Noisette” or “The Nutcracker.” It’s my favorite scene in the movie. You gotta see these ...
“Noises Off” at A Noise Within
You cannot be too hard pressed for Christmas gifts now that Glendale’s long-time theater group, A Noise Within, just extended its spendid staging of Michael Freyn’s comedy/farce from 1982 "Noises Off." A huge hit on both sides of the pond, the play tracks the backstage shenanigans of a mediocre sex comedy called "Nothing On." The ...
Mike and Julia 4
After immensely enjoying the Nora Ephron film, “Julie and Julia,” I remembered that decades ago my father, Mike Levine, interviewed Julia Child on his talk show on KDKA, Pittsburgh’s 50,000-watt AM radio station. My dad, who during the “Madmen” era looked, dressed, and smoked like Don Draper, interviewed everyone — from his days as a ...