Dance in Los Angeles

Writing Identity Crisis-ish

2010-02-14T21:33:00.000-08:00

Well, I continue to write - just not here. At the risk of sounding like I'm going for some tell-all blogging without the appropriate sense of irony, I say this: I am re-evaluating just how satisfied I am to write about LA dance and LA dance alone. So for now (clearly) I am taking a bit of a break (not from CultureSpot, just from this ranting site) to decide whether to make a more, oh, shall we say, liberal-arts-ish receptacle for my oft-overwhelming thoughts on, oh, whatever comes to mind.

What I'm trying to say is, it's not you, it's me.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Snort, hack

2010-01-23T08:51:00.000-08:00

I've been writing some. Just not much. Hello, Chicago! The Joffrey visits The Music Center, and Hubbard Street 2 comes to Pasadena. Locally, Mr. Perez has the birthday that never ends when an inspired tribute goes (went) up at Highways, featuring company members old and newest. (I will be missing this, thanks to excessive sniffles and a recent fever. Le sigh.) Third Street Dance is having a Haiti benefit class series tomorrow!, and then there's this.

No, let me emphasize: this. I can't decide whether to laugh. Ballet (which seems to have the same bipolar potential for ethereal beauty and laughable frivolity as does figure skating) has done plenty to botch cultural representations. Heavens. Just look at my beloved The Nutcracker. But in the Battle of Who Could Care Less (About Cultural Sensitivity), the skaters have won. I... I don't know what to say. And that's saying something.

Improvisation: Class v. Concert (Please)

2010-01-09T14:32:00.000-08:00

An improvised dance is not a chaotic dance... or not necessarily a chaotic dance, anyway. Before you read this, pop on over to the neat-o Electric Lodge in sunny Venice. Classes are on the pricey end, performance tickets are $20 or so, but the LA Improv Dance Festival is a sample platter of exactly where improvisation is going, how, and - with some DIY introspect - why. Go ahead. Buy your tickets.

With quite a few instructors roaming around throughout the past few days (and today, and tomorrow), it seems that the festival really has managed to capture the various aspects of improvisational dance. Or, in the instance of the Platt Brothers, dance that hones the confused (but surely relevant) modern habit of artistic pastiche to make a tight, goofy, perceptive routine.

The performance varies per night, with certain pieces appearing twice and others disappearing into the relatively un-codified, un-choreographed ether of Improv Performance. Now here it is: the beef. Friday's performance began with "Music/Dance Collaboration," led by Jones Welsh and Will Salmon. (Reading Rainbow, anyone? Sorry, Will.) This isn't chaos! This! Is! Improv! But that doesn't make me like it. The disorganized visual mess of it was enough to narrow my eyes. The apparent gym-clothes-ambivalence toward presentation made me question the form's respect for its own appearance. Furthermore, the enormous ensemble was relentlessly un-cohering except in occasional imitations - which were, by their nature, reduced to triteness! Blast. Apart from a divine moment of duet between a trombone and a man in blue, I'd had quite enough of the sprawling class presentation almost as soon as it began.

Twisting the knife was that attitude. You know - the one of a happy and bewildered lower primate tinkering with some new contraption. It's a worthy and oft indispensable aspect of workshops and class time (hey, improv ain't easy!). I've had that attitude for a long time, given the right place for it. But once presentation time rolls around, I truly tire of the "what's this? Oh, it's an arm! My, look how it hinges!" attitude. That attitude. Ugh. Classroom time is process-of-discovery time. I'd like to watch performers who can present, rather than demonstrate.

Am I a traditionalist?

At any rate, after the first piece-ish thing ended and the glaze lifted from my eyes, the Platt brothers came on stage. Are any of them single? (Sorry, but I couldn't ask on CultureSpot.) They are hilarious. They are silly. They are the aforementioned YouTube-sensation-worthy trio that had, as far as I can tell, little to no improvisational work at all in their routine! So tightly arranged was the act that when I caught one of the brothers wiping sweat from his brow, for what can't have been a second, I thought "HEY! You messed it up!" Which is not to say that such disciplined comics don't belong in a dance festival. I'm just not sure how this one makes sense. But they perform tonight as well.

I'll replace my usual rant about the inanity of infantile playground-style panel-of-judges television and just say that these guys are well-noted.

Scott Wells! Who are you? The men of Scott Wells & Dancers have come down from San Francisco for the weekend, and stag. This follows the joking-but-not "(h)improv" coincidence of the all-male cast of dancemakers putting the festival up this year. "Call of the Wild" is a tightly scored, but still beautifully intuited, piece of dance. It's a little Ted Shawn & His Male Dancers (a troupe of men a few decades ago who helped make dance look red-blooded again), a little mockumentary style (stereotypical improv dance class words abound, deadpan), a little stunt show (WHY DOES EVERYONE SUDDENLY THINK IT'S OKAY TO CALL A CLASS EXERCISE A PERFORMANCE?), and a little... no, a lot profound. I will say that there are games obvious and subtle involved. I will also say that a wrestling mat and a Gobo lighting effect get involved. I will even say that all the men wear black pants. Even that tiny element of costume coordination brought everything together in a way that the "Music/Dance Collaboration" totally, erroneously, infuriatingly overlooked...

