The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2010 Hollywood Bowl Jazz series kicked off on July 7 with performances celebrating the glorious tangle of influences that produced and continue to develop jazz music worldwide. The star-studded, soul-stirring lineup included Cameroonian bassist and vocalist Richard Bona, New Orleans trumpeter Terence Blanchard in collaboration with LA’s own Lula Washington Dance [...]
It’s Salieri’s play, but Mozart steals the show in The Production Company’s “Amadeus,” onstage at the Chandler Studio Theatre Center in North Hollywood, an intimate 33-seat venue that guarantees there is no bad seat.
Of course, Peter Shaffer’s Tony Award-winning play that premiered on Broadway in 1980 is a gem. And in the capable hands of [...]
Classical music and opera lovers can experience another side of their passions with a couple of local theater offerings this summer. The award-winning Fountain Theatre presents the LA premiere of “Opus,” a play about a “high-strung” string quartet. And Theatricum Botanicum offers “Master Class,” Tony Award winner Terrence McNally’s play about opera diva Maria Callas.
Here [...]
A couple in urgent physical conversation traces and re-traces a horizontal path through an industrial environment of hard surfaces and harsh light. The camera cuts in close so that heads dive and bare limbs slice through our field of vision. Then, when they quiet, we rest intimately in the tangle of her hair and against [...]
When Lionel Popkin’s There Is an Elephant in This Dance begins, an elephant suit lies scattered across the stage space, and the headpiece sits in an upstage corner, trunk askew, looking at us askance from under drooping lids. Popkin, son of a Jewish father and South Asian mother, grew up surrounded by images of Ganesh [...]
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 [...]
On May 16, LA’s usually far-flung dance community gathered together at the hip RecCen Studio in Echo Park for the 19th Annual Lester Horton Awards – this year subtitled “A Celebration of Community.” Hosted by the Dance Resource Center, an organization that has served and promoted dance in the Greater Los Angeles area for more [...]
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, [...]
UCLA Live introduced New York’s Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet to Los Angeles Friday night in Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Orbo Novo (New World), and Saturday the company returned to Royce Hall in its final performance (for now) with works by Canadian Crystal Pite, Norway-based Jo Strømgren, and Dutch choreographer Didy Veldman. I caught Friday [...]
LA-based choreographic collective, La Danserie, gathered talented artists – emerging, established, aspiring and professional – for Rendez-vous, an inspiring afternoon of dance at Cal State Northridge’s Plaza del Sol Performance Hall on April 25. The program reflected La Danserie’s 13-year mission to create new contemporary ballet for a broad audience and celebrated the creative community [...]
