Book review: Post-modern vaudeville … from The Grand Union
dilley, arnold, rainer, grand union Ed. note: Guest author Elizabeth Zimmer contributes this review of Wendy Perron‘s new book, The Grand Union: Accidental Anarchists of Downtown Dance, 1970-1976. If you miss dance in our time of pandemic-related deprivation, get this book. Wendy Perron, a near-contemporary and sometime colleague of members of the Grand Union, was ...
Breathe in, breathe out: Westside Ballet’s ‘Grace & Grit’ drive-in movie event
joy womack, for westside ballet Attention, all dance-deprived! A fun event, with a poignant underpinning, will be a pop-up drive-in movie evening of filmed dance offerings hosted by Westside Ballet in tandem with the Public Policy Institute of Santa Monica College. I like how it puts dance — and the determination to present dance — ...
A Martha Graham x-ray of Trump’s COVID medical team
“The body never lies.” This aphorism is taught to every student of Dance History 101. It comes from Martha Graham, who received it from her father, Dr. George Graham, a neurological physician. “Martha, you must never lie to me, because movement never lies, and when I see your body I’ll know you are lying.” Dr. ...
Still stimulating: ‘The Grand Union’ in 50th anniversary conversation
Sep
28
2020
A special on-line convocation of a dance-talk series hosted by Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Place in New York’s East Village, Conversation Without Walls, will take place November 21. Participants include weighty women of the arts, the dancer and Danspace co-founder, Barbara Dilley, and artist, Yvonne Rainer, and writer, Wendy Perron. To mark the 50th ...
Hollywood 1952: Jack Cole’s ethnic dance includes voodoo & waltz
In the summer and fall of 1951, the dance maker Jack Cole undertook two major new choreographies, one each at the two leading film studios of the era. He staged and danced the lead role in a voodoo ceremonial-rite for Lydia Bailey, at Twentieth Century Fox, and choreographed a sumptuous ‘grand valse’ for The Merry Widow ...
Fighting the virus of discouragement — with ballet 2
Sep
11
2020
Ed. note: It is a an honor to share words written by dance educator and director of the Anaheim Ballet, Larry Rosenberg. Larry is expressing feelings and ideas shared by dance educators and company directors world wide. Larry writes as follows: COVID-19 is dangerous and relentless, a real virus. But the virus of discouragement is ...
Ballet & blistering jazz-dance collide in Paris
Sep
3
2020
Youtube, you’ve done it again! And again and again. That’s how many times I have watched this wonderful newsreel clip, clearly an excerpt from a longer British Pathe story concerning … la danse. It takes place in Paris, which is always an excellent start. The cameraman seems be following a haughty prima ballerina, Ludmilla Tcherina, ...
Best of: Guggenheim’s ‘Works & Process’ artist videos
Ed. note: We’ve been tracking the rollout of virtual (video) commissions by artists reacting to life in a new abnormal — a global pandemic. As part of her previous story about the commissioning of these works by the Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process, writer Susan Reiter carefully selected “best of best” videos with commentaries, which ...
Guggenheim ‘Works & Process’ spurs artists in limbo
Dylan Crossman When performance venues shut down abruptly in mid-March, innumerable planned events were put on hold. That included the Guggenheim’s modest but high-profile “Works & Process” series, midway through its spring season which featured a mix of dance, theater and music events. Launched in 1984, the adventurous series “explores artistic creation through stimulating conversation ...
A ‘hands-on’ choreographer, Helen Tamiris
Aug
16
2020
When I was a dance student, it was perfectly normal to be utterly terrified of certain instructors. But they didn’t often man-handle you. Two generations ago, however, this was not the case. A student of Jack Cole described him banging her head on the ground as she stretched on the floor in second position. Banging ...