...as did the last piece, simply called "Dance Collaboration." Charlie Morrissey and the "iDFest Ensemble" closed out the Friday performance with the kind of activity I just can't shout in all-caps about again right now. I'll just leave it at that.

Likes: The trombone- and trumpet-players. The device (didn't mention it yet) of closing wings curtains to transition between sections. The Platt family genes. All but the trick show part of "Call of the Wild." Performances where the audience can chatter and buzz and react and feel totally all right about it.

Dislikes: Seeing a class when I came to see a concert. That monkey-with-a-new-toy carriage. The iPhone ring during the last piece.

And, hey. Go to the jam. If my calves ever recover from the jazz class I took with Danyol Jaye, I'll be there.

LA Ballet

2010-01-04T08:53:00.001-08:00

Oh, and how could I forget! I reviewed the Los Angeles Ballet's production of "The Nutcracker," which was super. Forgot to copy and paste. Looking forward to their upcoming productions.

Holidays? Any of 'em?

2010-01-04T08:15:00.000-08:00

Are there any more coming up? I recall an "In Case You Need an Excuse to Party" poster in my brother's room at home... but then, time flies. Turns out he's not 16 any more.

Happy new year!

The IDFest is coming up - take classes, see a show, help me decide when to attend. There's also word of a great Be-or-Bring-a-Beginner night at the LA/Santa Monica improv jam, and a viola? Played by someone? Next Sunday? I'll probably go, if I recover from last night. Turns out that stuff's not easy when you haven't done it for a while...

...other than that, I'm mostly just avoiding that public-funding-for-arts-education rant that's been sitting in my draft box. There's an Anatomy Riot coming up?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas is over.

Whirlwinds that Smell Like Peppermint and Sound like Hootie and the Blowfish

2009-12-20T08:04:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I don't like to fail. I also don't like to procrastinate, although according to Facebook I do.

But I am doing BOTH of those things by lazily linking you to the following: read about the dance year according to New York, buy tickets to one of the best Nutcracker performances EVER (I'll tell you why later, possibly from LAX and/or Dulles [if it's resurfaced]), and listen to Hootie and the Blowfish singing The Christmas Song (I'm obsessed).

By the time you're done with those things I might have finished my holler about public funding for the arts... which, as if it surprises anyone, was something I meant to finish days ago.

Woof.

2009-12-14T17:31:00.001-08:00

Well, that'll learn ya: don't eat really old bell peppers tossed in curry sauce before going out to swing dance. I'm sorry, Third Street Dance! I hope your party was a success. I'm glad you're helping critters out.

In a non-gastronomical update, congratulations are due to Show Box. After a good life at Metabolic Studio, the new home for DANCEbank classes is even more downtown! (I think the Colburn School owns the building? Not sure...) Also, the next Anatomy Riot is coming! And it's coming to that MiMoDa space I find so compelling. Perhaps I shall finally attend? The 2010 schedule is up somewhere for all of these things - I'll post it in a big ol' preview, which I keep telling myself I'll write before I go back east for a week.

Okay, so this was basically one long shout-out to Meg Wolfe. But ya gotta hand it to the woman. She gets things done.

Happy Wednesday!

LA Contemporary Dance Company Indeed

2009-12-13T17:13:00.000-08:00

I can be a real procrastinator. Thank you , chock -full Internet . You devour my time ! I am therefore a day and a half behind writing on the LA Contemporary Dance Company performance in the totally awesome Mimoda space on the west side. Called "Fight or Flight," the eye-level concert featured - features, since it's a two-weekender - work by Scott Hislop, Kate Hutter, and Adam Parson. Hey-o! Apparently Mr. Hislop is part of the finest moment of dance in at least somewhat recent high-schoolers-with-impossibly-cool-lives movie history. And I'm sold!, right?

Well, no. You see, I moved to Los Angeles for some pretty kooky reasons. High among them sits the fact that many a dance history textbook will follow a New York career in dancemaking until the human subject a. dies, b. goes off the deep end, or c. moves to the West Coast. The three seem equally fateful. I assure you they are not, but the most common response from my friends and co-dancers is "huh?" They moved to that other part of California to do wonderful things. I moved to La-La LAnd, and I can't even ironically link Perez Hilton.

I promise this is going somewhere.

