Movin’ & groovin’: Black teen dance shows of ’50s, early ’60s
Teenage dancers on the set of Teenage Frolics (Raleigh, NC), ca. 1960. Courtesy of Yvonne Lewis Holley. Ed. note: artsmeme is delighted to share the second of three excerpts from an marvelous new book by author Julie Malnig. Dancing Black, Dancing White: Rock ‘n’ Roll, Race, and Youth Culture of the 1950s and 1960s (Oxford ...
A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham, in third foray to Long Beach’s Carpenter Center
Sep
6
2023
a choreographer of our timekyle abraham, courtesy u.s.a. today That the MacArthur Genius Award-winning choreographer Kyle Abraham could bring his dance wares to any stage in Los Angeles — as he has in the past — is an understatement. We’ve seen him at UCLA; last year at The Soraya; and at The Wallis. This season, ...
A Martha Graham/Agnes de Mille meet-up in the 21st century 5
Sep
5
2023
in photo kathleen tovar, center, victor barbee, john gardner, american ballet theatre Ed. note: This story by Debra Levine, commissioned and previously published by the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts, is reprinted with permission. During the Second World War, with American men losing their lives in the overseas fight against fascism, Agnes ...
Cowgirl lassos Metropolitan Opera House 2
Sep
3
2023
In 1942, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, which, during the European war, toured in exile extensively across the American heartland, en route picked up marvelous dancers and dances. Following the success of Eugene Loring’s Billy the Kid (1938) for Ballet Caravan, the Ballet Russe invited Agnes de Mille to create yet another Americana-themed work, ...
Meet Ernest Belcher’s prize pupil, Pola Negri 2
News of the digital restoration of The Spanish Dancer (1923) by Milestone Film & Video and the Eye Film Museum caught our fancy for several reasons. The silent movie is promoted as a “great romance epic,” and gosh, you can never get enough of that, right? In its making, director Herbert Brenon employed a “cast ...
Made in Los Angeles: dance-manufacturing by Raiford Rogers, Tony Testa
Los Angeles has long been an industrial hub; over this city’s relatively youthful history, we’ve been a maker of stuff: first oranges and lemons; then a film industry begun on a wooden platform under the noonday sun; next, aerospace and widget manufacturing to prosecute a world war and man’s first step on the moon; then ...
Of human desire: Adrian Danchig-Waring at Lake Tahoe Dance Festival
Aug
7
2023
Lake Tahoe Dance Festival, Tahoe City, July 27, 2023 Photo: Erin Baiano It is a danced solo for a great dancer of our time, Adrian Danchig-Waring. The muscular yet faultlessly precise twenty-year principal of New York City Ballet ascended the stage in the guise of a 19th century poet: handsome in grey trousers and a ...
REVIEW: Fascinating time-travel with Mark Morris Dance Group at the Joyce Theater 1
numerator, photo: christopher duggan Mark Morris Dance Group was formed in 1980. The Joyce Theater opened doors in 1983. Yet while it has presented dance companies eleven months of the year, the Joyce stage had never hosted a MMDG season until now. So Tuesday’s opening night felt momentous – even historic – as MMDG finally ...
Lake Tahoe Dance Festival: dances for kids with baby on board!
Jul
28
2023
Lake Tahoe Dance Festival Opening Night Gala, July 26, 2023. photo by erin baiano When Founder Christin Hanna and her co-director Constantine Baecher of the eleven-year-running Lake Tahoe Dance Festival, now on in Truckee and Tahoe City, California, call their event ‘family-oriented,’ the community responds positively. Chatting after her successful Gala opening night, Ms. Hanna ...
In Tahoe, for Dance Festival 1
stephen hanna, photo: erin baiano “There will be bears in Tahoe,” Festival intern Summer Hatcher warned me — a dance writer who has never lived beyond a five-mile radius from a performing arts center. As we departed Reno Airport, she explained that I should wave arms at the creatures. Summer was navigating Interstate 80’s sweeping ...