Flourishing Los Angeles experimental dance scene of the ’80s recalled
Aug
16
2018
ed. note: We hear much about the current vigor of Los Angeles dance. A guest writer, the visual artist Steve DeGroodt adds his historic perspective in this essay contributed to the blog. There is a vibrancy and presence that has been missing in the world of dance in Los Angeles for some time. What once ...
The valleys are alive with the sound of gibberish, courtesy of artist Paul McCarthy
Maria, pictured above and played by Julie Andrews in the syrupy Hollywood movie-musical, The Sound of Music (1965), delivers her iconic hilltop anthem, but in a bizarro version created by visual artist Paul McCarthy, her scale runs do ti la so fa mi re do. McCarthy created cisuM fo dnuoS ehT / The Sound of ...
Ford Theatre’s magical August dance-weekend adds intimacy
Unicorns and moonbeams! That magical stuff will spool at the Ford Amphitheatre when the beloved outdoor stage winds toward summer’s-end 2018. Lending unusual piquancy in a special dance-weekend are full-evening works by up-and-coming choreographers: Marjani Forté-Saunders (Aug 24, 25) and Stephanie Zaletel (Aug 26 only). To accommodate the intimate, experimental nature of these dance performances, ...
Makarova/Godunov triumph in Don Q. Watch and enjoy.
Aug
6
2018
Both Russian-trained sensations. She of the Kirov, he of the Bolshoi. Both Soviet defectors. I never saw him dance in person. I saw her dance many times, with ABT. Note his one-armed lift (of her) at 0:53. Note her turns — every last one of them. Her turns breathe. See her (twice-executed) en dedans pirouette, ...
Bob Fosse, dancer, at UCLA Film & Television Archive
We’re all familiar with Bob Fosse, choreographer, and Bob Fosse, film director, right? And if we aren’t, UCLA Film & Television Archive is giving us a great opportunity to catch up as it celebrates a key influencer of modern cinema in “Fosse, Fosse, Fosse!” Fosse was a rarity … he advanced from dancer to choreographer ...
Osipova in premiere as Isadora Duncan at Segerstrom
How will the California-born Isadora Duncan be remembered 50 years from now? As the woman whose barefoot, Greek-vase inspired abandon birthed the modern dance movement? Or for her shocking, free-love lifestyle in Europe and Russia and early tragic death – decapitated by scarf while riding in a Bugatti sports car? To the uninitiated, and by ...
‘Monsters’ invade Burbank!
Aug
2
2018
It’s hardly a new way of moving; it’s been around for, what, thirty years? But what’s new about hip-hop is that it has become a teachable, replicable, and codified dance technique. And it holds an electric grip, especially, on young aspiring commercial dancers for whom it is the fresh, evolving, go-to dance language. I enjoy ...
Review: Dogged drills by Djordjevich @ REDCAT’s NOW series
An interesting time, last weekend at REDCAT, watching “CORPS,” a work by post-post-minimalist choreographer Milka Djordjevich featured in the second week of the theater’s well established New Original Works (NOW) series. As a young woman in New York, I performed in the dance company of second-generation minimalist Grethe Holby, an alumnus of Laura Dean’s original ...
Excuse me, Mr. Lipschitz’s sculpture, could you kindly move over?
You walk your dog, right? And you lug your groceries from the market to the car. So why shouldn’t the Los Angeles Music Center, as part of its $40 million Plaza renovation project, take its Jacques Lipschitz “Peace on Earth” sculpture for a little stroll as well? It’s been sitting in the same spot since ...
Kaplan’s “No Business” poster of MM mashes Travilla costumes
We all know that Mike Kaplan’s startlingly fabulous collection of dance-movie posters, Gotta Dance Too, a redux exhibition after Gotta Dance in 2014, now hangs at Jacob’s Pillow (a slide show of several posters here). The fetching poster above shows our girl Marilyn, aka Double M, in an interesting amalgam of two looks in which ...