At Jacob’s Pillow, with dance writers
Drawn to the Berkshires by an touching inter-generational mix of post-modern-dance artistry — Trisha Brown Dance Company celebrating its fortieth anniversary year at the Ted Shawn Theater, Jodi Melnick & David Neumann in the Doris Duke’s black box — a parade of dance writers sojourned to Jacob’s Pillow this weekend. We have: Jenny Hansell, Lakeville ...
What friendship hath wrought: Jodi Melnick & David Neumann’s “July” premieres at Jacob’s Pillow
“July,” a stirring dance duet whose refined physical beauty gives form to its tender emotions, had its premiere Wednesday night before the great open backstage door of Jacob Pillow Dance Festival’s Doris Duke Theater. The gifted duo, Jodi Melnick, a former Twyla Tharp dancer, and David Neumann, a dance-theater-comedy specialist, created the absorbing work on ...
Pillowtalk.2011 release 4
Beyond giving me a life-long hankering for a pink counter top, “Pillow Talk,” the Rock Hudson/Doris Day romantic comedy, is not to my liking. Made in 1959 right when I was hitting little girlhood, I find the film’s fifties innuendo and double-entendres, well, nauseating. My ’50s guy is Jack Cole — hard core, provocative, sexy, ...
Jane McAdam Freud memorializes her father Lucian
Aug
4
2011
We met the artist, Jane McAdam Freud, here in Los Angeles at her September, 2010 gallery show in Beverly Hills, and found it very easy to converse and connect with her. She is a friend of arts·meme, and we are very honored to reprint her wonderful memorial essay to her father from The Guardian. We ...
Jacaranda’s lovely musical edge
Aug
3
2011
It was one of those heaven-sent Sunday afternoons in Los Angeles — the ambient temperature so idyllic that you floated freely without a modicum of pushback from Mother Nature. And in this effortless environment, we very much enjoyed an afternoon of plein air classical music, courtesy of Jacaranda, Music at the Edge. In a garden ...
Gertrude Stein’s ROI on her Matisse
Aug
2
2011
Featured in San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde, Henri Matisse’s great game-changing canvas, Woman in the Hat. SFMOMA owns the painting. The work has amazing history. After viewing the vibrant paintings at the 1905 Salon d’Automne, Louis Vauxcelles, an important critic dubbed Matisse and his peers ...
Colonoscopy 3
Everyone’s jumping on the high-speed train, oh wait, we don’t have one … everyone’s powering north in their cars on the killer Golden State Freeway. Destination, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde. The much-admired Gertrude Stein show adds to the ever-growing dump of evidence that ...
Still the swingingest thing: West Side Story’s George Chakiris
A lot of ladies — and quite a few gents including American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Marcelo Gomes and the just-retired Jose Manuel Carreno — gawked as West Side Story star George Chakiris entered the Founder’s Room of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Los Angeles Music Center. It was the opening night reception following ...
She’s a rainbow, strums Gary Lucas at the Grammy Museum
Jul
26
2011
The instant Gary Lucas put his hand to his acoustic guitar and blasted into “She’s a Rainbow,” I took off into the stratosphere. A one-way ticket to pleasure-ville. I had forgotten this great Rolling Stones anthem — a love paean by Jagger/Richards dedicated to their flower-child cohorts. She comes in colours. The globe-trotting musician played ...
“Je ne suis pas contente de tout,” says Claude Bessy. 1
The film I loved most of the four I saw at the Dance Camera West festival in June was Fabrice Herrault’s beautifully constructed documentary about his former ballet instructor, Claude Bessy, Les lignes d’une Vie (Traces of a Life). Herrault, a dance professor at the Juilliard School and a respected private coach, has made one ...