Review: Diavolo’s “L’Espace du Temps” @ VPAC
Calling Diavolo: Architecture in Motion a dance company is like calling a monster truck a nice vehicle. It’s big. It’s brash. It’s loud. Sometimes it’s brilliant. The LA-based company performed its three-part “L’Espace du Temps” at the Valley Performing Arts Center (VPAC) September 19 and 20. Presented in partnership with the Ford Signature Series, it ...
American theater classic, “Fences,” in affecting Long Beach production
A neglectful husband, three times a father, a self-righteous best friend, a guilty brother, a hungry paramour, a proud homeowner … also a garbageman and a failed athlete who’s outrightly selfish, bitter and mean to his son. (We discover that ultimately he’s a noble human being.) That bundle of conflict describes all the ways in ...
REVIEW: Aspen Santa Fe Ballet dancers shine at home
Tuesday evening at the Aspen District Theatre was an adults-only affair, in a wonderful way. Local heroes Aspen Santa Fe Ballet rolled out a three-part program of notable sophistication and artistic distinction. The attentive audience, fortunate to co-habit a beautiful Rocky Mountain city with a world-class ballet company, took it in thoughtfully—it’s something you feel ...
Clarion voice of songbird Judy Collins fills L.A. night sky 8
Yes, a songbird, thrush, warbler, coloratura, balladeer … she self-describes as a ‘troubadour.’ But who knew that folk-rock legend Judy Collins is also supremely entertaining, a raconteur spieling salty, even ribald stories all while innocently strumming her guitar? Tonight in a delicious free concert at Levitt Pavilion Los Angeles, Collins lulled her audience like a ...
Review: Under pink clouds, Music Center’s “Moves After Dark”
Dance critic Gillian Anne Renault contributes this review to arts·meme: As grey clouds turned pink Monday evening and a cool breeze dimpled the Mark Taper Forum pool, a powerful alto voice quieted the crowd for Moves After Dark, The Music Center’s inaugural, site-specific, mainly outdoor dance concert. The ambitious evening, well executed, proved a worthy ...
Review: The History of Black Dance in America 4
It’s a safe bet that many in the audience at Saturday’s vibrant “The History of Black Dance in America,” performed by Central Avenue Dance Ensemble at Cal State Dominguez Hills’s University Theater, while attending an event that celebrated African-American creativity, were nursing bruised feelings over the insane racist violence targeting black people that shamed our ...
Review: Lucinda Childs’ “Available Light” @ Disney Hall 6
It was the silver-mesh curtain draped across Disney Hall’s “McFries” pipe organ that gave the performance its first “wow” moment. Almost as though architect/set designer Frank Gehry tossed a throw-rug over a messy sofa to ‘red up for the guests. But Gehry’s living room is none other than L.A.’s stellar fantastic transformational concert hall named ...
Review: Los Angeles Ballet “Directors’ Choice” program
The last time I saw Los Angeles Ballet was at the Ford Theatre in the early 1980s – that, of course, was the other Los Angeles Ballet, the one directed by John Clifford. Always on shaky ground, and much maligned by the Los Angeles Times, it later faced dwindling financial support and stiff competition from ...
“Big Shot” skewers THE GODFATHER @ Bootleg Theater
“That’s my family; that’s not me.” So Michael Corleone assures his blue-blooded girlfriend, Kay, in one of his character’s persistent moments of self-denial. First expressed in Mario Puza’s pulpy popular novel, a mega best seller published in 1969, the line was famously recycled in (then) newbie director Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic movie in three installments, ...
Ravishing dance-film journey to Havana
“Dancing for My Havana,” an Italian/Cuban co-production written and directed by Claudio Del Punta, has garnered the Special Jury Prize of the Dance Camera West festival 2015. The film, a colorful wonderland set in Havana’s romantic urban ruins, tells a love story interpersed with sensational dance numbers that give a rare glimpse into unadulterated Cuban ...