Summer salsa ‘stravaganza swarms Music Center
There’s quite a bit of ‘competition’ out there. Los Angeles has performing arts centers in abundance–in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Long Beach, Costa Mesa, Northridge, and Malibu. But there’s only one mothership, and that is the Los Angeles Music Center, a cultural anchor in our city since 1964. Home to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Ahmanson ...
Al Hirschfeld draws a dancin’ man
Everyone knows that arts journalist Al Hirschfeld, whose theatrical caricatures accompanied Sunday New York Times feature articles about Broadway openings, was a genius. But The Line King‘s rendering of Bob Fosse in 1978, on the occasion of the opening of his no-book, all-dance musical Dancin’, got my attention. I can’t stop looking at … … ...
‘Garden of Alla’s theatrical delights
Jun
17
2022
Alla Nazimova, nee Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon, as Camille, and at the Garden of Alla in Los Angeles Joni Mitchell, a resident in nearby Laurel Canyon, said it best: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” She was referencing, in song, the demolition of a 2.5 acre property at the south-west corner of ...
Grotesqueries courtesy of Spanish performance artist Marta Carrasco
photo: david ruano An intriguing woman artist from Spain is being presented in multiple performances by the Latino Theater Company at the L.A. Theater Center downtown. It’s the dancer, choreographer and performance artist Marta Carrasco, in a show with an equally intriguing title, Perra de Nadie (“Nobody’s Bitch”). Well, that’s a nice girly name. [We ...
Jack Cole ‘discovered’ Steve Reeves
As you see from the above “information sheet” for “Theatre World” magazine, Steve Reeves, the astonishingly buff muscle guy in his first creative foray worked for the choreographer Jack Cole in Kismet on Broadway. Reeves played the “Wazir” [chief of police]’s guard. Reeves (not to be confused with George Reeves, television’s “Superman”) was big on ...
To San Diego, for Fosse’s Dancin’!
bob fosse’s dancin’ in rehearsals. Photo by julieta dervantes It will be a reckoning. I have been researching Bob Fosse through his several biographies and of course, critically, through his movies. So, the advent of a major revival of Dancin‘ the original Broadway production created, directed, and choreographed by Fosse, this time directed and staged ...
George Chakiris: Riff before Bernardo
George Chakiris as Riff in West Side Story, in 1959 It’s one of those fascinating show-biz factoids. For fourteen months, circa 1959, George Chakiris, a good friend of artsmeme, performed in the London company of West Side Story, at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London’s West End theater district. What is little known is that the ...
Where the Bronx meets Orange County: Chazz Palminteri’s one-man show
In 1988, before it became a hit Broadway musical or a feature film co-starring Robert DeNiro, Chazz Palminteri wrote and performed in A Bronx Tale— bringing 18 characters to vivid life in a gripping tale of his rough childhood on the Bronx streets. The powerful play depicts his bruising youthful experiences in great detail — ...
Cover girl. The great Chita Rivera.
Chita Rivera, DANCE Magazine Nov 1957 West Side Story opened on Broadway in September 1957. By November, DANCE Magazine had a new cover girl.
Chita & ‘chicas’: WSS’s original ‘America’ dance crew 1
Chita Rivera out front. Behind, L to R: Carmen Gutierrez, Lynn Ross, Liane Plane (unseen behind Chita), Frances Taylor “Chita was so incredible as Anita,” our friend George Chakiris told the audience when I interviewed him in 2015. He played “Riff” in the London production of West Side Story circa 1958/59. Doing that meant keeping ...