Legendary dancer/director Arthur Mitchell visits L.A. 1
In tandem with the soon-to-close “40 Years of Firsts,” a loving and comprehensive art gallery retrospective of Dance Theatre of Harlem, Arthur Mitchell, the troupe’s artistic director emeritus, will appear at the California African American Museum the evening of June 30. The multimedia exhibit, organized by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, ...
merce misha mashup 2
“Farewell Merce Cunningham Dance Company” weekend in Los Angeles was capped by a bonus performance in which Mikhail Baryshnikov appeared with the company. It was a fundraiser for the Cunningham Dance Foundation’s “Legacy Project” and REDCAT. Charles Atlas, with whom the choreographer collaborated on multiple video projects over thirty years, presented his film homage to Merce — ...
Merce’s marvelous Irish jig 3
Co-published on Huffington Post arts page “It was unutterably moving to watch,” said long time company archivist David Vaughan of the historic reconstruction of “Roaratorio” (1983) that graced Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s fare-thee-well performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall this weekend. “We all feel Merce in the dance.” Indeed, watching company elder Robert Swinston, 60, ...
Neil Greenberg chats about Roaratorio
May
24
2010
“You really see people dancing. It’s especially clear that this was a concern of Merce’s. There’s a lot of humanity in this work.” Thus choreographer Neil Greenberg remembers Roaratorio, the Merce Cunningham work dating from 1983 that will be restaged at Disney Concert Hall next weekend. A member of Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1979 ...
Lionel Popkin, elephantine
We all know it's a jungle out there. Especially now, with oil gushing into the Louisiana Wetlands, we're sincerely grateful to choreographer Lionel Popkin for inverting the familiar man-destroys-nature theme. Popkin transforms a downtown Los Angeles performance space into an urban jungle of lush mystery in his marvelously inventive "There is an Elephant In This ...
Pina Bausch films at Dance Camera West
Kudos to hardworking impresario Lynette Kessler on the launch of the ninth annual installment of Dance Camera West, the month-long series celebrating the best-of-the-best of the filmed dance experience. Here is Dance Camera's West's full schedule. I'm particularly drawn to Lynette's June 12 symposium on German choreographer Pina Bausch, a great force in dance who died ...
L.A. Music Center co-commissions revival of Merce Cunningham work
May
10
2010
It gave me pause to learn that the Los Angeles Music Center had co-commissioned the revival of Roaratorio, a major work dating from 1986 that Merce Cunningham Dance Company will soon present in L.A. That’s really cool. I had to read it twice. Choreographer Neil Greenberg, who performed in the piece while a Cunningham dancer, ...
The eyes have it …
Indian dancers dance with their eyes. They train them too. That’s evident in this image of the great Indian classical dancer Uday Shankar (Ravi Shanker was his little brother and Jack Cole was his student). Modern-dance choreographer Yvonne Rainer wisely reminds us that the mind is a muscle. So, too, are the eyes. The pedagogy ...
Heidi Duckler’s sudsy classic
The Echo Park lavanderia (“SpinCycle”) where choreographer Heidi Duckler is reprising her 1988 site-specific work “Laundromatinee” stands next door to a Los Angeles bagel factory. Yeasty baking odors waft into the laundromat where her whimsical dance unrolls. We’re in the inner city. That makes sense because Duckler, a long-time contributor to the local dance scene, ...