NEW ORIGINAL WORKS (NOW) FESTIVAL REDCAT Theater, Los Angeles Program One July 30 - August 1 What are you doing for the next three weeks? This year’s edition of REDCAT’s 12th annual New Original Works Festival (NOW) looks to be a colorful debutante ball, with several stunning Cinderella arrivals in the mix. In three program … [Read more...]
My Lunch with a Billion-Dollar Tour Director
[This article originally ran in the LA Times.] In a dark booth at the Polo Lounge, just down the street from his Beverly Hills home, tour director extraordinaire Jamie King struggles to recall the day he hung up his dance shoes for good. Though his management badly wants this interview to stay on the topic of his current feats as the … [Read more...]
Hofesh Shechter’s “Political Mother”
[This piece originally ran in the L.A. Times.] In a week of dramatic Mideast news, including the release of Sgt. 1st Class Gilad Shalit and the death of deposed Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, Royce Hall audiences who caught the United States premiere of Israeli-born choreographer/composer Hofesh Shechter’s “Political Mother” traveled beyond these … [Read more...]
Billy Elliot in Spades
The film “Billy Elliot” is a masterpiece of storytelling economy. Alongside its most famous thread — a young boy’s discovery of ballet — Lee Hall portrayed the impotent rage of a redundant working-class population (it’s set during the year-long strike of the British National Union of Mineworkers), the insularity and conformity of small-town England … [Read more...]
Behind the Scenes at Hanson’s Revolution
"Gloria’s Cause" is choreographer Danya Hanson’s first full-bodied ensemble piece since her 33 Fainting Spells days, and she has packed it more fully, and dug more deeply, than anything she’s done before. If her early works with Gaelen Hanson were like dense short stories, and her later works with Hanson, Peggy Piacenza, and Linus Phillips were … [Read more...]