LA County’s resident classical ballet company, Los Angeles Ballet opens a sixth season with Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary’s original staging of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker.” This sweet holiday treat is currently making its annual three-week tour from Glendale’s landmark Alex Theatre to UCLA’s Royce Hall to the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center.
The ballet opens on [...]
Daisy Foote’s gripping “Bhutan,” now in its West Coast premiere at LA’s Rogue Machine Theatre, is a time-bending tragedy that chronicles the disintegration of a small New Hampshire town. Focusing on one hard-luck farm family, Foote expertly weaves the personal with the socio-political, delivering a grim, last-gasp portrait of rural America.
The Conroy clan appears plucky [...]
The oldest surviving Romantic ballet and one of the most popular ballets of all time, “Giselle” (1841) was the very first “ballet blanc,” featuring the corps of women in long white tutus which has become the symbol of classical ballet.
As staged by Los Angeles Ballet Co-artistic Director Thordal Christensen, this timeless masterwork is a living [...]
The human mind arrives at stunning truths which, once known, cannot be unknown. The most life-altering of all insights – the inescapable reality of Death – comes to all of us at some point. The force of the blow that precipitates our dark understanding, and our age when it comes, color forever how we approach [...]
In an era of catastrophic personal belt tightening and calamitous corporate downsizing, too many promising arts organizations have fallen face-first into the chasm of disappearing dollars. When even an established, respected old organization like the Pasadena Playhouse had to close its doors for a time, it is beyond astonishing that a new classical ballet troupe [...]
A middle-aged woman half-heartedly tries on clothes in the dressing room of a discount store. Perplexed and uneasy, she does not recognize her business-suit-clad self reflected in the full-length mirror, having spent years in old sweatsuits while tending her dying mother. Who is she, now that her role has changed? Her best friend sits on [...]
The Los Angeles Jewish Symphony celebrates contributions of Jewish composers to film history with its annual concert program, Cinema Judaica, on Sunday, Aug. 8, at 7:30 p.m., under the stars at the Ford Amphitheatre. The orchestra, led by Founder and Artistic Director Noreen Green, pays tribute to Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Steven Schwartz, Danny Pelfrey, [...]
“The process is completely fascinating,” says longtime theater lover Abigail Paine, as she leaves the small West Los Angeles theater. “It really feels like a privilege to have watched something as unusual as ‘New York Animals’ evolve at Rogue Machine.” Paine says she has seen this mega-workshop of Steven Sater’s newest play three times. “And [...]
I love ballet. I love the grace, the magic, the sheer beauty of it all. But, once in a while, ballet isn’t merely attractive young dancers in white tutus, assembling in lovely tableaus to strains of Mozart and Delibes. Once in a while, ballet is the tumultuous and heartstopping and transformative theatrical experience I had [...]
From May 15 to 30, the Los Angeles Ballet finishes its fourth season with the unveiling of four contemporary world premieres by acclaimed guest choreographers Mandy Moore, Travis Wall, and Sonya Tayeh of the FOX TV hit, “So You Think You Can Dance,” and LA’s Josie Walsh. Titled “New Wave LA,” the program presents cutting-edge, [...]
