Love for Yvonne & a bright future for Westside Ballet 1

Dance
It was an evening of beaming smiles, prodigious effort, community love, and some real artistry last Saturday at the Broad Stage, as the Westside Ballet staged a impressive Gala fundraising event. Visiting “etoiles,” stars from companies as esteemed as New York City Ballet, Smuin Ballet, The Joffrey, and Miami City Ballet, studded the program, bringing ...

Dance finale, dance party & dance season to come, all @ CAP

Dance
Oh the seasons, they come and they go. That’s easy enough for us mortals to say. But for a monster-scaled live-arts presenter like the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, it takes both brains and brawn to pull off a full season. You live it, breathe it, push it, pamper it, and promote ...

Gwen Verdon sighting: ‘Drink your prune juice!’ 2

Dance · Film
There’s our girl: Gwen Verdon You’re a contract dancer at Twentieth Century-Fox, and you’re lazing around the studio with the guys, killing time. No assignment. All of a sudden into the rehearsal hall strides Jack Cole, hurriedly. He impatiently assembles a sage bit of choreography on you. Growling orders at Matt Mattox and Frank Radcliffe ...

Rudi Gernreich stunner: ‘The Swan’ for Lewitzky Dance in 1976

Dance · Fashion
We’re just starting to dig into the rich content of “Fearless Fashion: Rudi Gernreich,” the exhibition now up and running at the Skirball Cultural Center, with its stimulating mix of design, gender, fine art, and social issues. All those elements came crashing together, in a sixties kind of way, in the work of the adventurous ...

‘So L.A.’ in a good way: Jacob Jonas The Company reviewed

Dance · Reviews
by 
‘to the dollar,’ chor by jacob jonas, photography matthew brush It’s hard to avoid politics these days. We tweet about it, march about it, get outraged about it. It’s in your face in every medium. Including dance. Jacob Jonas The Company’s (JJTC) brilliantly danced mixed bill at The Wallis on Friday included two politically-charged works: ...

‘Buy local’ defines 2019/20 dance season at The Wallis

Dance
A big gang of arts journalists crossed the thin line to mount the stage of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Tuesday evening to toast a special occasion whose time has come. In his annual upcoming-season announcement, The Wallis’s artistic director Paul Crewes, shown in photo with the Beverly Hills theater’s CEO Rachel ...

Last call: Jessica Lang Dance @ Pepperdine

Dance
Yes, it’s sad. It’s a sad moment. The closure of a boutique dance company, a precious organism, is depressing especially if it is for just one reason: it’s too hard to keep it going. That is the difficult decision choreographer Jessica Lang reached after seven years running her well-respected Jessica Lang Dance (JDL). jessica lang, ...

Dorrance Dance to fill Segerstrom Hall with tap funk & noise

Dance
Dorrance Dance: “ETM: Double Down” at Segerstrom Center May 3, 2019photo by Christopher Duggan It’s all based on a single idea, a profound one; it’s the notion that tap dancers are also musicians. And upon that premise the acclaimed tap dancer/choreographer Michelle Dorrance is prepared to ‘double down.’ She’ll aptly illustrate her point while dancing ...

A gift to Gwen from Jack

Dance · Fashion
FOSSE VERDON — Michelle Williams as Gwen Verdoncredit Eric Liebowitz/FX Networks Ed. note: Excerpted from a story published today in DANCE Magazine: You can see them in “Fosse/Verdon” episode one. Michelle Williams, playing Gwen Verdon, wears them with a cool, retro, forest-green jumpsuit. Tucked beneath a mop top of tousled Gwen Verdon locks, Williams sports ...

It’s Jack Cole time Tuesday on FX’s ‘Fosse/Verdon’

Dance · Film
Actor Christopher Tocco, above, plays Jack Cole in a backstage scene with the young Gwen Verdon in FX’s blockbuster eight-episode docu-drama, “Fosse/Verdon.” “Fosse/Verdon”‘s backstage scene between Verdon and her mentor Jack Cole is preceded by a Jack Cole jazz number vividly choreographed by “Hamilton” choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, who is a co-producer of this series. Out with ...