Best COVID-19 short video: Mark Morris Dance Group’s ‘Lonely Tango’

Dance · Film
It’s unclear whether Morris and his gang (MMDG) assembled this Ode to Isolation prior to the pandemic or thereafter. I *think* I see a face mask in the grocery-shopping sequence. But it’s not that important: The dead-and-deader spirit suits the moment well. This is a COVID-era-disseminated short video — utterly witty in its minimalist approach ...

Don’t just sit there … jive with your hands!

Dance · Film · Music
by 
Ed. note: We’re pleased to feature a fun item contributed by an expert in American popular dance, Julie Malnig. Take it away, Julie! The Hand Jive was one of the most popular rock and roll group dances of the late 1950s and became a hit on televised teen dance programs of the era such as ...

Show some respect! for Martha Graham … and Jack Cole 5

Dance
I was intrigued to learn, while doing research, that Jack Cole, a great dance pedagogue, instructed his pupils as follows: “Jack asked us to stand when he entered the dance studio, like Martha Graham‘s students,” one of Cole’s late-life students at UCLA told me in an interview. Cole was long an admirer of Graham with ...

‘Instead of dance, it’s choreography,’ gripes choreographer Robert Alton 1

Dance · Film
danny kaye, ‘choreography’ number from white christmas (1954) Danny Kaye, in the screenshot above, performs a send-up of Jack Cole‘s Hindu-Jazz in Robert Alton‘s “Choreography” number in WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954). The number is primarily a spoof on Martha Graham, and I imagine Kaye inserting this little fillip just for fun. Kaye worked extensively with Jack ...

Lost Martha Graham solo finds contemporary context in world premiere @ The Soraya

Dance · Music
Martha Graham, ‘Immediate Tragedy’ 1937. Photo by Robert Fraser. Courtesy Martha Graham Resources, a division of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, Inc A scholar’s cache of rediscovered materials—remnants of a 1937 Martha Graham solo fashioned in response to the Spanish Civil War—has spawned a digital collaboration between Martha Graham Dance Company and the ...

In Shanghai, where dancers breathe their own carbon dioxide

Dance
Carbon dioxide is a natural by-product of the body’s respiration process, something we breathe in and out every day. Dancers obviously need more oxygen when their hearts are operating at elevated levels. And yet, here is the Shanghai Ballet taking class in face masks. How good, or harmful, can that be? According to Health, a ...

Meanwhile in China: a balancing act

Dance
On Chinese television competition show, “Dian Feng Zhi Lu,” an unnamed husband and wife (unnamed to us, named to them and everyone they know) astound with their balancing ability. The Chinese have readily adopted a hybrid form of acrobatics and classical ballet that finds great popular reception across the universe.

Memorial Day 2020: Los Angeles theaters we miss 1

Architecture & Design · Dance · Film · Music · Theater
coveted during covid quarantine – the egyptian theatrethis spectacular photo of the egyptian’s balcony by morgan glier for the ucla daily bruin It all feels surreal — but my essential problem during the theater shutdown of the Covid-19 pandemic is that for me, art happens at night. Rarely during the day, sometimes at matinees, and ...

arts·meme reveals all at age twelve

Dance · Ideas & Opinion
At twelve, she’s a little lady. A proper one. But sometimes she lets it all hang out — just like Tamara Toumanova in this photo with bad boy Danny Kaye. arts·meme is getting up there in the pre-teen category. Twelve years old today ~ May 24, 2020! Please have fun with our annual birthday posts. ...

On Misty Copeland, gold is the new pink 1

Dance
What ‘ballet pink’ has been for more than a century has gone redefined. It is high time. Enough of that insipid shade. Enter a new theme, dusky gold, the color magnificently worn in these photos by the glorious, triumphant ballerina and principal dancer of American Ballet Theatre, Misty Copeland. Seen sculpting space in the skyscraper ...