Women of post-modern dance perform ‘on Broadway’
Oct
7
2016
New York’s Broadway, just like Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, is a long street. But it’s a noble performance address. I’m looking forward, this weekend, to visiting the southern portion of Broadway in SoHo. It’s WeisAcres, the loft of Cathy Weis where Eva Karczag & Vicky Shick will perform “your blue is my purple.” Shick ...
Review: Jean Genet’s ‘The Maids’ @ A Noise Within
Jean Genet had a remarkable career – a thief, a jailbird, an internationally celebrated playwright whose work often embodied his compatriot’s Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous line, “Hell is other people.” That was from Sartre’s play “No Exit,” and Genet’s play “The Maids” (1947) depicts a particularly suffocating hell. Two sisters, maids in a bourgeois French household ...
The brilliant business of Miles Davis
Oct
6
2016
A hillside Los Angeles home. Awesome acoustics. The stylized sound the trumpet master was famous for. Repertory standards and originals. All on tap at Jazz at the A-Frame‘s upcoming “Unfinished Business” tribute to Miles Davis Sunday November 6 at a private home. In the house: Kenny Dennis (drums), John Campbell (piano), John B. Williams (bass), ...
Why and when Ethel Martin started wearing hats
Yet another delicious show-business nugget from the plain-spoken Jack Cole dancer Ethel Martin, courtesy of the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts: So out of working for Jack [Cole] at the Casa [the Casa Manana, Billy Rose’s night club] , Jack held auditions for Something for the Boys. He took me. He didn’t ...
‘Showgirl’ dances once more, at Film Forum
In 1928 Alice White, First National Pictures’ blonde answer to Clara Bow, starred in the movie musical Show Girl. She plays Dixie Dugan, an aspiring dancer who fakes her own kidnapping as a publicity stunt. Based on popular writer J.P. McEvoy’s Dixie Dugan character, Show Girl was the first starring vehicle for White. Long thought ...
Frolic the Hall of Mirrors with Louis XIV in “Versailles”
In the dance world, we know King Louis XIV for his balletomania, which led to the first formal classical ballet, “Le Ballet de la Nuit.” Louis himself danced the lead role, embodying a character modestly called ‘The Sun King.’ (As Mel Brooks sagely noted, it’s good to be king.) A reenactment of the performance appears ...
Looking forward: Pam Tanowitz Dance at the Joyce Theater
Sep
24
2016
I like this skulking posture from “Once With Me,” a dance that had its premiere this past May in Buenos Aires. The dancers are stepping out, aren’t they? Only their heads remain, tucked back, with guilt? reluctance? shyness? Lots of mixed messages in their body language. The choreographer, Pam Tanowitz, who is my fellow Fellow ...
How Eugene Loring ‘got sold’ on working for producer Stanley Kramer 1
Fascinating commentary from dance maker Eugene Loring who choreographed the whimsical The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, a Dr. Seuss-derived cult movie dating from 1953. Loring, the creator of “Billy the Kid” ballet for American Ballet Theatre and founder of Hollywood’s American School of Ballet, ports impressive film credits that include Ziegfield Follies (1945), Yolanda ...
Print pioneers of Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L. 1
It’s no surprise anymore when an American artist of any discipline or media turns out prints. Painter, sculptor, installation specialist, conceptualist, land mover—all find something in their trick bags that will fit on a piece of paper with a high-rag content. It wasn’t always so. None of the Abstract Expressionist vilde chayas who dominated 1950s ...
A $1 tour of Gamble House, for 50 years a public museum
Sep
20
2016
January 14, 2016 marked the 50th anniversary of the gift of the Gamble House from the Gamble family to the City of Pasadena and the University of Southern California. This generous gift agreement allowed the Gamble House to open its doors to the public in September of the same year. The Gamble House was designed ...