Don’t just sit there … jive with your hands!
Ed. note: We’re pleased to feature a fun item contributed by an expert in American popular dance, Julie Malnig. Take it away, Julie! The Hand Jive was one of the most popular rock and roll group dances of the late 1950s and became a hit on televised teen dance programs of the era such as ...
Through the eyes of Milton Glaser 2
If you lived in America in the last half of the 20th Century, you saw the country, in part, through the eyes of illustrator and graphic designer Milton Glaser (1929-2020). So prolific and widespread was his visual sense that, for a while, almost all good design looked like his. He co-founded Push Pin Studios, the ...
Show some respect! for Martha Graham … and Jack Cole 5
Jun
27
2020
I was intrigued to learn, while doing research, that Jack Cole, a great dance pedagogue, instructed his pupils as follows: “Jack asked us to stand when he entered the dance studio, like Martha Graham‘s students,” one of Cole’s late-life students at UCLA told me in an interview. Cole was long an admirer of Graham with ...
Ready, set … go back to the movies!
They could open, but they didn’t open, last Friday. Confusion reigns in the largest cinema market in the country, Los Angeles, which also happens to be a hotspot of COVID-19 infection. The MPAA website mentions nary a word about movie theater re-openings. Here are the California Department of Public Health guidelines: Limit attendees in the ...
Saturday afternoon with the in-crowd — and Ramsey Lewis
Jun
15
2020
How much more of an in-crowd guy can you be? The cool cat seated in front of the yellow backdrop is the GRAMMY® Award-winning pianist Ramsey Lewis. Lewis, an NEA Jazz Master who is still rocking it at 85, has a nice invitation to get onto your Saturday schedule — it’s a way to check ...
‘Instead of dance, it’s choreography,’ gripes choreographer Robert Alton 1
danny kaye, ‘choreography’ number from white christmas (1954) Danny Kaye, in the screenshot above, performs a send-up of Jack Cole‘s Hindu-Jazz in Robert Alton‘s “Choreography” number in WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954). The number is primarily a spoof on Martha Graham, and I imagine Kaye inserting this little fillip just for fun. Kaye worked extensively with Jack ...
Lost Martha Graham solo finds contemporary context in world premiere @ The Soraya
Martha Graham, ‘Immediate Tragedy’ 1937. Photo by Robert Fraser. Courtesy Martha Graham Resources, a division of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, Inc A scholar’s cache of rediscovered materials—remnants of a 1937 Martha Graham solo fashioned in response to the Spanish Civil War—has spawned a digital collaboration between Martha Graham Dance Company and the ...
John Garfield, glimpsed twice by his daughter’s oil paints
Jun
8
2020
The Postman Always Rings Twice: Portrait of John Garfield (2020)artist: Julie Garfield Haunted by the father she lost at a young age (he died at 39 in 1952 when she was just six) artist Julie Garfield paints her way to the essence of a great American actor via frozen cinematic moments from two of his ...
In Shanghai, where dancers breathe their own carbon dioxide
Jun
4
2020
Carbon dioxide is a natural by-product of the body’s respiration process, something we breathe in and out every day. Dancers obviously need more oxygen when their hearts are operating at elevated levels. And yet, here is the Shanghai Ballet taking class in face masks. How good, or harmful, can that be? According to Health, a ...
Meanwhile in China: a balancing act
Jun
1
2020
On Chinese television competition show, “Dian Feng Zhi Lu,” an unnamed husband and wife (unnamed to us, named to them and everyone they know) astound with their balancing ability. The Chinese have readily adopted a hybrid form of acrobatics and classical ballet that finds great popular reception across the universe.