post sponsored by the Carpenter Center
Complexions brings dances for ‘now’ to Long Beach
Complexions Contemporary Ballet performing WOKE. photo: Nina Wurtzel Complexions Contemporary Ballet continues to prod, provoke, and entertain. When choreographer Dwight Rhoden and dance-superstar Desmond Richardson co-founded their rainbow coalition of a ballet troupe in 1994, it took hold. Spurred by their mentor Alvin Ailey, the two men staked their claim on the power of dance ...
Gone fishing
Mar
18
2015
A lot of chatter, lately, amongst dance geeks on Facebook about the great classical ballet pose the “fishdive” which, according to pundits was not part of the original Petipa choreography (way too athletic and upside down for that era) but seems to have been introduced in the 1946 version of “The Sleeping Beauty.” This notwithstanding, ...
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 ...
Rhoden’s RISE revisited
Just loved getting another look at Complexions Contemporary Ballet romping through Dwight Rhoden’s exemplary “RISE,” set to a sound score by ’80s rock band, U2, last night at the Smothers Theatre of Pepperdine University’s Center for the Arts. The work, a kind of dance corollary to the ecstasy of a rock concert-on-fire, stands up well. ...