[Los Angeles struggles to support a pure dance company. You'd be surprised how the city trails behind NY, SF or Seattle. Yet this weekend, some good news: a small company called BodyTraffic! With a premiere from Kyle Abraham! I wrote for the L.A. Times on the Saturday night show:] Coming off prestigious gigs at New York’s Joyce Theater and … [Read more...]
Arthur Pinajian: An art-world genius lost, found and now worth millions
Wedged between a hair salon and yogurt shop, Stephanie’s Fine Art Gallery is a narrow, unpretentious exhibition space and frame shop in a strip mall on Foothill Boulevard in La Canada. There is no “Stephanie” here. The owners are Linda and Sepon Stepanian, Turkish-born Armenians who have run custom frame shops in this area for decades now. They … [Read more...]
Performance/Art Arrives at LAX Airport
[A version of this piece originally ran on the L.A. Weekly arts blog.] The current renovations and re-branding of Los Angeles International Airport is delivering frustrating, mixed cues for its art. In its first public arts festival -- "Influx: Art at LAX," running through Dec. 31 -- a few of the newly designed and curated exhibition spaces -- … [Read more...]
David Roussève/REALITY in the soft premiere of “Stardust”
Though dubbed an 'avant-premiere" (the official world premiere is slated for January 2014 at the University of Maryland), there was nothing anemic or glitchy at the Los Angeles opening of "Stardust," the latest challenging, one-pot dance-theater stew from David Roussève/REALITY. A dogged 85-minute work, “Stardust” was chockablock … [Read more...]
24 ‘Choreographed’ Dancers?
"24 choreographed dancers? That's the unlikely phrase the new Royal Carribbean Cruise line TV advertisement uses to bestow validity and power to the jazzy dance performances on its cruise ships. Has anyone seen such language before? Since when did "choreographed" become Madison Avenue's go-to adjective for teasing a populist dance … [Read more...]
Dancers in the Architecture
As a lover of dance and a lover of architecture, I was both excited and fearful about “HomeLA,” the dance performance held on May 4th in a private home on the cliffside heights of Mount Washington. Directed by Rebecca Bruno, working in partnership with the Dance Resource Center and the dance lab Pietor, the recent site-specific event advertised 14 … [Read more...]
The Well-Oiled Alvin Ailey Audience in SoCal
Southern California is old, good friends with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, with a rightful claim to a crucial piece of Ailey choreographic history (the Lester Horton connection was forged here) and a revered longtime company member (Matthew Rushing). Ailey concerts have a party atmosphere at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion -- the houses … [Read more...]
Blessed Stillness of Trisha Brown Retrospective at CAP-UCLA
A funny thing happened when Amelia Rudolph, artistic director of Oakland-based BANDALOOP dance company, launched into the very rare, permit-heavy re-staging of Trisha Brown's "Man Walking Down the Side of a Building" (1970) during the Brown Dance Company Retrospective on Friday evening at CAP-UCLA. Just as she crested the edge of the 8-plus story … [Read more...]
The Horses Keep Coming
Back in February, I received the fun assignment to look at the choreography created for the dozens of horses in "Odysseo," the new $30 million touring production from Cavalia. As usual, the show is a popular hit -- originally slated for a 3-week run in March, it keeps getting one extension after another after another. As of now, the end date is … [Read more...]
Buried Love Affair Evokes Elusive Moment in American Ballet History
With ballet’s 15th-century Renaissance origins still somewhat imaginable, it’s hard to keep in mind that American ballet -- born in 1940s New York City -- is still less than 100 years old. The two pillars of American ballet -- George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet and Lucia Chase’s American Ballet Theatre -- both arose in that same urban, … [Read more...]