Oh Samuel Lee Roberts, you beautiful Alvin Ailey dancer
Apr
16
2015
The pleasure of watching the splendid and just-gorgeous dancers of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre at the company’s opening night performance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion drove home how much time I have been spending looking at images of dancers on a computer. And how that is not the real deal. To get the full ...
The great Graham’s California roots
Apr
15
2015
In my “pre-talk” prior to Martha Graham Dance Company‘s performance at Valley Performing Arts Center this Saturday night, I make the case that the impact and duration of Graham’s career start-up in Los Angeles has gone woefully under reported. Here Graham poses with her first partner, Ted Shawn, in “Malaguena” (1921) — in a California ...
Dance Camera West to spool classic ballet flick, “The Unfinished Dance”
Everything is beautiful at the ballet. Except at the movies. In the movies, for some confounded reason, the world of pretty-in-pink turns blood red. It’s a parade of backstage drama awash in envy, rage, depression, jealousy, backstabbing, unkindness — and that’s just the light stuff. At worst, there are full-on murderous attacks, vengeful fits and ...
George Chakiris brings “West Side Story” to the wild west
Just returned from a wonderful screening of the majestic movie musical from 1961, “West Side Story,” seen in an unusual setting, The Ellen Theatre, a rare, preserved vaudeville theater in Bozeman, Montana. The movie’s Academy Award-winning star, the actor-singer-dancer George Chakiris, took part in a long interview and audience Q & A session. The enthusiastic ...
High-profile Los Angeles showcases for choreographer Andonis Foniadakis
Apr
6
2015
We’ve not yet experienced the ballets of Andonis Foniadakis, born in Crete and dance-educated in Athens. But on an upcoming April weekend we’ll get a very good opportunity. Two recent works by Foniadakis will be delivered by world-class dance companies, each performing at Los Angeles’s distinctively beautiful new theaters from April 16 – 18, 2015. ...
Ann Miller, in KISS ME KATE 3-D, too darn hot! 1
It was awfully fun, during TCM Fest 2015, to run into Jon Olivan who heads up the TCM Classic Movie Fan Club in Los Angeles. We mixed and mingled in Club TCM, sipping (complementary) Humphrey Bogart gin surrounded by Mike Kaplan’s great dance-movie posters exhibited in that lounge. Olivan shared a special memory of “Kiss ...
Oh yeah! Bobby Banas rocks “The Nitty Gritty” 13
Mar
25
2015
The great, great stage and screen dancer Bobby Banas swings, very hard and very well, in “The Nitty Gritty” — this television clip from The Judy Garland Show in 1964. Banas choreographed the number on the spur of the moment. “I choreographed the “Nitty Gritty,” he shared in an email, explaining that choreographer Peter Gennaro’s ...
Dance critic’s TCM Fest 2015
On the cusp of the sixth annual TCM Classic Film Festival set to open Thursday night in Hollywood, our dance-critic’s eye is finding at least two strong movie musical entries — with great cinematic dance. 42ND STREET (1933), Saturday March 28, 11:30 am “Naughty, gaudy, bawdy, sporty” 42ND STREET gets a facelift with the world premiere ...
Tap across 42nd Street with “Gotta Dance!” book & movie posters
Above: Belgian poster for 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, USA, 1933). Artist unknown. “The sharp, spunky granddaddy of all backstage musicals… [Busby Berkeley’s] choreography takes center stage in this stunning Belgian poster, showcasing his dancers atop and within the three-dimensional title treatment… the actors took second place to Busby Berkeley’s dazzling, kaleidoscopic production numbers, with their ...
To Bozeman, with Bernardo
It’s Bernardo, Anita, Riff, Tony and Maria gone waaay west. Looking forward to sharing the ultimate of urban movie-musicals, “West Side Story,” in an unusual location — on America’s real West side, Bozeman, Montana. The Academy Award-winning musical will screen at the historic Ellen Theatre, a vintage vaudeville house dating to 1919. The restored theater ...