Seeking Jack Cole at the Rainbow Room

Architecture & Design · Dance · Music
It was a lovely holiday event, a swellegant affair. First Republic Bank of New York, generous supporters of myriad arts organizations, threw a reception at the Rainbow Room high atop Rockefeller Center. Rocking the Room were the Fat Afro Latin Jazz Cats, whose youthful big-band sound boomed beneath the clatter of cocktailers while the crazy ...

Very now, very Pam-Tan

Architecture & Design · Dance · Reviews
Watching it, it has the feeling of today: choreographer Pam Tanowitz’s “thunder rolling along afterward,” an emotionally fraught, 20-minute-long work fashioned for a sleek tribe of Juilliard School dance majors. Along with contributions by John Heginbotham, Katarzyna Skarpetowska, Matthew Neenan, Tanowitz’s “thunder” comprised the Juilliard School’s annual showcase, “New Dances: Edition 2016.” What is that ...

Dance on, three nymphs, at Hollyhock House!

Architecture & Design · Dance · Visual arts
Don’t these girls deserve a rest? Apparently not! We recently announced the joyful homecoming of a reaaaaally old work of art — a first-century Roman bas relief still in stunning condition. A high-tech replication of an original tableau of three dancing girls lives once more on Olive Hill, a hilltop retreat dedicated to the arts ...

Aline’s nymphs to prance once more on Olive Hill

Architecture & Design · Dance · Visual arts
It’s the thing I most love, except for my relatives. I need this marble when I arrive home from a day of shopping or business. And I recover immediately when I look at those three maidens. They sooth me with their rhythm, that balance of movement, so charming, so pitre … This marble is already ...

All is golden in the Golden Nautilus, says Catherine Turocy

Architecture & Design · Dance · Ideas & Opinion
The structure of the Nautilus is considered sacred geometry, the Golden Mean, represented by the Greek letter phi, one of the mysterious natural numbers that seems to arise from the basic structure of our cosmos. “Baroque Dance and the Golden Nautilus” is a lecture/performance by Baroque expert Catherine Turocy.  The artistic director of the New ...

As we melt down, then rebuild: Cherkaoui’s ‘Babel(Words)’

Architecture & Design · Dance
In this arresting moment from “Babel(Words)” created in 2010 in Brussels and now on view at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival, co-choreographers Sidi Lardi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet bring their gang of gypsies through a ballet of physical violence that culminates in a gruesome frieze. It’s a vision that should terrify us, were it not ...

Nasty women, nasty men dance with ‘Two Hags’ sculpture: Susan Marshall & Co.

Architecture & Design · Dance · Visual arts
An upright metal grid of cut steel pipe bisects a table, and steel rods — sharpened to a spike — are prepared in rows. The dancers of Susan Marshall & Company pay careful attention to speed, force, and precision, while navigating dangerously sharp edges of Martha Friedman’s new sculpture, Some Hags.  The spikes are pushed into ...

Frolic the Hall of Mirrors with Louis XIV in “Versailles”

Architecture & Design · Dance · Fashion · Film
In the dance world, we know King Louis XIV for his balletomania, which led to the first formal classical ballet, “Le Ballet de la Nuit.” Louis himself danced the lead role, embodying a character modestly called ‘The Sun King.’ (As Mel Brooks sagely noted, it’s good to be king.) A reenactment of the performance appears ...

A $1 tour of Gamble House, for 50 years a public museum

Architecture & Design
January 14, 2016 marked the 50th anniversary of the gift of the Gamble House from the Gamble family to the City of Pasadena and the University of Southern California. This generous gift agreement allowed the Gamble House to open its doors to the public in September of the same year. The Gamble House was designed ...

Let’s go to the drive-in.

Architecture & Design · Film · Visual arts
Projection for Two Stations a looping video will transform the parking lot of Bergamot Station Arts Center into a nightly pop-up drive-in movie. The clever creator of this best possible use of a Santa Monica evening is artist Alia Malley (b.1973, California). Malley received her BA in Critical Studies from USC School of Cinematic Arts ...