Critic’s round-up: Indian Jazz Suites, Laguna’s ‘Stars of Dance’ 1
L.A.’s big dance weekend — it had the dance-infatuated scampering up the heights of Bunker Hill, across the Cahuenga Pass and down Laguna way — has come to its close. Certainly the weekend’s big draw was the launch of a new contemporary dance company, Ezralow Dance, an event that also closed the Ford Amphitheatre for a ...
Review: Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre’s “Dancing at Dunbar” 1
“It’s site-specific work, so feel free to walk around so you can see,” offered choreographer Heidi Duckler at the outset of Saturday night’s “Dancing at Dunbar” performance by Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre. In doing so, she encouraged her audience to remain active during the site-driven dance event. A full spectrum of Duckler fans and curiosity-seekers ...
Review: Ate9 Dance & Fleck a pithy pairing @ REDCAT
“It’s the second night of the third week of the 11th year of the New Original Works festival,” announced Mark Murphy, executive director of REDCAT performance space Friday night in a pre-show greeting of his audience. Surveying the full house of folk who track with emerging performance art, Murphy’s flickering smile seemed to convey, “But ...
Nude ballet photos! Herman Cornejo, Ivan Vasiliev in near buff
Yes, budgets are tight. So we’re seeing our biggest ballet stars come on stage wearing less and less clothes! In this case, it’s no huge punishment. We are talking about two of the loveliest, most talented — and beefiest — guys in ballet today. Pictured at left, Herman Cornejo, who commenced the “Diana & Acteon” ...
Mozart @ 18 in Glyndbourne’s “La Finta”
Haven’t heard of La Finta? Not to worry, few people have. Written when the composer was but 18 years old and very (very) rarely performed, the anonymous text is primarily to blame: The Podesta (Mayor) is in love with his new gardener Sadrina, which is too bad for the servant Serpetta who more than fancies ...
Review: National Ballet of Canada’s “Romeo and Juliet” at the Music Center
Alexei Ratmansky’s infusion of ballet classicism with inventive, sometimes quirky, contemporary dance movement reinvigorated “Romeo and Juliet” for a new generation last night at the Los Angeles Music Center. The National Ballet of Canada‘s compelling opening-night performance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was further enlivened by live orchestral delivery of the Prokofiev score. Despite minor fits ...
Somi aces Ace Hotel Shoreditch
I’d never heard of her but liked her look on the press announcement: the youthful but knowing joy of her open smile, the color riot of her wax print dress celebrating the burnished brown of her skin. Tickets only £10 (in Shoreditch?)The London launch of Lagos Music Salon, her new cd from Okeh. I remember ...
Dance Biennale 2014: Marina Giovannini meditates on beauty
The second week of BIENNALE DANCE 2014, an ambitious urban festival showcasing contemporary choreography whose tag line, “Gesture, Place, Community,” reflects curator Virgilio Sieni’s high aspiration for the art form, got off to a particularly strong start Tuesday evening in Venice. Among four vivid presentations by choreographers Sieni, Roy Assaf and duo Raffaella Giordano/Maria Muñoz, a ...
Gilliam’s brilliant, bonkers Berlioz @ ENO
Bombastic imaginations, bonkers juxtapositions, no attention to rules of deportment, and energy without limit. It would seem that Hector Berlioz and Terry Gilliam are a match made.. well, somewhere .. but certainly for each other. Following the wild and wooly success of his Damnation of Faust in 2011, Gilliam has trained his most particular talents ...
REVIEW: Maurice Hines tappin’ to mother’s heartbeat @ The Wallis 1
The act was called Hines, Hines & Dad. But song-and-dance man Maurice Hines, 70, rectified any oversight of his mom, Friday night, as he opened his one-man show powered by personal history, “Maurice Hines is Tappin’ Thru Life,” at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. The touching, classy, and beautifully staged cabaret program, ...