MoMA announces ‘All That Jack (Cole)’ films 2
It’s historic. Never before has the brilliant Hollywood choreographer’s cinema output been compiled in a single, curated exhibition. The rare opportunity to grasp and assess the entirety of Cole’s talent and influence is in store for New York audiences from January 20 through February 4, 2016. Over the course of two weeks, 18 films (most ...
‘Hopscotch’ing through the Bradbury Building
Photographic memories of “Hopscotch,” a rolling (literally, in cars), city-wide site-specific opera performance that in one of its home bases — the regal Bradbury Building of downtown Los Angeles — dancers scampered ’round audience, even in a wrought-iron caged elevator. Intermingling in the photo with crew from The Industry are the dancers of Ate9 Dance ...
Infectious holiday fun: “Salsa Navidad” at VPAC
Oscar Hernandez came of age in the burgeoning New York Latin music scene of the 1970s and ‘80s, when the Fania label recorded many of the greats canonized today: Willie Colón, Bobby Valentín, Pete Rodriquez, Johnny Pacheco, Cheo Feliciano, Larry Harlow, Hector Lavóe, Ray Barretto, Luis ‘Perico’ Ortíz, and Papo Lucca among others. It was ...
Jack Cole’s “Down to Earth” recast as Kenny Ortega’s “Xanadu”
I like this freewheeling, highly cinematic dance number for nine women, “I’m Alive,” choreographed by Kenny Ortega for Xanadu (1980). Its hyper-realism, fresh swapping of perspective, and other charming trickery prove what the camera can do with dance that’s not possible on stage. Smooth editing and special effects enhance the number. “I’m Alive” and the ...
Reading tap 1
Dancing, like writing, is a craft before it is an art. Rare is the professional who excels at both; the thousands of hours of practice necessary to make an artist rarely allow time for rigorous training in another genre. Somewhere between the craft and the art, though, lie scholarship and criticism, and the world is ...
Jack Cole’s pinnacle, “Ladies in Waiting” 3
Mitzi Gaynor, at right above, in a sotto voce-hiss to Kay Kendall in Jack Cole‘s brilliant “Ladies in Waiting” dance sequence from LES GIRLS (MGM, 1957), delivers bad news. Their friend, Angele (Taina Elg) will soon be exposed to her fiancé and his proper family as a tawdry chorus girl. The number, full of drama ...
Pick your Sugar Plum Fairy NOW!
Hey, you Sugar Plums and Snowflakes! Stop dancing in our heads, and start whirling ’round the Segerstrom Hall stage. This will occur sooner than you can shake a candy cane. In a real first, Segerstrom Center of the Arts is presenting a big-city-style, lengthy run of American Ballet Theatre’s “The Nutcracker” at the esteemed Orange ...
Historic Jack Cole film retrospective to MoMA
ALL THAT JACK (COLE) celebrating a great Hollywood choreographer 18-film retrospective/interviews/talks coming to The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Jan 20 – Feb 4 2016 save the dates – film listings in december
Chita Rivera tells it like it is prior to her PBS “Great Performances”
A very fun exercise on Thursday’s Facebook had Chita Rivera — Broadway doyenne, empress and icon, a queen of the art of song-and-dance — chattering on line in a PBS-hosted forum with (among others) Grover Dale of Answers4Dancers with whom she performed in the original production of West Side Story. Chita’s words strike me as ...
De Keersmaeker soon revealed in CAP UCLA retrospective
New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff once described Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker as “a cross between Lucinda Childs and Pina Bausch … a choreographer who makes you think and feel at the same time.” That was in 1986, the year that “Rosas danst Rosas” caused a sensation at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next ...