Let’s get this party started! Memphis jookin’ with Lil Buck at Carpenter Center in Long Beach

Dance
As a dance writer and historian, I’m completely fascinated — and on board — with the seemingly inexhaustible supply of witty, innovative new dance forms that arise from the streets of our society. A crash course in one such form will be on tap at the Carpenter Center in Long Beach, with the entertaining showcase, ...

Live performance lives! at Vail Dance Festival

Dance · Reviews
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Melissa Toogood with other Festival Artists in Michelle Dorrance’s “New to the Session” at the Vail Dance Festival. Photo by Christopher Duggan As New York City’s dance venues gear up to re-open next month, in early August a heady mix of the city’s finest dancers brought the thrill of live dance to the Vail Dance Festival. ...

Vail goes virtual

Dance
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Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet and New York City Ballet perform Alonzo King’s The Personal Element. Photo by Christopher Duggan. This is the year of the virtual summer festival. Staying in front of your computer, you can have a virtual Tanglewood, Jacob’s Pillow, Aspen Music Festival experience – and many more. One yearns to experience each ...

Dance finale, dance party & dance season to come, all @ CAP

Dance
Oh the seasons, they come and they go. That’s easy enough for us mortals to say. But for a monster-scaled live-arts presenter like the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, it takes both brains and brawn to pull off a full season. You live it, breathe it, push it, pamper it, and promote ...

Review: Memphis jookin phenom Lil Buck & pals wow @ Broad Stage

Dance · Music · Reviews
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Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade is only eight blocks from The Broad Stage, but it took Memphis jookin phenom Charles “Lil Buck” Riley thousands of miles and several years to get from one to the other.  Six years ago, he was busking for quarters on the Promenade, but when a video of him dancing to ...

Lil Buck pays back James Brown

Dance · Music
JB’s immensely funky riff from 1973, “The Payback” given exceptional dance interpretation today — first by the quicksilver Lil Buck, then by a less brilliant partner Jon Boogz. While Boogz dances, Lil Buck upstages him by leaning against a wall. Then he cycles through for a second round at video-end.