Duckler dancers to scale tall ships of Port of Los Angeles

Architecture & Design · Dance
Full immersion is the typical call to action of a Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre site-specific happening. That’s what attracts her adventure-seeking audience. But next Saturday night, when we attend Beyond the Waterfront, Duckler’s latest site-specific work, we hope it does not require a plunge into the deep dark sea at the Port of Los Angeles ...

Charles Lummis, Los Angeles city founder, sprung to life in dance & documentary

Architecture & Design · Dance · Film
Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre will bring its site-specific brand of immersive performance, this weekend, to the historic Southwest Museum building. The performance, “143 Days,” is part of a commission by the Autry Museum of the American West and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Dance company will present a modern retelling of the pioneering American ...

Review: Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre’s “Dancing at Dunbar” 1

Architecture & Design · Dance · Reviews
“It’s site-specific work, so feel free to walk around so you can see,” offered choreographer Heidi Duckler at the outset of Saturday night’s “Dancing at Dunbar” performance by Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre. In doing so, she encouraged her audience to remain active during the site-driven dance event. A full spectrum of Duckler fans and curiosity-seekers ...

Duckler’s ‘The Groundskeepers’ in historic Boyle Heights

Architecture & Design · Dance
The Groundskeepers, a multi-scene, walk-thru performance taking place at Linda Vista Hospital in East Los Angeles’s historic Boyle Heights neighborhood, reverses viewer expectations. Choreographer/director Heidi Duckler and her artistic collaborators identify unseen, intriguing spaces in the hospital, and transform them into artistic installations. The performance begins on an external fire escape (anticipate gymnastic dangling); then ...

Heidi’s healing happening in Elysian Park 2

Architecture & Design · Dance · Reviews
In her most recent escapade, the skyscraper-topping “Cleopatra CEO,” Heidi Duckler ramped up her audience with an heady dance cocktail mixing corporate and sexual politics. This past weekend, the pied-piper choreographer, having transformed us into alpha men, led us to a forested glen in Elysian Park, one mile outside downtown Los Angeles. There on the ...

Dirty laundry courtesy Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre

Dance
Dance maker Heidi Duckler, who shakes us out of our passive theater-going habits and drags us around our own city, brings her landmark site-specific work, Laundromatinee, to the La Brea Coin-Op. These shows come on the [dirty] heels of Duckler’s ambitious Cleopatra CEO, a baroque corporate-opera set in the ghostly but seventies-resplendid executive offices of ...

Cleopatra, CEO, comes to rule Los Angeles

Architecture & Design · Dance
We chatted with Heidi Duckler, in the final creative phase for her upcoming dance work, “Cleopatra CEO,” which opens this Friday night on the 51st floor of Paul Hastings Tower in downtown Los Angeles, and runs for three subsequent weekends. The architecture-savvy choreographer, celebrating 30 years as a local dance maker, was last seen running ...

Madam Mayor, aka Heidi Duckler, occupies City Hall 1

Architecture & Design · Dance
I’m looking forward to seeing Heidi Duckler | Collage Dance Theatre‘s “Governing Bodies,” a wild event in which the choreographer takes over Sergeant Joe Friday’s favorite digs: Los Angeles City Hall. Joe’s proud LAPD badge (number 714) bore the emblem of City Hall, once L.A.’s proudest architectural beacon —  it’s certainly still iconic — and for ...

Heidi Duckler’s sudsy classic

Dance · Reviews
The Echo Park lavanderia (“SpinCycle”) where choreographer Heidi Duckler is reprising her 1988 site-specific work “Laundromatinee” stands next door to a Los Angeles bagel factory. Yeasty baking odors waft into the laundromat where her whimsical dance unrolls. We’re in the inner city. That makes sense because Duckler, a long-time contributor to the local dance scene, ...