Spend Friday the 13th with ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ now 50 years old
Apr
3
2018
To provide shivers and thrills on Friday the 13th, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of one of the most terrifying movies of all time, Rosemary’s Baby. Ira Levin’s ingenious best-selling novel imagined a witches’ coven hiding in plain sight in contemporary Manhattan and hatching a plot to bring ...
Liberty Hill Foundation to honor L.A. arts angel Liz Levitt Hirsch
Apr
2
2018
“Attention must be paid!” says Jane Jelenko, philanthropist, activist, writer, longtime friend to Elizabeth Levitt Hirsh, and co-chairperson of the upcoming Upton Sinclair Awards Dinner, April 19, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where Levitt Hirsch will be honored with a Founders Award. “I’ve known Liz for nearly thirty years. I’ve watched her arts activism from ...
A smoking dance number! ‘Two Cigarettes in the Dark’
It was so much fun to receive this dance number (above) from our friend the pianist/performer Peter Mintun, a very niche expert in old-tyme American popular music — the stuff of cafe society. The lead tap dancer (unidentified) and chorines deliver performances that can best be described as ‘smoking.’ “Two Cigarettes in the Dark,” by ...
From South Africa, Dada Masilo’s re-envisioned ‘Giselle’ @ The Wallis
She’s messed with Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, and Carmen. Now comes Giselle. ‘Messed with’ is perhaps a strong term, but South Africa’s Dada Masilo is among a small group of choreographers – notably Matthew Bourne, Akram Khan, Boris Eifman and Mats Ek – with the guts to turn a hallowed narrative ballet into something ...
Denkeschoen: Jeremy Denk in April concert @ the Wallis
Mar
28
2018
Pleased to see that Jeremy Denk, MacArthur ‘Genius’ and Avery Fisher Prize winner, will soon concertize in the intimate Bram Goldsmith Theater of The Wallis in Beverly Hills. A youthful and hugely versatile-and-robust piano stylist, Denk, whom Paul Crewes, artistic director of The Wallis, singles out as, “one of America’s foremost pianists,” will deliver a ...
A house tinged by antisemitism: Denishawn 2
Mar
24
2018
Excerpted from: Humphrey, Doris, “Doris Humphrey: An Artist First,” an autobiography edited and completed by Selma Jeanne Cohen (Wesleyan University Press, Middletown CT), 1972, pp 61-62. The summer of 1928 Charles [Weidman] and I were teaching the classes at the Carnegie Hall studio, while Pauline [Lawrence] played piano. The students were stimulated by our enthusiasm ...
Edna Guy: her race kept her from dancing with Denishawn
Mar
24
2018
Three years after Tamiris premiered her first Negro Spirituals, Edna Guy and Hemsley Winfield collaborated to stage the First Negro Dance Recital in America on 29 April 1931. With tickets priced from one to four dollars, spectators at the Theatre in the Clouds, an intimate space located on the top floor of the Chanin Building ...
Peter Sellars ‘Lagrime di San Pietro’ goes on the road
Mar
23
2018
It’s mournfully sad, very beautiful, music. But, for many, these are sad times. And we all need more beauty. That was my takeaway after a 75-minute submersion of ears and soul in the exquisite rapture of Lagrime di San Pietro (Tears of St. Peter), a stunning swathe of a capella choral music by Orlando di ...
Hitting the mark with Robin Mitchell
To see the world in a grain of sand is a goal shared by many creative people. In the case of Robin Mitchell, she sees the world in a mark. She’s a non-representational painter and, unlike others who work in that genre, her paint doesn’t sprawl, drip, stain or consist of hard-edge color blocks. Mitchell ...
Filmforum to screen radical-60s-cinema take on black power
Mar
19
2018
Over the course of the year, L.A. Filmforum will present screenings that reflect the the turbulent global events of 1968 from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Kennedy to the Democratic Convention and 1968 presidential election in the US, to the strikes in France in May and the Prague Spring and Soviet ...