REVIEW: Simmering with Ate9 dance company at The Wallis
“Let it simmer.” With those words, the music savant Michael Jackson directed his band in This Is It, a documentary capturing his final, unrealized rock concert. MJ’s instrux came to my mind while watching the dance splendor choreographer Danielle Agami unveiled at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts this weekend. The Israeli-born Los ...
Weather report: It’s raining female artists in Los Angeles
Feb
15
2019
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova in live performance with PussyRiot at The Broad Stage, photo by Ben Gibbs We’ve had some crazy tumultuous storms lately in Los Angeles, a weather pattern augured to continue as women are seizing the stages of the city’s performing arts centers. For a mighty wind of female fabulousness — and fury — has ...
Fly high in 2019, with dance!
Jan
2
2019
Did the holidays do you right? Kinda, sorta? Some of us still feel fatigued! Laden, draggy, down to earth. That is why we want, and need, peppy young people, for example dancers, in pursuit of a hot new trend — going airborne. Because space is the place ~! It may be the new dance frontier. ...
Rat Pack-ish: Chris Walden Big Band at The Wallis
Chris Walden is the most ubiquitous musician you’ve never heard of, but whom you’ve heard everywhere. He’s one of the busiest of the current Hollywood composer-arrangers, and just a sampling of his recent album credits includes Michael Bublé, Jessie J., Michael Bolton, and Celine Dion. His film and TV writing is voluminous (your kids hear ...
Long Day’s Journey: a family feud, familiar fodder for Americans
Jun
14
2018
Every family has its problems. Every problem spurs its drama. I anticipate my upcoming visit to The Wallis to see Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night as a microcosm, a kind of deep dive into a Petree dish — a ‘family drama’ the likes of which our nation is undergoing now. A highly controversial ...
A Giselle for the 21st Century
Seen above, the tragic-heroine, “Giselle,” in a contemporary re-make of a woman’s story dating from the 19th century and transferred (rightfully in the 21st century) to the choreographic reins of a woman. The role is delivered with great pathos by the work’s creator/lead dancer Dada Masilo in her “Giselle” on view this weekend at The ...
From South Africa, Dada Masilo’s re-envisioned ‘Giselle’ @ The Wallis
She’s messed with Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, and Carmen. Now comes Giselle. ‘Messed with’ is perhaps a strong term, but South Africa’s Dada Masilo is among a small group of choreographers – notably Matthew Bourne, Akram Khan, Boris Eifman and Mats Ek – with the guts to turn a hallowed narrative ballet into something ...
Denkeschoen: Jeremy Denk in April concert @ the Wallis
Mar
28
2018
Pleased to see that Jeremy Denk, MacArthur ‘Genius’ and Avery Fisher Prize winner, will soon concertize in the intimate Bram Goldsmith Theater of The Wallis in Beverly Hills. A youthful and hugely versatile-and-robust piano stylist, Denk, whom Paul Crewes, artistic director of The Wallis, singles out as, “one of America’s foremost pianists,” will deliver a ...
REVIEW: Michelle Dorrance Dance @ The Wallis 1
The night before seeing Dorrance Dance at The Wallis in Beverly Hills I binge- watched Astaire and Rogers clips on YouTube. Such elegant technique! Two bodies moving as one in gauzy ballrooms. Dancing as if on air. In the 1930s and ‘40s, Fred and Ginger embodied love and luxury for a generation eager to escape ...
Jose Limon: America’s great immigrant choreographer
As the threat of erecting a barrier on our southern border looms, consider the saga of José Limón (1908-1972), a Mexican immigrant who after becoming a son of Los Angeles forged a distinguished forty-year career as one of the dance world’s most noble and magnetic figures. As a pioneering choreographer, Limón unflinchingly examined life’s thorniest ...