How “Birdcage” choreographer Vince Paterson created ‘Fosse Fosse Fosse’ number 4
“I had the joy of working with Mike Nichols twice. First on “The Birdcage,” and then on “Closer,” I directed Natalie [Portman] and Clive [Owen] in some movement.” We were chatting with choreographer Vincent Paterson on the sad occasion of the death of director Mike Nichols. While working on “The Birdcage,” Paterson created, on the ...
Review: L-E-V’s “House” of dance invention @ REDCAT
Not since Dawn of the Dead did as stricken a posse of emaciated weirdos tromp before your eyes — all the better to experience, in real time, at REDCAT performance space. The stalwart black-box theater is rendered even darker by Avi Yona Bueno’s gorgeously murky lighting design for “House,” choreographer Sharon Eyal’s futuristic ballet for ...
Pre-Thanksgiving ballet weight gain @ Segerstrom Center
Nov
19
2014
This stunner of a high-attitude position, poised on a set of million-dollar legs comes from Mikhailovsky Ballet ballerina Veronika Ignatyeva, as Cupid, in “Flames of Paris.” The French Revolutionary ballet, first created in Stalinist Russia in 1932, will be on view Nov 28-30 at Segerstrom Center for the Arts over Thanksgiving weekend. The production, ...
High culture at the movies, courtesy of Laemmle Theatres
At the other end of the civilization spectrum from AFI Fest’s recent pepper-spray incident (ironic, isn’t it, that fisticuffs broke out at a screening of a new bio-pic about British painter William Turner), is the marvelous roll-out, now in its third month, of Laemmle Theatre’s “Culture Vulture Mondays.” The series is just one way that ...
Review: Ohad Naharin’s masterful “Sadeh21” @ CAP UCLA
Days after watching Batsheva Dance Company bring choreographer Ohad Naharin’s splendid full-evening work, “Sadeh21,” to vivid life in its U.S. premiere at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, I am struck by the inadequacy of still photography in capturing the dance’s essence. The benign ring-around-the-rosy image, above, does not represent the multi-chaptered ...
JazzAntiqua lives, with live music @ Nate Holden Center Nov 15
If there’s anything I’m a bigger fan of than live jazz accompanying dance, it’s a great dance photograph … artistic director Pat Taylor has both on tap in promoting the premiere of “Song in a Strange Land,” a new work for her JazzAntiqua Dance Ensemble. Founded in 1993, the award-winning JazzAntiqua honors the jazz tradition ...
Eighteen minutes of dance greatness: James Brown, T.A.M.I Show (Oct 1964)
Fifty years ago! James Brown’s ballistic performance at the T.A.M.I. Show, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, October 28 and 29, 1964. Even standing still, James Brown is one of the greatest-ever American dancers. High-Heeled Sneakers Prisoner of Love Please Please Please Night Train Like this? Read more: James Brown’s rhythm ecstasy, Paris 1971 James Brown playlist, ...
From Bernardo to “Bebo’s Girl”: George Chakiris tribute @ MoMA 6
Balmy Indian-summer weather added pleasure to the late-October opening weekend of “To Save and Project,” The Museum of Modern Art‘s annual film-preservation festival whose tasty programming included a tribute to Oscar-winning actor-dancer-singer George Chakiris. In “George Chakiris: A Life in Film,” a wide-ranging interview that could not begin to encapsulate his decades-long activity in film, ...
Irina Baronova, baby ballerina no more
Oct
14
2014
In 1932 George Balanchine happened upon a ballet protégée, Irina Baronova, when she was a 12-year-old pupil of Olga Preobrajenska, the Russian ballerina teaching in exile in Paris. The visionary choreographer, who throughout his career would repeatedly mentor and package outstanding female dance talent, bundled Baronova with two equally precocious ballet cohorts, Tamara Toumanova (12) ...
George Chakiris in double NYC honor: first MoMA, then Juilliard
In fitting recognition of a great dancer whose searing, Oscar-winning performance as “Bernardo” in “West Side Story” was filmed on NYC’s Upper West Side terrain where the Juilliard School now stands, George Chakiris will visit the renowned conservatory for an interview and dance conversation. Location shooting of the playground sequences that open “West Side Story” ...