Enter early Los Angeles ballet instructors Kosloff & Rasch
Mar
22
2020
ed. note: artsmeme is pleased to publish a two-part excerpt, from a new book, Ballet Class: An American History by Melissa R. Klapper (Oxford University Press, March 2020). Our Los Angeles-based blog requested writing from Ms. Klapper that focuses on the early history of ballet training in our city. Part two below! Jean Westheimer, ...
European exiles & emigres instruct kids of early Los Angeles in ballet 2
Mar
14
2020
ed. note: artsmeme is pleased to publish a two-part excerpt from a new book, Ballet Class: An American History by Melissa R. Klapper (Oxford University Press, March 2020). Our Los Angeles-based blog requested writing from Ms. Klapper that focuses on the early history of ballet training in our city. Part one below! With no ...
Review: ‘West Side’ Video
Shereen Pimentel, Isaac Powell and cast. photo: Jan Versweyveld Broadway’s current revival of West Side Story—the groundbreaking 1957 musical by Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim whose dramatic power has long been associated with kinetic energy and eloquently focused movement opens simply. The Jets saunter to the front of the vast, bare ...
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A ‘Romeo + Juliet’ for 2020 soon at The Soraya 2
Feb
25
2020
As reviews and reactions to the just-opened Broadway production of West Side Story (based of course on the Romeo and Juliet myth) zing back and forth like gang warfare, a new Romeo + Juliet by Ballet BC, the nearly 35-year-old Vancouver-based contemporary ballet troupe, heads to The Soraya for two performances. The production is en ...
Review: Blue13 Dance Company hits home run at The Wallis 2
Blue13 Dance Company “Diya aurToofan” photo credit: Kevin Parry for The Wallis Last night’s boffo showcase by the 15-year-old Blue13 Dance Company brought great pleasure, including a former secret now in plain sight thanks to presentation by The Wallis: the presence of a real choreographer in our midst. Achinta McDaniel, American-born of Indian descent, along ...
Tanowitz observed: critic’s notes on ‘Four Quartets’ at CAP UCLA
An artsy crowd showed up at Royce Hall Sunday afternoon to see Four Quartets, no doubt because of the rapturous reviews it got in London and New York and because of its heady combination of the arts: literature (TS Eliot’s poem of the title read with earthy finesse by Kathleen Chalfant); modernist painter Brice Marden’s ...
Soulful, spiritual, aspirational: Yuval Ron Ensemble revisits Spain’s Golden Age
The first time I heard the music of virtuoso guitarist Yuval Ron was, gosh, it must have been twenty years ago, in an intimate concert at a private home — his own. Packed into a living room on three sides in chairs arranged three rows deep, a group of total strangers passed an indelible evening ...
Toni Basil ‘does the Pony, does the James Brown’ on CBS
We loved seeing Toni Basil, 76, doing the pony and the James Brown on CBS Sunday morning on Oscar Day 2020.
An Oscar cookie for the New York dance world
Strike a dance pose! cried the photographer, and the critics complied. Contrary to popular belief, when artsmeme is not excavating the coal mines of library archives for factoids to tickle your fancy, or cajoling you to attend the latest cool performance, she has a social life! This gathering on Oscar Sunday in New York included ...
On sacred ground: Step Afrika! at the Soraya
Ed. note: This article was commissioned and first published by The Soraya. It is republished on artsmeme with permission. In a return visit to The Soraya on Sunday, February 23, Step Afrika!, the distinguished Washington, D.C.-based performance troupe, will bring its latest creative project to Los Angeles. Drumfolk, a special Black History Month presentation, lends ...