To Untermyer Gardens with Duncan dancers!

Architecture & Design · Dance
The dancers trained in the technique and philosophy of modern-dance pioneer Isadora Duncan (1878 – 1927) already danced at Untermyer Gardens! Having missed both opportunities (first in 1922, then in 1932), I’m so grateful to be attending an update of this essential American modern-dance history on Labor Day weekend. That’s this Sunday evening at six ...

Italy’s Kilowatt Festival: dancing an ‘ethic of living’

Dance
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Detail from Piero della Francesca’s “Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels” In the hometown of Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca, the Tuscan borgo of Sansepolcro, the Kilowatt Festival, in its 20th year, examines how contemporary performance can foster “urban regeneration.” This year’s theme, “Excess of Reality,” entrusts performance with reformulating “a forgotten ethic of ...

REVIEW: ‘La Binoche’ swaps partners, melts down, in ‘Both Sides of the Blade’

Film · Reviews
Why does a movie stick in your head and haunt you for days after viewing? That was my experience with director Claire Denis’ latest, BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE (2022), opening in theaters July 8 and streaming July 23. It surely has to do with the shattering intimacy of Juliette Binoche‘s beautifully modulated performance as ...

Happy Queen’s Jubilee from the Commonwealth’s indigenous artists

Visual arts
Vincent Namatjira. Elizabeth and Vincent (on Country), 2021.  Acrylic on linen. 48 x 60 inches. © Vincent Namatjira/ Courtesy the artist and Fort Gansevoort A vibrant-looking, good humored show from an unusual clutch of artists — Vincent Namatjira, Kaylene Whiskey, and Tiger Yaltangki, three leading members of the indigenous Indulkana Community in the northwestern region ...

‘Garden of Alla’s theatrical delights

Theater
Alla Nazimova, nee Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon, as Camille, and at the Garden of Alla in Los Angeles Joni Mitchell, a resident in nearby Laurel Canyon, said it best: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” She was referencing, in song, the demolition of a 2.5 acre property at the south-west corner of ...

Grotesqueries courtesy of Spanish performance artist Marta Carrasco

Dance · Theater
photo: david ruano An intriguing woman artist from Spain is being presented in multiple performances by the Latino Theater Company at the L.A. Theater Center downtown. It’s the dancer, choreographer and performance artist Marta Carrasco, in a show with an equally intriguing title, Perra de Nadie (“Nobody’s Bitch”). Well, that’s a nice girly name. [We ...

Love as a one-way street at the Panorama

Film
She won’t stop writing to me — e-mails, letters, texts, cards — but it’s not merely because I hardly know her that I no longer reply. It is the increasingly demanding tone, and the fact that a romance is gaining momentum without my needing to be involved.-Unrequited Love, by Gregory Dart You’ve heard of a ...

‘Pride month’ salutes film producer Harriet Parsons at UCLA Film Archive

Film
louella, harriet parsons, 1959 Along with Virginia Van Upp at Columbia Pictures and Joan Harrison at Universal, Harriet Parsons (1906-1983) was one of the very few women to make her mark in the industry as a feature film producer in the 1940s. Parsons got her start at Columbia creating myriad uncredited newsreel-like “documentary” shorts in ...

Bijayini Satpathy animates Met Museum galleries with her dance

Dance · Visual arts
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photo credit: stephanie berger When Odissi dancer Bijayini Satpathy was selected as the MetLiveArts Artist in Residence for 2021-22, she contemplated how to use the much-coveted opportunity─a year-long association with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its superlative architecture and collections. Satpathy was still in the nascent stages of exploring her own choreographic voice when ...

Cementing mitts and memories: Lily Tomlin honored at TCM Fest 2022

Film
The range is surprising once you see it in print. It spans from television to film to theater to streaming content to a much acclaimed one-woman show. Noted TCM primetime anchor and official host of the TCM Classic Film Festival, Ben Mankiewicz, of the woman this year’s festival honored with the Grauman’s footprint ceremony (she ...