Ted VanCleave’s tough photographic vision of Los Angeles 2
I deeply respond to photographer Ted VanCleave’s recent “Concrete Porn ~ Buildings & Bridges” series, a visual homage to that most unyielding of building mediums, concrete. “My love of concrete architecture began when I visited the Pantheon in Rome. I was in awe of the beautiful, massive concrete dome which is still the world’s largest ...
Great performances overcome ‘Otello’ racist legacy @ ENO 2
I find Shakepeare’s Othello problematic in the extreme, all the racist references in the text, the historic use of blackface, the desperate fragility of a black man so easily duped by a white conniver, the hysteria around strong and bestial black hands closing around the white neck of the blameless Desdemona, even more so when ...
MoMA to bring Chakiris, arts·meme for talks, screenings Oct 26-27 4
A wonderful celebration of Los Angeles cultural history soon kicks off the Museum of Modern Art’s 12th annual “To Save and Project” film preservation festival. Three events, each related directly or indirectly to Hollywood dance history, will highlight the Festival’s opening weekend. The first, Sunday October 26, 2014, is an interview with dancer-actor George Chakiris ...
Critic’s round-up: Indian Jazz Suites, Laguna’s ‘Stars of Dance’ 1
L.A.’s big dance weekend — it had the dance-infatuated scampering up the heights of Bunker Hill, across the Cahuenga Pass and down Laguna way — has come to its close. Certainly the weekend’s big draw was the launch of a new contemporary dance company, Ezralow Dance, an event that also closed the Ford Amphitheatre for a ...
Flying men of Hollywood dance
Is it a bird? Is is a plane? No, it’s a Hollywood dance man, flying. Like this? Read more: Ailey guys fly
Review: Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre’s “Dancing at Dunbar” 1
“It’s site-specific work, so feel free to walk around so you can see,” offered choreographer Heidi Duckler at the outset of Saturday night’s “Dancing at Dunbar” performance by Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre. In doing so, she encouraged her audience to remain active during the site-driven dance event. A full spectrum of Duckler fans and curiosity-seekers ...
James Cagney studied ballet with Kosloff 5
In my soon-published long essay, “Theodore Kosloff and Cecil B. DeMille Meet Madam Satan,”* I write as follows: James Cagney, too, studied ballet with Kosloff, or so the actor-hoofer let drop to the Los Angeles Times in January 1938. Cagney confessed that he was training for a pet project: playing Nijinsky in a bio-pic. (This ...
Good God, Universal! Save Stage 28.
Does anyone have extra space in their basement or attic? Universal Pictures has something it needs to store … It’s the ornate set replicating the interior of the Paris Opera House (Palais Garnier) which now sits like a big immovable rock in Universal’s Sound Stage 28. The set, constructed in 1924 for filming silent-movie classic ...
Breeding hybrid dance artists at USC 2
Sep
2
2014
Very pleased to have contributed the cover story to DANCE TEACHER Magazine September 2014 issue …. “Breeding Hybrids.” Excerpt here: The news came as a shock, a pleasant one. On May 7, the Glorya Kaufman School of Dance at the University of Southern California, on the cusp of taking in its first crop of BFA ...
Fred Astaire, pianist
On this Labor Day weekend 2014, why not let Fred Astaire, pianist (and, oh yes, dancer), do all the work? Yet another incredible Fred Astaire dance sequence, this one from LET’S DANCE (1950). Just love Fred’s little ballet barre opening the number … then he gives a whirlwind “site-specific” dance tour of two pianos! Like ...