I vacillate between denying the detached superficiality of this town and intellectualizing it. (I especially love car culture theories.) But superficiality is always there, and what drives me batty about "Fight or Flight" is not the lyrical alt-pop music. It is not the choreographed virtuosity for virtuosity's sake! And it's not even the thorough absence of any "Fight or Flight" themes at all in the products under the title. Nope, what maddeningly balances "Fight or Flight" between "hit" and "miss" is its absolute, and absolutely "LA," obliviousness.

Parson's "Initiator" projects photos of women around the globe, doing whatever it is those women do, onto a promisingly suggestive back drop of white sheets on a clothesline. The graceful and totally versatile women in the company enter the space. Baskets are shaken, hips are shaken, shapes are formed and dispersed. Potential becomes predictable: women spoon, women smile, women suffer, women bind together, women are women and isn't that nice and simple and pretty? If you're going for broke with cliches, go for broke. It can be done! But I tend to think (and really, why else would I write in public-ish?) that in another red-letter Year. of. Women's. Issues ., it is nothing short of ignorant to make a non-committal piece of dance that openly suggests simplicity.

Maybe I'm being harsh. But whether Parson knew what he was doing is an unanswerable question! This is not to undermine his abilities as a dancer. "Initiator" constructs many beautiful, innovative, and moving (no more puns, I swear) moments out of very capable bodies. But deliberate portrayals of quote "womanhood" are very, very loaded, and should not be casual unless they're pointedly so. (If you're 18 or older and not in my family, Google coffee table book of my dreams "4 Inches".)

Parson is as indecisive as Los Angeles, and neither here nor there.

For every possibility of stealing my breath (like the shuffling feet of women from behind the clothesline set piece - they've become the bedsheets!) there is a moment to suggest that he had no idea he was stealing it. For example, the agony of social rejection is reduced to the aforementioned SYTYCD aesthetic. Hey. I love Imogen Heap as much as the next Manic Pixie Dream Girl. But more than that, I value my unique intelligence, my willingness to look past the television for dance, and the endlessly prismatic nuances of the too-often generalized sex to which my body committed itself. This first third of "Fight or Flight" (huh?) bared the internal conflict of non-street Los Angeles art to its scariest blind-spot potential. I'll probably be panicking in the blind spot for a while.

Hislop's "rEVOLUTION" annoyed me considerably less, and its costumes were some of the best I've seen in Los Angeles. Reverse corsetry gives the women massive hips and thighs, the men Hulk's bicep action. And I won't even wax redundant on casual heteronormative partnering, frontal performance, gesturing, or musical dependence. (To all I say, "plegh.") The dancers interact in ways formal and suggestive. It is a reflection, remnant of Petite Mort. Societal mores skew and dramatize the very basic elements (read: sex) of being a species.

The dancers are incredibly versatile and capable, carrying out even the most gasp-inducing leaps and poses with a sweaty, almost-casual elegance that I rarely, if ever, encounter in concert dance. But when the costumes are shed, the choreographic composure is, too. An informal hand-clasping line dance loses sight of the ballroom, and the basic black clothes (read: dance pants) hardly give Hislop's and Hutter's costuming expertise any credit. But I am curious about where Hislop can go if he tightens his focus, lets go of concert conventions, and pushes the envelope further on a few, or even just one, of the social structures he so obviously understands. "rEVOLUTION" side-steps, at least for its first half, the stereotypes of LA.

"I Ran" is Ms. Hutter's concert finale creation. It doesn't succumb to the blinders of "Initiator," but it doesn't observe like "rEVOLUTION." It has a resounding topical ADD: Televisions. Uniforms. Gender roles. Pantomime. Quaint, sweet gestures. Counting out loud. Pop music - ironic? frank?. I'm back in college! Help! Worse than that, I don't know what the flinging, sprawling style set on the dancers (who are great) is supposed to convey or accomplish.

I do know that it reflects the hyperactive, unaware, puppeteered, music-flung status of all the dances that anyone from the outside seems to see coming out of Los Angeles.

Tickets, if you want to debate with me.

Lucky Stumble

2009-12-06T08:55:00.000-08:00

I am not a popper. I can pop!, but I don't quite make a narrative of it yet, going from Point A to Point B with an apparent plan. These people have an apparent plan.

At an anniversary party for a neighborhood boutique (without a website - but with that Cube t-shirt for sale!), a battle brought out pros and amateurs making tiny, rapidfire movements into a 21st-century meaning of Cool. I may have missed the local modern dance fare at Diavolo space yesterday, buuuuut... maybe this was better?

