Stellar casting creates “Beauty”ful ABT quandary @ Segerstrom Center
Feb
18
2015
Southern California, wake up! Stop your behind-the-wheel slumbering … Don’cha know that we’re hosting the dance event of the season? And it’s a real sleeper! That would be “The Sleeping Beauty,” in a prestigious new production presented by American Ballet Theatre. The new “Beauty” will have its festive premiere March 3 at the Segerstrom Center ...
Writhing & wriggling Gwen Verdon elicits yawns in “David and Bathsheba”
In this wonderful clip from DAVID AND BATHSHEBA (1951), the great Gwen Verdon fails to arouse the attention of a couple of onlookers, despite choreographer Jack Cole throwing every slinky trick in the book at them. Watching Gorgeous Gwen, you’d think they’d at least sit up in their chairs! The 20th Century-Fox Biblical epic, directed ...
Thom Andersen, thinking with images
Feb
16
2015
A foremost practitioner of the essay film returns with a new work inspired by the writings
of Gilles Deleuze on cinema. Thom Andersen’s The Thoughts That Once We Had (2014, 108 min.) is a richly layered journey through cinematic history, masterfully edited as it playfully moves across decades and genres, and suffused at every turn ...
Lovely ladies-in-motion from choreographer Kyle Abraham
Both “The Watershed” and “When the Wolves Came in,” the paired set of dance programs by Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion presented at Royce Hall by the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, drew inspiration from serious political and social issues — racial injustice and resulting liberation struggles in the Civil Rights movement and the fight ...
Wim Wenders brings PINA to Aero Theatre Mon Feb 16
Fresh from the Berlinale festival conferring its Honorary Golden Bear on the 69-year-old filmmaker for lifetime achievement, Wim Wenders, the son of Düsseldorf beloved by the dance world, as well, for his magisterial filming of Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal in PINA, the American Cinematheque has nailed the hot-hot-hotter Wenders (on March 2, the Museum of ...
Recco’ed: choreographer Kyle Abraham & Co. to kick it at Royce Hall
Feb
10
2015
A tremendous opportunity to experience the “post-modern gumbo,” the rich inner imaginings and outer cultural connections of choreographer Kyle Abraham whose work we have happily tracked for the past several years. Two separate dance pieces will be shared over two evenings this week’s end, at the regal Royce Hall, presented by the Center of the ...
REVIEW: Ballerina Wendy Whelan, restless for a reason 2
At left, an iconic photograph of George Balanchine partnering Suzanne Farrell in “Don Quixote” for New York City Ballet. Wendy Whelan/Restless Creature, which we enjoyed Saturday evening in Long Beach, brought to mind this historic pairing — a great choreographer dancing with his muse. The four-ballet program, premiered in 2013 at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, ...
How did ‘Cuddles’ do it? Revealed at Skirball Center’s “Light and Noir”
Feb
6
2015
As this TCM tribute sets forth, the Budapest-born, jowly S.Z. ‘Cuddles’ Sakall was adorable, hilarious and popular on the set. But did those qualities alone get the character actor prominent play in 46 Hollywood movies? One of many film people to flee Nazi-dominated Europe, arrive on American shores, and wend their way to southern California, ...
Stones still rolling @ Taschen’s
Feb
6
2015
Great to learn that It’s Just a Shot Away: The Rolling Stones in Photographs, the fantastic, spacious, high-quality exhibit of superlative Rolling Stones portraiture is still on tap. You cannot miss Taschen’s cool Beverly Boulevard gallery — it’s the hot white-and-pink building. Thru February 28. (b&w) Masks, Toronto, Anton Corbijn, The Rolling Stones, 1994(color) Jumpin’ ...
Thelonious Monk, dancer
Just as James P. Johnson, George Gershwin, Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington took musical inspiration from New York City, it’s impossible to divorce pianist/composer Thelonious Monk’s music from Gotham. In Monk, the erotic and the athletic intertwine at the Savoy Ballroom, subways vibrate with propulsive rhythms, congregational choirs shake church foundations, young girls skip rope ...