Determined design discipline behind Diavolo’s daring dance-wheel

Architecture & Design · Dance
A group of Penn State Architecture and Engineering students spent the year designing and building the 12’8″-tall-by-17′-wide “Dance Vehicle-01” in an interdisciplinary studio built around a collaboration with renowned Los Angeles-based Diavolo Dance Theater. An exercise in the interplay of movement and devices, “The Secret Life of Public Spaces” studio resulted from a $251,670 grant ...

The Barn’s ready for its close-up, Mr. DeMille!

Architecture & Design · Film
The events presented under the “Evenings @ the Barn” series are among my favorite in town — friendly, intimate and full of gossipy tidbits and info about Hollywood history. Here’s an event that focuses on the hugely historic building where the events take place — the Hollywood Heritage Museum on Highland Avenue across from the ...

Architectural duo to reconfigure May Company building into film museum 2

Architecture & Design · Film
Award-winning architects Renzo Piano and Zoltan Pali will design the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science announced today. The new museum will occupy the former May Company building, a beloved Los Angeles icon that sits at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, the dead center of ...

Remnants of “The Players” found in anthropological dig of L.A. nightclub property 4

Architecture & Design · Film
Our story concerns the film director Preston Sturges, whose great legacy is his canon of laugh-out-loud, politically tinged screwball comedies: “Sullivan’s Travels,” “The Palm Beach Story,” “The Lady Eve,” among them. The former private home where Sturges’ bar/restaurant, The Players, once operated still stands at 8225 Sunset Boulevard. In the 1940s it formed a Triangle ...

New Yorkers show their love for an arts-loving building

Architecture & Design
Before-and-after photos of the historic renovation of 62 East 4th Street in New York’s East Village, an edifice with a lot of art history.  

East Village building echoing art history gets preservation award

Architecture & Design · Dance · Film · Music
Our story concerns a grand, old New York City structure with a noble track record in art and cultural history. The pink lady in the picture has been home to creative endeavors in music, dance and film. Last year, the exterior of the building receive a $2.1 million restoration as part of the renovations of ...

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 ...

Kosloff stages Fokine’s “Les Sylphides” @ 80,000-seat L.A. Memorial Coliseum

Architecture & Design · Dance
You’re a young city, spreading your wings. You build a ginormous sports arena. What should you do to inaugurate it? What else? Stage “Les Sylphides”! Dateline, Los Angeles Herald Tribune, July 29, 1923 LOS ANGELES TERPSICHOREANS. Theodore Kosloff [standing, at middle], dancing professor extraordinary, surrounded by a score of his premier pupils in the new ...

Cleopatra, CEO, comes to rule Los Angeles

Architecture & Design · Dance
We chatted with Heidi Duckler, in the final creative phase for her upcoming dance work, “Cleopatra CEO,” which opens this Friday night on the 51st floor of Paul Hastings Tower in downtown Los Angeles, and runs for three subsequent weekends. The architecture-savvy choreographer, celebrating 30 years as a local dance maker, was last seen running ...

Go postal: use choreographer commemorative stamps

Architecture & Design · Dance
Finally. A great reason to use snail mail. You can smack a beloved choreographer right onto the envelope. Jim McMullan, the well known poster designer for Lincoln Center, created the images following a first lot of choreographer stamps in 2004. That group featured mini portraits of dance giants: George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Martha Graham, ...