“Patty The Revival” at Highways. Smart and wonderful. Go! 1
Unlike the 28-year-old theater wunderkind Patrick Kennelly, whose electro-opera “Patty the Revival” I very much enjoyed at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica last night, I was a vulnerable ten-year-old sponge when “The Patty Duke Show” hit the airwaves circa 1964. Ka-thunk. That’s the sound of television pablum landing on my undefended prepubescent brain. And ...
Misha acts at Broad Stage, then Tavis Smiley chats him up
I enjoyed watching Mikhail Baryshnikov prowl the Broad Stage, supple as an alert deer, in director Dmitry Krymov’s “In Paris.” Playing a rigid retired military man, Nikolai Platonovic, Barysh speaks mellifluous Russian, his mother-tongue, and Russian-inflected French. The 80-minute dance-drama, an adaptation of a Russian short story by Ivan Bunin, opened Wednesday night in Santa ...
Review: Keith Jarrett travels over the rainbow @ Disney Hall 2
Jazz legend Keith Jarrett opened his solo concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall Tuesday night by plucking on his Steinway’s strings — avant-garde style. Fast forward to his evening closer, a love letter to Los Angeles: Somewhere Over the Rainbow, by composer Harold Arlen. A parade of music, not quite jazz, instead, unidentified art songs, ...
Classical Underground rocks
Clamor filled the central-Los Angeles industrial loft last Thursday evening, when the Russian expatriate painter, Alexey Steele, and his wife Olga opened their funky-junky, atelier-style home to the music lovers of Los Angeles. Amidst a clutter of books, art supplies, burning candles, and oversized classical paintings, propped onto surfaces or hanging from walls, habitués of ...
Between “Pina” and a hard place 4
Heavy-hitting filmmakers are turning their cameras on dance and it’s an honor. It’s also a puzzlement, to the dance world. It surprises us. We thought that the only folk attending dance performances were fellow dancers, parents, and dance critics. But clearly we were wrong. Other artists – filmmakers – love dance too. With “Pina,” German ...
Janet Jackson, queen of the desert, thrills fans @ McCallum Theatre gala 4
Twenty minutes after Janet Jackson’s much anticipated “Number Ones: Up Close and Personal” gala concert was scheduled to start Thursday evening at Palm Desert’s McCallum Theatre, some in the audience began to squirm in their seats. Many of the theater’s older patrons, though geared for an unusual performance, were unaccustomed to late-starting rock shows. Suddenly, ...
Cirque du Soleil’s swell Hollywood opening night party
artsmeme’s debra levine & hollywood dance historian larry billman Fun photos of the super party the Cirques threw in Los Angeles last night posted below. The mighty Montreal’eans upped and closed, from car traffic, a humongous stretch of Hollywood Boulevard in front of the Kodak Theater. There, under a tent, to thumping, hypnotic music, attendees ...
What friendship hath wrought: Jodi Melnick & David Neumann’s “July” premieres at Jacob’s Pillow
“July,” a stirring dance duet whose refined physical beauty gives form to its tender emotions, had its premiere Wednesday night before the great open backstage door of Jacob Pillow Dance Festival’s Doris Duke Theater. The gifted duo, Jodi Melnick, a former Twyla Tharp dancer, and David Neumann, a dance-theater-comedy specialist, created the absorbing work on ...
Carmageddon & ABT’s communist caper-ballet 5
Despite best efforts, California authorities (the people who brought you Ronald “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev!” Reagan) could not put the kibosh on American Ballet Theatre’s “The Bright Stream,” choreographed by their new in-house guy, Alexei Ratmansky. Clearly controlled by Soviet agents, ABT foisted a clever piece of communist propaganda on our sunny climes. ...
REVIEW: Rennie Harris’s “REIGN” rains on China
A woman stands at stage center, her knee-length black dress draping loosely over trousers. She’s trembling. Flashing lights — a disco? faux lightening? — cut the stage’s darkness. The sound of thunder, then rain, pours from the speakers. It’s loud, overpowering. The woman suffers, she’s convulsing; her corn-rowed hair flies in the syncopated rhythm. A ...