Review: The Joffrey Ballet’s “The Rite of Spring” at the Music Center 5
We did not hoot, we did not holler, but we let rip with a bracing “bravo!” for Vaslav Nijinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” (Le Sacre du Printemps) at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Friday night. First, because the Joffrey Ballet’s 100th anniversary reconstruction of the historic Ballets Russes production was great. But mainly because … to ...
Doug Varone & Dancers flash fun, finesse in O.C.
All hail modern dance. Not “contemporary” dance, not “contemporary modern,” but old-school barefoot modern dance, a movement language spoken, traditionally, without the aid of shoes, that is, toes gripping the ground. A conversation, via a trained and fluid body, between music (sometimes text, sometimes silence), fellow dancers, and an audience. Doug Varone, veteran choreographer and artistic ...
Eötvös’s noir quartet, “Korrespondenz” (1993), by Calder Quartet @ Jacaranda
What a strange and intricate moment when composer Peter Eötvös’s Korrespondenz, Scenes for String Quartet opened Jacaranda’s “Fierce Beauty” program Saturday night in Santa Monica. The Calder Quartet played the 1993 work with Eötvös in the room, making the occasion extra special. The global music luminary is visiting Los Angeles from Hungary for a week of ...
Esa-Pekka, Especially-Pleasurable, at HEAR NOW benefit 3
Posing with The Lyris Quartet (Alyssa Park, Shalini Yijayan, violins, Timothy Loo, cello, Luke Maurer, viola) is our marvelous and much-missed Los Angeles Philharmonic Conductor-Laureate, Esa-Pekka Salonen, on a return visit to our town. Salonen’s now London-based where he’s principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra. His presence at a house party in Culver City proved ...
Review: No chopped liver, but still great: GATZ @ REDCAT 2
When I was a kid, my yiddishe grandmother would pack us sandwiches for Saturday movie matinee (she called it “the show”). My cousins and I would line up at the box office of Pittsburgh’s Manor Theater, clutching in our little hands a few bucks and our greasy brown-paper bag lunches. The theater concession’s stellar offerings ...
Review: Streisand, refridgerated
Warming the nippy November night with her presence, Barbra Streisand captivated the Hollywood Bowl — an outdoor amphitheater, a house of 18,000 seats — in a wonderful concert. She looked gorgeous and her voice was gorgeous, often silken and surprising. A powerful, beautiful woman dressed sharp in a black sequined pant-ensemble, Streisand commanded the Bowl’s ...
Stones still rolling fifty years later, on HBO 1
When the great blues-steeped rock band, The Rolling Stones, launched in 1962, I was seven years old — and already an budding arts journalist. Their marking a half century of existence is the magical stuff of a generation. Last night we previewed Crossfire Hurricane, the 100-minute tour de force of fascinating original footage knitted together ...
Heidi’s healing happening in Elysian Park 2
In her most recent escapade, the skyscraper-topping “Cleopatra CEO,” Heidi Duckler ramped up her audience with an heady dance cocktail mixing corporate and sexual politics. This past weekend, the pied-piper choreographer, having transformed us into alpha men, led us to a forested glen in Elysian Park, one mile outside downtown Los Angeles. There on the ...
Wayne Shorter blows his own horn at L.A. Jazz Society tribute
At a swank do at the Universal Hilton Hotel Sunday evening, the Los Angeles Jazz Society, for the past 29 years the labor of love of Flip Manne (she’s the surviving widow of drummer Shelly Manne), honored saxophonist Wayne Shorter as its 2012 Jazz Tribute Honoree. Movie maven Leonard Maltin, also a jazz lover, smoothly ...
REVIEW: The Los Angeles Philharmonic dances! 2
A big week for dance in Los Angeles: first came the premiere of L.A. Dance Project under the direction of Benjamin Millepied. Then followed Thursday’s symphony gala celebrating what Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel called, in pre-concert remarks, “a union of the arts.” Dance shared the stage, rather marvelously, with our symphony orchestra. Grand ...