Gang warfare quelled by dancer love — backstage at Miami City Ballet 3
On stage, it was “The Jets are gonna have their way … tonight.” It was the premiere of Jerome Robbins‘s “West Side Story Suite” at Miami City Ballet. A big tangle of tension, gang hatred, rumble, and knife-fight. But backstage, a cross-generational love fest took hold, as George Chakiris, the iconic Sharks gang-leader, now retired, ...
A rumble, with love, at Miami City Ballet 2
Valentine’s Day love continues to take new and different forms. This year, February 14, 2014, in serendipitous Miami, Florida, a love connection of a special sort occurred at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. It was a backstage visit by Oscar-winning dancer/actor George Chakiris following Miami City Ballet’s premiere performance of “West Side ...
Review: The Hamburg Ballet in “Liliom” at Segerstrom Hall
All elements converged for John Neumeier’s “Liliom,” a two-act narrative ballet presented Saturday night by the choreographer’s stellar company of 38 years, The Hamburg Ballet. The revisiting of Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar’s play, adopted by Rodgers & Hammerstein as “Carousel” in 1945, packed much visceral pleasure and emotional punch into one evening at Segerstrom Hall. ...
Koehler on Cinema: A great movie week
It’s pure coincidence that this is one of the best opening weeks for new movies in Los Angeles in recent memory. Not only are “The Lego Movie,” “In Bloom” and “The Last of the Unjust” all essential viewing—along with “A Field in England,” the latest brilliant black comedy from director Ben Wheatley and writer Amy ...
West Side Story’s George Chakiris to host Miami City Ballet gala 4
The distinction — true, false or otherwise — between so-called commercial dancers and those of the “concert” dance world will be breached February 14, 2014, when George Chakiris, “Bernardo” in WEST SIDE STORY (1961), hosts a gala to benefit Miami City Ballet, one of the nation’s leading classical ballet companies. Chakiris, who began his long ...
Gracious Gainsborough sparks vivid Timken-UCLA design competition
At right, “A Peasant Smoking at a Cottage Door,” dating from 1788 by the English landscape and portrait master Thomas Gainsborough. The work is on extended loan to San Diego’s Timken Museum of Art from UCLA’s Hammer Museum. “A Peasant Smoking” offers the tranquil vision of peasants in a bucolic English countryside setting. The gracious ...
Next week is Barbara Stan-week
Feb
1
2014
Frank Capra called her “the greatest emotional actress the screen has yet known.” She was one of its most natural, timeless, and underrated stars. Author Victoria Wilson, the author of a massive and much anticipated biography, “A Life of Barbara Stanwyck – Steel True – 1907-1940,” will appear at three book events in fun locations ...
How green is Thor’s Valley
Thor Steingraber, former vice president for programming for The Music Center in downtown Los Angeles, has been named the new executive director of the Valley Performing Arts Center at California State University, Northridge. CSUN’s Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Harry Hellenbrand heralded the occasion: “Thor is credited with the vision to blend classical ...
Fred Astaire’s songs that dance 2
If all you know of Fred Astaire is his movie dancing, the new two-CD set “Fred Astaire: The Early Years at RKO” (Turner Classic Music/Sony Masterworks) will be a revelation. With the possible exception of Bing Crosby, Astaire introduced more good songs — first on the Broadway stage, then in his movie musicals — than ...
Koehler on Cinema: the greatness, and terror, of a flood
No words, no images, no sounds can fully convey the total horror of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927. The book that comes closest to putting you in the middle of the most widespread water disaster in American history—it stretched across the entire Mississippi River valley and west, across the river’s tributaries, affecting nearly ...