A flash of modernism: E.O. Hoppé meets The Firebird 2
Tamara Karsavina, Adolph Bolm in “The Firebird” (1911) A moment of silence, please, for this splendid photograph, a capture of choreographer Michel Fokine’s “The Firebird,” a ballet created to Igor Stravinsky’s stirring score for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Dancing in their originating roles are Tamara Karsavina and Adolph Bolm. Yes, it’s a sensational, dance historic moment. ...
Jimi Hendrix, Los Angeles, 1969
(left) Monterey Pop Festival, Nurit Wilde/from “Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child”(right) with Michelle Phillips & Mama Cass Henry Diltz/ from “Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child” ed note: This excerpt from “Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child” by Harvey Kubernik & Kenneth Kubernik, Sterling Books (2021) is published with permission of the authors. In 1960s rock royalty, none wore the ...
Yuval Ron’s mystical music magic to whirl in garden setting
banafsheh sayyad The weather may be nippy at these outdoor-garden events, but isn’t it time we generated a little heat within? That is on offer as the indefatigable Yuval Ron invites our attendance at Rumi’s Wedding Night. Yuval, a master of the Middle Eastern lute, the oud, assembles a troupe of players for evenings of ...
Los Angeles, California, home to two choreographer-goddesses
Macaela Taylor, Danielle Agami It’s exciting. For awhile there, things were looking bad. We seemed to be losing the female voice in the contemporary dance space, as men, holding the reins of most operating companies, naturally meted out sparse commissions and jobs to guy-pals. Female dance leaders, critics and scholars sounded the alarm. Foundations, universities, ...
Quarantine blues, back-to-nature edition
There’s the walking blues, the talking blues, and now thanks to filmmaking collaborators Wade Robson and Tony Testa, there’s “DisInteGrated,” the dancing blues, filmed in Maui. Testa, looking like Gilligan in search of his island, convenes with nature — sand, sea, sky, forest, even planted!
REVIEW: Count Basie Orchestra swingin’ at The Soraya 2
count basie orchestraphoto: luis luque for the soraya When the Count Basie Orchestra concert at the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts was cancelled for the COVID shutdown in March 2020, it was a bitter pill. When the cloud lifted, Soraya director Thor Steingraber declared that the match would no longer be ...
Martha Graham Dance Company, dancing through time 2
ed. note: This story by dance critic Debra Levine, commissioned and originally published by the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts, is reprinted with permission. When Martha Graham placed a single bare foot—famously small, her feet had enviable high arches—on the stage of New York’s 48th Street Theater in her 1926 debut as ...
REVIEW: Julia Child, warbly kitchen warrior near to our hearts, in new doc
The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu is ‘said’ to have said, “When the student is ready, the master will appear.” American homemakers didn’t realize it in the post-World War II decade, but Julia Child was the master they awaited – a down-to-earth cookery guru to guide them away from pre-made mixes, frozen variety trays, and the ...
Ella and Basie, reunited by Basie band & Lizz Wright at The Soraya
Lizz Wright, Basie orchestra ed. note: This story by music writer Kirk Silsbee, commissioned and originally published by the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts, has been excerpted with permission. The Count Basie Orchestra band has not just outlived the big band era, it has thrived. This is no ghost band; its last ...
The Huntington’s people of color: the Blue Boys 1
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Kehinde Wiley’s “A Portrait of a Young Gentleman” (2021) (© Kehinde Wiley, collection of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, and commissioned through Roberts Projects, Los Angeles) Funny … they don’t look Blueish. But both are dandies. And there they are, well hung, in Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Garden‘s Thornton Portrait ...