Busby Berkeley brings it to Bette Davis in ‘Fashions of 1934’
A great dance movie starring Bette Davis. Who knew? Apparently Film Forum director of repertory programming, Bruce Goldstein, did. He programmed FASHIONS OF 1934, smart and smashing in a 35mm print and preserved by Library of Congress, as part of Film Forum’s recent nine-day Busby Berkeley festival. It’s a really good movie, well acted and ...
Very now, very Pam-Tan
Watching it, it has the feeling of today: choreographer Pam Tanowitz’s “thunder rolling along afterward,” an emotionally fraught, 20-minute-long work fashioned for a sleek tribe of Juilliard School dance majors. Along with contributions by John Heginbotham, Katarzyna Skarpetowska, Matthew Neenan, Tanowitz’s “thunder” comprised the Juilliard School’s annual showcase, “New Dances: Edition 2016.” What is that ...
Horses for courses, from The Lucinda Childs Dance Company
Dec
5
2016
My favorite work of the first program (“Lucinda Childs, A Portrait 1963-2016”) of a two-part Lucinda Childs retrospective now on at the Joyce Theater was Radial Courses (1976), a hugely fun, tongue-in-cheek, pretzel-puzzle of a dance. Promenading at a clipped pace, four tidily attired male dancers circumscribe a large oval shape. As the British love ...
Ticket to dance, courtesy of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
During the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater‘s winter season in New York, ticketed dancegoers should hang onto their ducats! For 60 days following the Ailey performance you attend, your stub will be good for one free class at the Ailey Extension program. Those classes happen in the company’s glam, window-walled, mid-Manhattan building. You’ll get to ...
‘Dance Masters’ Chakiris & Chase in ‘An Evening at the Barn’
Two great dancers. Two beautiful people. Both with Los Angeles dance roots. Both gypsy dancers in the great decade of movie-musicals, the 1950s. Between them, their titles include: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, There’s No Business Like Show Business, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, Meet Me in Las Vegas, The I Don’t Care Girl, Daddy Long ...
Lichtenstein’s lingerings in Los Angeles
Nov
29
2016
Pop for the People: Roy Lichtenstein in L.A., an art exhibit now running at The Skirball Center through next March, explores how the artist, a vanguard of the Pop Art movement buoyed by a renaissance in printmaking, made fine art accessible to the American public in ways that had not been achieved before. The Skirball ...
Dance on, three nymphs, at Hollyhock House!
Don’t these girls deserve a rest? Apparently not! We recently announced the joyful homecoming of a reaaaaally old work of art — a first-century Roman bas relief still in stunning condition. A high-tech replication of an original tableau of three dancing girls lives once more on Olive Hill, a hilltop retreat dedicated to the arts ...
Aline’s nymphs to prance once more on Olive Hill
It’s the thing I most love, except for my relatives. I need this marble when I arrive home from a day of shopping or business. And I recover immediately when I look at those three maidens. They sooth me with their rhythm, that balance of movement, so charming, so pitre … This marble is already ...
Martha Graham Dance Company dances for Haiti
Nov
16
2016
The Martha Graham Dance Company was scheduled to perform in Haiti at the end of October 2016, but the devastation caused by Hurricane Mathew earlier in the month postponed the performance. The Graham Company dancers decided to take action and help Haiti. Viewers can attend a live benefit performance at the company’s Westbeth studios or for ...
All is golden in the Golden Nautilus, says Catherine Turocy
The structure of the Nautilus is considered sacred geometry, the Golden Mean, represented by the Greek letter phi, one of the mysterious natural numbers that seems to arise from the basic structure of our cosmos. “Baroque Dance and the Golden Nautilus” is a lecture/performance by Baroque expert Catherine Turocy. The artistic director of the New ...