DANCE REVIEW: Twyla Tharp talks
Feb
26
2025
Dance critics like to use the word “language” in describing the identifiable steps, movement chains, and tonality associated with choreographers of stature. At sight, you know it is Balanchine, Taylor, or Cunningham. You know it’s Fosse or Cole. But that metaphor does not often move to the next level, viz., whether (or not) in drawing ...
Film review: THE SUBSTANCE, a triumph of the insubstantial
Ed note: This review, written in August 2024, is belatedly published, thus the wishful reference to a woman president in its last paragraph. The director is French, which I found surprising. And she cannot be called young. That was my second shock, for, in watching her movie, THE SUBSTANCE, I would have sworn it was ...
Free tix! Twyla Tharp, Sunday at The Soraya
Feb
18
2025
Yeppie, it’s Twyla. Twyla’s back and The Soraya‘s got her. First at the Segerstrom Center and then, this coming weekend at the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts, February 22 and 23, Tharp is hitting the stage with fourteen best-in-class dancers in a 60th anniversary of her career as a choreographer. Here’s what ...
Twyla Tharp, irrepressible, meets Beethoven, Philip Glass, for Jubilee Tour
Ed. note: This story by Susan Reiter, commissioned and published by the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts, is reprinted with permission. Twyla Tharp: The name is distinctive and memorable. So, too, are the accolades the choreographer has accumulated over decades in the creative artist’s lane. Now, at 83, the Tony/MacArthur/Primetime Emmy/Kennedy Center/Guggenheim ...
Sugar Plums for the ages, in ABT’s ‘The Nutcracker’ at Segerstrom Center
Nov
26
2024
Her name is Antonietta Dell’Era (1861-1945), and, as legend goes, in 1892 she was the first to dance to Tchaikovsky’s magical foray on the celesta as the Sugar Plum Fairy. That music the brilliant composer concocted to give aural evocation of “drops of water shooting from a fountain.” Ms. Dell’Era’s first performance received good reviews, ...
On Hallo•meme, be bewitching, like ‘Gilda’ 6
I was thinking about my costume for this Halloween. Who better to embody than Rita Hayworth in her hallowed role as a film-noir temptress in the movie of the same name, Gilda (1945), from Columbia Pictures?Here she is in her nightclub number in the movie, “Put the Blame on Mame.” Rita was dressed in a ...
Let’s watch YouTube reactions to Jack Cole’s ‘Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend’
Well, I’ve studied it, screened it, spooled it, summarized it, synopsized it. I’ve analyzed, advocated, argued and addressed it. Glowed and kvelled over it, enjoyed and celebrated it. So it’s fun, for a change, to let YouTube queen, “India Reacts” take the reins as she watches (her first time, ever) a video of “Diamonds Are ...
Top this, Hollywood! The making of ‘Top Hat’ (1935) 2
artsmeme is lucky to have good friends who collect fabulous Hollywood dance photos like the one above, given to us by Bison Archive’s Marc Wanamaker. It’s a soundstage shot of the making of the superlative movie-musical from RKO, “Top Hat” (1935). In our photo, director Mark Sandrich, in his own swank chapeau, directs a brief ...
A happy ceremony for La Cérémonie (1995) at Laemmle Anniversary Classics
ed. note: To mark the 30th anniversary of French auteur Claude Chabrol’s dark masterpiece, La Cérémonie (1994), Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classic Series present a special screening of the film followed by a with a conversation between host Stephen Farber and actress Jacqueline Bisset, in person, at the Laemmle Royal Theatre in Santa Monica. ...
The many modes of Chita Rivera
Mar
1
2024
Let’s watch this great dancer/entertainer, Chita Rivera (1933-2024), do her thing in her 2005 show “The Dancer’s Life,” in which she pays homage to her choreographers, Jack Cole, Peter Gennaro, Bob Fosse, and Jerome Robbins. It is a brilliant montage impeccably performed. Rivera found this luminous path to continue to share her gifts well into ...