Zorina in Balanchine’s “Zenobia” ballet 3
Jul
10
2012
Here’s the esteemed Mrs. George Balanchine #2, also known as the Continental beauty Vera Zorina — luscious, lovely, and delectable. In this precious video, Zorina dances the Princess Zenobia pas de deux made by Balanchine for the Richard Rodgers musical “On Your Toes” (1936). Oh my god, I love when toward the end she balances ...
Diverse dance makers selected for National Choreographers Initiative
Jul
6
2012
The ninth annual National Choreographers Initiative takes place this summer from July 9-27, 2012. During the three weeks of intense creative effort at the dance studios of University of California, Irvine, teams of choreographers and professional dancers produce new dance works culminating in a public performance at the end of July. The invaluable program is ...
Fred & Barrie for the Fourth 2
The meeting of two slenderellas …. in her red jumpsuit, Barrie Chase looks like a Fourth of July firecracker!
Jack Cole, the camera’s eye, and the space of the soundstage
In the photo above from “The I Don’t Care Girl,” Cole inserts a staircase so that the dancer (Mitzi Gaynor, on steps) floats (as in space) at mid-frame. Cole layers men on the ground, populating the bottom edge of the frame. He regularly dispatched men, scrambling, across the frame bottom. He even extended the viewer’s ...
I *do* care that you get tickets for “The I Don’t Care Girl” screening August 4
The Billy Wilder Theater, where UCLA Film & Television Archive will screen “The I Don’t Care Girl” on Saturday night, August 4, with Mitzi Gaynor attending, is located on the ground floor of the Hammer Museum. The Hammer Museum is the old Occidental Petroleum Building at the corner of Wilshire & Westwood Boulevard. It’s right ...
In a New York state of mind … with Henning Rubsam 1
This New York/New York anecdote comes from our Facebook friend, Henning Rübsam, the artistic Director/Choreographer of SENSEDANCE: Back in NYC. Last night at the MET watching ABT … “Are you in fashion?,” the old lady sitting next to me started the conversation. “Always in fashion. But professionally I am a choreographer,” I answered. “My nephew ...
Chillin’ with a ballerina by a babbling brook
Jun
18
2012
Diaghilev hung around Venice’s Lido Beach with Lifar. Balanchine cooked Sunday dinners for his favorites. Ballet impresarios need down time. If they genuinely enjoy their artistic charges, they hang around with them on their day off. Here’s the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet artistic and executive director duo, Tom Mossbrucker and Jean-Philippe Malaty, on a ...
Jack Cole’s magic for Mitzi Gaynor on view in rare screening of “The I Don’t Care Girl” by UCLA Film & Television Archive August 4. Gaynor to appear in-person. 7
I am very pleased to announce my participation in a truly wonderful celebration of dance on film at the Billy Wilder Theater In Westwood on Saturday August 4, 2012. It’s sponsored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. On that night, as a community, we will view the rare and out-of-circulation Twentieth Century Fox movie ...
Determined design discipline behind Diavolo’s daring dance-wheel
A group of Penn State Architecture and Engineering students spent the year designing and building the 12’8″-tall-by-17′-wide “Dance Vehicle-01” in an interdisciplinary studio built around a collaboration with renowned Los Angeles-based Diavolo Dance Theater. An exercise in the interplay of movement and devices, “The Secret Life of Public Spaces” studio resulted from a $251,670 grant ...
Oh la la! Jack Cole’s “Les Girls” from “Les Girls” (1957) 1
The (by then) hugely experienced dance-on-film man Jack Cole choreographed the brilliant dance sequences in “Les Girls,” a movie musical directed by George Cukor in 1957. “Les Girls” is included in the upcoming TCM broadcast “Choreography by Jack Cole” on Turner Classic Movies September 10, 2012. I will co-host the evening with Robert Osborne. “Les ...