Jack Cole dancer George Martin dies 5
Sad news. One of the last living connections to Jack Cole and a key member of Cole’s great brigade of film and nightclub dancers, George Martin, died in Atlanta on April, 6, 2011, we learned yesterday from Dancers Over 40. I met the Martins, George and Ethel, at a symposium on Cole last summer ...
Paul Taylor’s Annamaria Mazzini, a true modern dancer
Apr
11
2011
Annamaria Mazzini, in action-mode in Paul Taylor’s Runes (1975), a ritualistic piece about a primitive society (i.e., nothing to do with America today). This great, thrusting leap by the soon-to-retire Mazzini says everything about why modern dance is its own magnificent art form: the way her arms pull behind her, the subtle curve of her ...
Jamison, Battle, and Ailey dancers feted by L.A. community
Apr
9
2011
This line-up of good-looking people is an elite squadron — they’re dancers with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Nice and fun people, too. We had a chance to meet them at Thursday night’s packed and bustling party hosted by mega-couple Mattie McFadden-Lawson and Michael A. Lawson (here’s Michael hanging out with one of his good ...
Jack Cole mosaic
Apr
7
2011
Photos say it best where the intense dancer/choreographer of film and nightclub, Jack Cole, is concerned. Here’s a little collection for your viewing pleasure. As for photo #6, what about Jack Cole and Gwen Verdon as a dancing duo? Absolutely superb . . .
Accomplished arts professional Kristy Edmunds to head UCLA Live
Performing arts curator Kristy Edmunds has been named executive and artistic director of UCLA Live, the venerable outlet for music, dance, and theater at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus. Edmunds, an American, born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, comes to UCLA Live from Australia’s University of Melbourne, where she was head of the ...
Paul Taylor Dance Company in San Francisco
Apr
2
2011
Friday, April 1: Orbs (1966), a reconstruction of an early full-evening work in which Taylor, as a young choreographer, explores the pull of natural forces on human relationships. A highly formal work set to exquisite late Beethoven string quartets. Also Playing (2009), Taylor’s likable and high-spirited send-up of vaudeville theater Saturday, April 2: Brief Encounters ...
Get stoned … go higher! See David Dorfman’s “Prophets of Funk”
Dance maker David Dorfman throws down the gauntlet. And the gauntlet is this: Can he out-do, in his choreographed tribute to Sly & the Family Stone, what the great sixties interracial funk band achieves in a cold television studio? Check out this video: I wouldn’t miss it — if only because the cast includes Kyle ...
L.A. dance patron honored by NYC’s Joyce Theater Foundation
We’re very proud of Liz Hirsch, the longtime supporter of dance in Los Angeles, who is being honored along with her mother, Mimi Levitt, by the Joyce Theater Foundation on April 11. Liz, a classy gadabout, always superbly dressed and full of fire, was a key supporter of the Joffrey Ballet when it was resident ...
TCM to broadcast “Fragments: Surviving Pieces of Lost Film” & “Unseen Cinema” 1
arts·meme friend Jeff Masino alerts us that next Sunday evening, April 3, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), cable’s outstanding classic film channel has an unusually interesting broadcast line-up. It’s a long evening starting at 5 pm LA time, 8 pm in NYC, so stock up on wine and cheese. Two “clips” programs of rarely seen early ...