Creative women SoKo & Loie Fuller align in new film ‘La Danseuse’
We are looking forward to meeting SoKo, the French singer/songwriter/video artist, in her film performance playing modern-dance pioneer Loie Fuller, in La Danseuse (The Dancer). The movie opens tomorrow, Friday, at Laemmle Theatres. Fuller (1862 – 1928), the great modern-dance pioneer, is now considered, in retrospect, to have been a prescient multi-media artist for her ...
‘Rebels on Pointe,’ a film about the pursuit of human happiness
“I can be myself. I can wear tutus. Why not?” asks the Cuban-born ballet dancer. Carlos Hopuy, in a matter-of-fact tone. He adds, “Those little things change the world.” Hopuy voices these comments with the candor of a liberated person — he’s one of the members of the male-travestie troupe Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte ...
Adieu to The Suzanne Farrell Ballet~!
Nov
29
2017
With sadness and regret we learn that a valiant and artistically important ballet company will soon be no longer. In a farewell program of George Balanchine favorites, each with a special meaning for Ms. Farrell, the Kennedy Center’s The Suzanne Farrell Ballet celebrates its 16th and final season with performances in the Opera House, December ...
Alan Johnson / Mel Brooks dance-clips party at the Paley Center 1
Ed. note: Guest writer Julie McDonald, senior agent and co-founder of McDonald Selznick Associates (MSA), contributes this story about a tribute event for the choreographer Alan Johnson. Sunday evening I attended a career retrospective of the great choreographer, Alan Johnson, held at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills. Having attended a prior celebration ...
Luminario Ballet’s festive winter’s tale at the California Club
For those who have loved and lost. For those for whom great art can assuage life’s forays into the forlorn. For those who love wine, a great meal, live chamber music and dance in a singularly splendid setting: the Luminario Ballet Viennese Winter Gala is the thing. Good cheer, live art and companionship go far, ...
It concerns us all, says choreographer Miguel Gutierrez
Ed. note: arts·meme is delighted to reprint an artist’s statement from choreographer Miguel Gutierrez on the occasion of a commission for the French Ballet de Lorraine soon to have its premiere. Gutierrez, an artist who is alternately outrageous and deeply thoughtful, shares his ideas here: I was invited by Petter Jacobsson and Tom Caley to ...
‘Delicate and sensitive’ film, ‘The Whales of August,’ in 30th anniversary screening
Film producer and marketing executive Mike Kaplan is a friend of arts·meme. This super nice guy is the leading collector of a massive trove of superlative movie musical posters; more to the point, Kaplan’s collection zeroes in on the art of dance as captured in artful movie posters. We like that. Kaplan published a companion ...
Danielle Darrieux fondly recalled 6
Two young American actor/dancers, George Chakiris and Grover Dale, had a life changing experience when cast in director Jacques Demy’s quirky French take on the movie musical, “Les Demoiselles de Rochefort” (1967, The Young Girls of Rochefort). Amidst a stellar ensemble cast (Michel Piccoli, Jacques Perrin, Gene Kelly) was a great treasure of French cinema, ...
Not afraid of Virginia Woolf: Portland’s NW Dance Project
The Portland-based NW Dance Project makes a rare appearance in Los Angeles in a program at the Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center that includes Woolf Papers, inspired by Virginia Woolf’s modernist novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925, concerns the inner life of a post-World War I woman of British high society. ...
REVIEW: Kimin Kim brings action-hero explosiveness to Mariinsky Schéhérazade 2
I admit that prior to Sunday night I had never seen a full-length, fully produced staging of Michel Fokine’s Schéhérazade — including lengthy orchestral prelude, sets, costumes, the works. The Mariinsky Ballet and Orchestra delivered their version this weekend at Segerstrom Center for the Arts as part of an all-Fokine program. At Sunday’s performance, the ...