Dance & Theater
36 posts found
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Bodytraffic Wants To Be Los Angeles’ Dance Company
“LA deserves to have a remarkable dance company that's representative of this community,” Tina Finkelman Berkett, co-founder and artistic director of Los Angeles-based dance troupe BODYTRAFFIC, told me. BODYTRAFFIC is a 17-year-old dance company based in Los Angeles that will be performing at the Audrey Irmas Pavillon performance space at Wilshire Boulevard Temple (3643 Wilshire Blvd) on February 29 with a program, “In Pursuit of Love” that features three pieces, Love. Lost. Fly by Micaela Taylor, Recurrence by Ethan Colangelo and Blue Until June by Trey McIntyre, set… -
Los Angeles Ballet Takes Next Steps
Last June, when I interviewed Melissa Barak, the former dancer, choreographer, founder of Barak Ballet, who is now the artistic director of Los Angeles Ballet (LAB) she spoke of her belief that LAB could distinguish itself and catalyze the audience for dance in Los Angeles with new works, in much the same way the Los Angeles Philharmonic has done for classical music. Memoryhouse, her first full-evening ballet which she premiered then (and which I wrote about here), made a strong case for… -
Lessons from Arthur Schnitzler's Vienna
One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons features two men in conversation walking down a city street. Surrounding them are... View Original Article -
Comedy, seriously
Can comedy save a life?... View Original Article -
Jon Baitz's Journey to Other Desert Cities
Baitz's play seeks an alternative way out of the seeming impasses of our times -- our political deadlocks, our family dramas, even our most heartfelt and ego-driven certitudes -- by making us experience a greater emotional truth. View Original Article -
Dale Franzen: Bringing The World Back Into Tune
Opera singer, Institution builder, Arts Administrator, Fundraiser, Theater Producer, Tony Winner, advocate for women's stories. You would not be wrong to imagine this as the dream team of players needed for a successful production at an arts venue. Or we could just be talking about Dale Franzen.Franzen is the Tony-winning lead producer on Hadestown (now playing in Los Angeles at the Ahmanson through May 29; and then at the Segerstrom Center for The Arts in Costa Mesa, CA, August 9… -
"Hadestown" Marks A Return To Los Angeles
Hadestown, the many-Tony-award-winning musical, which retells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice (and Hades and Persephone) in a modern-day New Orleans-like setting (with some steampunk flourishes), has arrived in LA, at the Ahmanson through May 29, 2022 (and then again at the Segerstrom Center for The Arts in Costa Mesa, CA, August 9 to 21).Hadestown has much to recommend it, and if the crowd the night I attended is any indicator, it has a great appeal to a young and… -
Dancer Lauren Lovette Comes Home as a Choreographer
The Thousand Oaks-bred ballerina talks about growing into a choreographer and what inspires her By Tom Teicholz May 21, 2021 American Ballet Theatre in Lauren Lovette’s La Follia Variations (Photo by Todd Rosenberg) On April 25, a landmark event occurred at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts: American Ballet Theater (ABT) dancers performed for the first time in a year on a stage live in front of an actual audience. Uniting in Movement, as the program is called, featured new works… -
Dance And Theater From Home
To cap off this round of arts and culture in the quarantine era, I want to share some dance and theater experiences.If you happened to catch the 90th birthday celebration of Stephen Sondheim, "Take Me to The World," despite initial technical difficulties, it was a wonderful and moving celebration of Sondheim and how his songs have transformed the idiom of the American musical, making it at once conversational, intimate, cerebral and poetic. What's not to like with Meryl Streep, Christine… -
Four Quartets, A Memorable Dance Performance For Our Times.
Coronavirus has given me the opportunity to catch up-to write about exhibitions, performances, books, that I had meant to address but that slipped by until Coronavirus got in the way. I feel like Larry David who has finally found the perfect excuse for avoiding going out and social interactions â sorry I can"t because it's shut down/I"m socially distancing.But that doesn"t mean that, alone in my guest room turned office-for-the-moment, and with internet access, I don"t recall and relish th...… -
Mariinsky's "Jewels" Shine Not as Bright
At the Music Center in Los Angeles, The Mariinsky Ballet of St. Petersburg performed George Balanchine's "Jewels."In a very informative pre-performance lecture at the Music Center, journalist and dance historian Elizabeth Kaye explained that Georges Balanchine, born Georgiy Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg to Georgian parents, studied at the Imperial Ballet before joining the Mariinsky (the Soviet incarnation of the Imperial Ballet) where at a young age he began choreographing ballets. In 192... View Original Article -
The Mariinsky: A Dream of a Ballet at the Segestrom
The Mariinsky Ballet performs La Bayadere View Original Article