Benjamin & Natalie go to the ballet
Sep
24
2012
That would be the dancer-choreographer Benjamin Millepied and his wife the blonde actress, er … the actress Natalie Portman. And here’s is what they went to see: the debut of L.A. Dance Project, a new repertory dance company headed up by Millepied. The boutique troupe of six dancers presented a stimulating and credible evening of ...
Merce Cunningham’s “Winterbranch” by L.A. Dance Project 2
Sep
20
2012
SEPT 29 2012 UPDATE: CONCERT REVIEWED ON THE HUFFINGTON POST HERE. A wonderful dark and gloomy photo of Merce Cunningham’s “Winterbranch” (1964) with early cast members Carolyn Brown and Gus Solomons, Jr. We’ll watch the re-staging of this High Cunningham classic this weekend courtesy of L.A. Dance Project, the newly launched repertory dance company sponsored ...
Review: Keith Jarrett travels over the rainbow @ Disney Hall 2
Jazz legend Keith Jarrett opened his solo concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall Tuesday night by plucking on his Steinway’s strings — avant-garde style. Fast forward to his evening closer, a love letter to Los Angeles: Somewhere Over the Rainbow, by composer Harold Arlen. A parade of music, not quite jazz, instead, unidentified art songs, ...
Goldsborough to mine gold for Miami City Ballet
Pictured, on the right, above, is Nick Goldsborough, a treasured member of the Los Angeles dance community. The photo was taken on the opening night of “Windows,” a wonderful one-act play about the world of Bill Gates, which Nick produced. Nick is a gentleman whose mother instilled in him the love of ballet, and whose ...
Boulez’s masterful “sur Incises” at Disney Hall 2
It was a privilege, last night, to watch Pierre Boulez conduct his own work from the late 1990s, “sur Incises,” written for a triplet of threesomes: three harps, three pianos, and three percussion clusters (xylophone, marimba, bells, tympani). A guided journey through a landscape of crystalline sound, the work clung miraculously to the air of ...
Merce’s marvelous Irish jig 3
Co-published on Huffington Post arts page “It was unutterably moving to watch,” said long time company archivist David Vaughan of the historic reconstruction of “Roaratorio” (1983) that graced Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s fare-thee-well performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall this weekend. “We all feel Merce in the dance.” Indeed, watching company elder Robert Swinston, 60, ...
Meredith Monk, liberator of singers
Multimedia artist Meredith Monk, labeled avant-garde for her reducing of dance, music, and drama to their most basic and powerful elements, gave the great voices of the Los Angeles Master Chorale a remarkable gift: their bodies. Halfway through “Songs of Ascension,” the final work of Sunday evening’s Monk tribute, the singers circulated the stage of Disney ...
Los Angeles Philharmonic: Adieu, Esa-Pekka Salonen! 6
May
24
2008
Friday night I watched Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct the LA Phil for perhaps my last time. Esa has had a huge impact on my life, as I entered the symphony world under his tutelage. He is retiring as the Phil’s conductor after this season. Renowned for his special touch with 20th century music, he conducted Stravinsky and ...