‘Radical Bodies’ in California exhibit and on the streets of New York

Dance · Ideas & Opinion
Politics was not the intended focus of the day-long conference that opened “Radical Bodies: Anna Halprin, Simone Forti, and Yvonne Rainer in California and New York, 1955-1972,” an exhibit at UC Santa Barbara’s AD&A Museum. Art was. The hugely instructive exhibit unearths and traces the influence on American modern dance of three groundbreaking, bi-coastal dancer/choreographers. ...

Fierce women of dance featured in UC Santa Barbara conference

Dance · Ideas & Opinion
We all heard Meryl Streep tell it like it is at the Golden Globes awards. Yes, we did. A courageous woman. We are similarly slated to hear from a group of courageous women of modern dance — they talk with both brain and body. In August 1960, Anna Halprin, at right, taught an experimental workshop ...

All is golden in the Golden Nautilus, says Catherine Turocy

Architecture & Design · Dance · Ideas & Opinion
The structure of the Nautilus is considered sacred geometry, the Golden Mean, represented by the Greek letter phi, one of the mysterious natural numbers that seems to arise from the basic structure of our cosmos. “Baroque Dance and the Golden Nautilus” is a lecture/performance by Baroque expert Catherine Turocy.  The artistic director of the New ...

A dance thinker & do-er: Dana Caspersen

Dance · Ideas & Opinion
One of many, many highlights of being a Fellow, this fall, at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU has been encountering the dancer/author Dana Caspersen. For three decades, Caspersen was a leading artist with Ballet Frankfurt and the Forsythe Company, and a primary collaborator of choreographer William Forsythe. As a dancer, she ...

Dance scholars recognized with awards in New York

Dance · Ideas & Opinion
Two of our smartest and best … and nicest … dance scholars are being honored in New York City this fall. On November 21, the Martha Hill Dance Fund will grant a Lifetime Achievement Award recipients to author/critic Deborah Jowitt at the Manhattan Penthouse in New York City. Journalist/critic Deborah Jowitt began to  write a regular ...

On arts·meme’s front page: ‘The Front Page’

Film · Ideas & Opinion
So very excited to see the restored (by the Academy Film Archive ·and the Film Foundation) first film version of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s 1928 Broadway comedy, “The Front Page,” which kicks off To Save and Project at the Museum of Modern Art. According to MoMA adjunct curator Dave Kehr (he and curator Josh ...

Looks amazing: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s ‘Babel(words)’@ Lincoln Center 2

Dance · Ideas & Opinion
I’m interested — who isn’t? — in the changing ways in which society is communicating. And I wonder how dance can play an active role as, increasingly, words matter less and the visual (and visceral) matters more. (A very wise man recently told us, “It’s just words.”) So I’m looking forward to “Babel(words),” a new ...

Jack Cole’s nightclub act: a talk by Debra Levine Oct 25

Dance · Ideas & Opinion
A review headline screamed, “Cyclone Hits Slapsy Maxie’s.” The performance?  Jack Cole and His Dancers at the Wilshire Boulevard supper club in 1948. In the house: Frank Sinatra, Robert Walker, Jimmy Durante, Lucille Ball, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Jimmy Dorsey, Max Baer. Also attending, according to the review, “Bullets Durgom still without a toupee.” Cole ...

Bolshoi means BIG

Dance · Film · Ideas & Opinion
Travel back to the Roaring ’20s in Europe with “The Golden Age,” broadcast live from Moscow and danced by the Bolshoi Ballet to music by Dmitri Shostakovich and choreography by Yuri Grigorovich. A stunning cabaret dancer must choose between her love for a visiting fisherman and the leader of a gang, who is also her ...

It’s cool. You’re cool. So go. AfterParty @ The Wallis.

Ideas & Opinion · Music · Theater
As everyone in Los Angeles knows, it’s not the event. It’s the after party. That’s why a cool new theater package offered by the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Arts stands a good chance of attracting a younger demographic into its cozy theater smack in the center of Beverly Hills. It’s AfterParty @ The Wallis, ...