Stellar dance company keeps Martha Graham forever young
Apr
20
2015
Wow, Martha Graham. Your excellence, exactitude and relevance entered a new era as the vigorous and beautifully trained dancers of Martha Graham Dance Company simply shined in a well-selected repertory evening, Saturday, at Valley Performing Arts Center. Onto the generous and beautifully lit VPAC stage, before a notably rapt, sold-out audience, paraded the latest crop ...
The great Graham’s California roots
Apr
15
2015
In my “pre-talk” prior to Martha Graham Dance Company‘s performance at Valley Performing Arts Center this Saturday night, I make the case that the impact and duration of Graham’s career start-up in Los Angeles has gone woefully under reported. Here Graham poses with her first partner, Ted Shawn, in “Malaguena” (1921) — in a California ...
High-profile Los Angeles showcases for choreographer Andonis Foniadakis
Apr
6
2015
We’ve not yet experienced the ballets of Andonis Foniadakis, born in Crete and dance-educated in Athens. But on an upcoming April weekend we’ll get a very good opportunity. Two recent works by Foniadakis will be delivered by world-class dance companies, each performing at Los Angeles’s distinctively beautiful new theaters from April 16 – 18, 2015. ...
From Bernardo to “Bebo’s Girl”: George Chakiris tribute @ MoMA 6
Balmy Indian-summer weather added pleasure to the late-October opening weekend of “To Save and Project,” The Museum of Modern Art‘s annual film-preservation festival whose tasty programming included a tribute to Oscar-winning actor-dancer-singer George Chakiris. In “George Chakiris: A Life in Film,” a wide-ranging interview that could not begin to encapsulate his decades-long activity in film, ...
Martha, my dear
Nov
5
2013
How thrilled and impressed are we that the spanking new Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, dead in in the center of Beverly Hills, will present as its inaugural performance modern dance? Very thrilled and impressed indeed. Why should this be so unusual? There are several reasons. Classical ballet has tended to trump modern ...
The great Graham
Mar
20
2012
The highlight of a dance-filled week in New York was seeing the Martha Graham Dance Company perform all three sections of Graham’s powerful anti-war screed, “Chronicle,” made in 1936. Part II of “Chronicle,” the reconstituted group dance, “Steps in the Street,” has been in circulation for a few years. But it was my first look ...
To New York for Paul Taylor, Martha Graham, Susan Marshall
Mar
12
2012
You’ve heard of ‘Autumn in New York,’ correct? Well, what about ‘Spring Dance Season in New York’? We’re eastward-bound to check it out. Like this? Read more: Paul Taylor Moves to Lincoln Center (The Huffington Post) Michael Jackson visited Martha Graham studio