Baryshnikov backstage at REDCAT

Dance
Monday evening saw Russian-born ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov join the great Merce Cunningham Dance Company on stage for a fundraiser at REDCAT performance space in downtown Los Angeles. Beneficiaries: MCDC’s “legacy” project and REDCAT. After the show … Barysh & the Merce’ites click for better view Marisa Meets Misha click for better view Mark Murphy, Executive Director, REDCAT, ...

merce misha mashup 2

Dance · Visual arts
“Farewell Merce Cunningham Dance Company” weekend in Los Angeles was capped by a bonus performance in which Mikhail Baryshnikov appeared with the company. It was a fundraiser for the Cunningham Dance Foundation’s “Legacy Project” and REDCAT. Charles Atlas, with whom the choreographer collaborated on multiple video projects over thirty years, presented his film homage to Merce — ...

Lionel Popkin, elephantine

Dance · Reviews
We all know it's a jungle out there. Especially now, with oil gushing into the Louisiana Wetlands, we're sincerely grateful to choreographer Lionel Popkin for inverting the familiar man-destroys-nature theme. Popkin transforms a downtown Los Angeles performance space into an urban jungle of lush mystery in his marvelously inventive "There is an Elephant In This ...

The eyes have it …

Dance · Reviews
Indian dancers dance with their eyes. They train them too. That’s evident in this image of the great Indian classical dancer Uday Shankar (Ravi Shanker was his little brother and Jack Cole was his student). Modern-dance choreographer Yvonne Rainer wisely reminds us that the mind is a muscle. So, too, are the eyes. The pedagogy ...

John Jasperse tells his truth … at REDCAT

Dance · Reviews
New York choreographer John Jasperse’s engaging dance work with the coy name, “Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat-out Lies,” confirms the obvious. And that is that of the many wonderful outposts for dance in Los Angeles, REDCAT is the most happening. Highlights of the REDCAT dance season included the re-staging of Anna Halprin’s “Parades ...

Filmmaker Ross Lipman’s urban ruins, found moments

Film
“Everything that’s built crumbles in time: buildings, cultures, fortunes, and lives,” says Ross Lipman, one of the world’s leading film restorationists who is also an accomplished filmmaker, writer and performer. Lipman focuses his experimental films on urban decay as a marker of modern consciousness. “The detritus of civilization tells us no less about our current ...

The incomparable Lou Reed at RedCat

Music
Last night Benoit and I sat in the small theater in the basement of the Disney Concert Hall as Lou Reed and his art-school buddies bombarded our ears with a wall of electronic sound. Lou Reed is a very tough minded and uncompromising artist.The music (two extended pieces lasting 1.5 hours) invaded our senses, sounding ...