Paul Taylor’s gorgeous, sprawling “Brandenburgs” on PBS
Apr
29
2013
“This piece is meant to be very dancey, but it has a theme. I would say it’s about gallantry. The men are gallant towards the women. The women are more playful. Each of the women has a distinct personality. There’s a leading man, too. His relationship to the women, it’s gallant, but it’s not a ...
Dancers, meet the museum world. Museums: consider dance.
This weekend, the Hammer Museum presents Dancing with the Art World, a two-day symposium that convenes artists, choreographers, curators, and historians to reflect on the interface between dance and art, consider its historical precedents, and debate its effects on artistic and institutional practice. Dance has long intersected meaningfully with the visual arts. But in recent ...
Maria Tallchief, who trained in Los Angeles, dies
Apr
12
2013
Excerpted from “Maria Tallchief, America’s Ballerina, Larry Kaplan [University of Florida: 2005]: When I was twelve years old and Marjorie was ten and a half, we went to a new ballet teacher. A ballet mother at Mr. Belcher’s told Mother that the great Bronislava Nijinska had opened a studio near Beverly Hills, and even though ...
Jodie Gates, dance dynamo, to head USC Dance Department
Apr
11
2013
A blast of wonderful news came across our desk this morning. Former dancer and current dance educator and presenter Jodie Gates has been named vice dean and director of the new USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. The school was established in November 2012 by a transformational gift from Glorya Kaufman, a visionary Los Angeles ...
Fox to release “The I Don’t Care Girl” (1953) on DVD 1
We just learned, courtesy of our good friends at Polly O Entertainment, personal managers to Mitzi Gaynor, the wonderful news that Twentieth Century-Fox will release arts·meme favorite, “The I Don’t Care Girl” on DVD April 8, 2013. The biopic, a relatively turgid mid-century look back at vaudeville hottie Eva Tanguay (pictured above with Mitzi who ...
Trisha Brown’s “Roof Piece” (1971) to be staged @ Getty
Trisha Brown’s “Roof Piece,” an historic dance work, the mother of all site-specific dances, to be restaged in Los Angeles on April 6, 2013, at the Getty Museum. The rich roster of events and performances has been organized by the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. CHOREOGRAPHY: Trisha Brownmusic: Ambientset design: Trisha Browncostume: ...
Koplowitz driven underground with “Red Line Time” 1
Mar
27
2013
We received an intriguing note from our friend Stephan Koplowitz, the Bessie-bearing, Guggenheim-garnering, Alpert-awarded choreographer, who is also Dean of Dance of the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts. Despite all of Steve’s awards and accolades he’s apparently being driven underground. And he seems to like it! Writes Steve: I’m proud to say ...
Book review: ‘Hermes Pan, The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire’ 3
A book review first published by Dance Magazine [December 2012] Growing up in Memphis as the son of Greek immigrants, Hermes Pan (1909–1990) copped dance steps from the family’s African-American household help. Fast-forward to the Depression, when the self-taught Hollywood choreographer’s black-and-white dance fantasies for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers offered Americans escape. The versatile ...