REVIEW: A well-heeded call for community: DIAVOLO’s ‘Existencia’
We all knew why we were there. We were there to remember and commemorate — most of us having lived through it. We were there to ruminate, and then, to thank our lucky stars. For, in the ashes of the January 17, 1994 Northridge Earthquake, a 6.7-magnitude tumbler that overturned the campus of Cal State ...
Big music by Sánchez/Alexa for big ‘Existencia’ choreography at The Soraya
Ed. note: This story by Debra Levine was commissioned the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts. The spasms of explosive percussion that jump off the screen of Birdman, the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 2014, are the work of a brilliant and innovative musician: the Mexican-born drummer Antonio Sánchez. In the decade since that ...
Shaken but not deterred, Diavolo dancers to commemorate Northridge earthquake
Dec
5
2023
jacques heim, artistic director, diavolo dance Ed. note: This story by Debra Levine, commissioned the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts, is republished with permission. On January 17, 1994, slumberers across the city of Los Angeles were awakened by a heaving jolt. It was 4:31 a.m. (This writer was hurled from bed to ...
‘S.O.S.’ cries Diavolo’s timely ‘The Veterans Project’ 1
photo: george simian When Jacques Heim, founder/choreographer/director of Diavolo Dance Theater and one of the most consistently engaging of Los Angeles creative talents, launched The Veterans Project in 2016, hearing of it, I thought of it as an ambitious and laudable community outreach program. Partnering with the “V.A.,” the Veterans Administration, Heim and his dancers ...
‘Buy local’ defines 2019/20 dance season at The Wallis
May
2
2019
A big gang of arts journalists crossed the thin line to mount the stage of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Tuesday evening to toast a special occasion whose time has come. In his annual upcoming-season announcement, The Wallis’s artistic director Paul Crewes, shown in photo with the Beverly Hills theater’s CEO Rachel ...
Pick: Diavolo at the Music Center
There’s a dizzying amount of dance going on the next few weekends, as it is the height of the fall season. But if you really want to travel to dizzying heights, consider the upcoming offering of Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center, Diavolo | Architecture in Motion at the Ahmanson Theatre. Diavolo Artistic ...
What a week! Los Angeles blossoms in the fine arts
I’ve inhabited Los Angeles more or less, since 1989. The city’s rich art existence, long undetected, has kept me busy and happy here. There is little doubt, however, that something arts-phenomenal is happening right now in our city. It must be true; the New York Times is sputtering about it all the time. In fact, ...
Review: Diavolo’s “L’Espace du Temps” @ VPAC
Calling Diavolo: Architecture in Motion a dance company is like calling a monster truck a nice vehicle. It’s big. It’s brash. It’s loud. Sometimes it’s brilliant. The LA-based company performed its three-part “L’Espace du Temps” at the Valley Performing Arts Center (VPAC) September 19 and 20. Presented in partnership with the Ford Signature Series, it ...
BYOB: Diavolo brings bowl to the Bowl
The Hollywood Bowl’s historic band shell, the object of community affection as well as architectural dispute over the years, gets an ultimate homage when Diavolo Dance Theater installs its own version, a huge fiberglass replication, on the huge stage. It’s part of the September 5 world premiere of “Fluid Infinities,” performed by the architectural movement ...
Determined design discipline behind Diavolo’s daring dance-wheel
A group of Penn State Architecture and Engineering students spent the year designing and building the 12’8″-tall-by-17′-wide “Dance Vehicle-01” in an interdisciplinary studio built around a collaboration with renowned Los Angeles-based Diavolo Dance Theater. An exercise in the interplay of movement and devices, “The Secret Life of Public Spaces” studio resulted from a $251,670 grant ...