What's Happening

2009-12-02T19:30:00.000-08:00

There is so much to relay about dance. Where on earth have I been, besides eating my weight in Thanksgiving goodies? Better late than never, I suppose. There are the usual suspects: upcoming events (including a visitor on the 7th), a human interest story, a great cause, a piece of music that makes me wish I had a company to boss around. Less common, and more local, a happy belated birthday to Rudy Perez! And congratulations to Heidi Duckler and dear Leslie Seiters for their appearances in a new publication about site-specific dance. I'm looking forward to the next edition of Itch Dance Journal (and the one after that, when I'll actually mind the deadlines). Best of luck to the upcoming improv festival in LA, can't wait to swing dance at the Third Street Dance Holiday Party (scroll down one poster), and you'd better believe I'm getting my tickets to the LA Ballet Nutcracker.

Anybody else?

Swingin'

2009-11-19T08:46:00.000-08:00

I went swing dancing! Well, sort of - one class and a brief open studio way out on the west side hardly count as a wild and crazy night of being led around the dance floor. But it was a perfectly happy little evening of good old-fashioned social dance. Warm up this way, add steps that way, and next thing you know you're either floating like a cloud around an engaging, loveable partner!, or you're having all your signals crossed by a man who can't count past six. Turns out you don't get much choice sometimes.

All right... so sue me. I have ideological misgivings about surrendering the basic structure of a dance to a man. But in a recent effort I've commissioned myself to, I present to you: the positive! (That's right. The positive.) The positive is that after a long and happy few years of always demanding at least equal share in a dance, it's a little bit freeing to just shuffle my feet and swivel around under the guise of chipper surrender. I had an unbeatable sense of my partner's baffled respect as, provided he could count past six, I made the most of every structural resource on the dance floor.

As I type, I am letting a Taylor Swift song poison my mind about how love works, and I'm wondering (as I imagine many, and wiser, wonderers have) if we created these structures for social interaction just to break them when the time comes, if the Lindy or the East Coast or whatever the heck I was doing to "All Shook Up" are just launch pads to acknowledging what really matters by giving it a boundless free-for-all boogie. Is freedom from structure... transcendent?

(Answer me, Taylor!)

But I digress, and my day job beckons. Happy dancing.

Flash! A mob!

2009-11-15T17:55:00.001-08:00

What just happened? Did I just meet up with hundreds (right?) of strangers in LA (aah, city) and bust out Janet Jackson moves in a flash mob? Why, yes. Yes I did. And it looked like this the second time:

Staci Lawrence and Conroe Brooks put their production experience and general enthusiasm (it's infectious) to the test, gaining participants from friends, family, Facebook, Twitter, and Miss Jackson's (if you're nasty) website, then having the whole lot of 'em stepping in time to a medley of the superstar's hits.

Sadly, the much-Twittered Janet appearance overshadowed the "flash" part in Round 2 (hence the aisle). Flash Mobs can be pillow fights , hug-fests... anything; in a manner somewhat typical of LA, this one served consumer culture. But hey, the first round surprised glassy-eyed Grove shoppers into unexpected delight!

What a bizarre experience. "It's really about promoting that viral grassroots side of it," Staci pointed out. And this is true: I am utterly impressed with the range of dancers, from skinny to not-skinny and tall to short, old to young and in between, obviously and sneakily devoted to Jackson. (After learning my intentions to ponder and write, one participant asked me outright: do you like Janet Jackson? I do.) The "let's just do it" attitude of the whirlwind orchestration says quite a bit about embracing spontaneity. (Cheese!) Furthermore, I've never felt so connected to so many people in this weird car-obsessed land of group solitude.

I'm disgruntled that this was, by definition, a promotion (see the tab here). But if a comedian and a singer in the TV-and-movie industry can just say "hey, let's do this" and really do it? Well, then I have no doubt that they'll keep doing this for simpler things - even better than Janet's Number Ones album.

Happy dancing!

It's Happening!

2009-11-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

Fact: I dislike extensive program notes. I think they mute the dance. The dance should speak for itself. Down with program notes!

Now that that's out of the way, let me praise every other aspect of "Once More, Again, One," Hana van der Kolk's latest creation at Five Thirty Three. I'd been feeling a little gipped after parades & changes, replays came to REDCAT this week, as if by missing the 1960's I'd missed having my mind blown by the first run of anything.

Wrong!

With or without all the rhetoric in the program notes (which I still refuse to read), "Once More, Again, One" is part is-this-art?, part Warhol happening, and all 2009. I'm not even totally sure when the program began, although it certainly picked up when David Kendall (not the VJ) spun a song out of sounds coming from the four dancers. The performance elements are just super. (Gush!) There are solos, duos, and Lucinda Childs-ish floor patterns, not to mention enough Prince to tide me over 'til next 1999. There's stripping down and zoning out and a creepy a capella Madonna cover! But I'd rather you attend this gem of a show than read what's in it. Heck, skip parades & changes, replays. You'll be learning more about postmodern art if you see it at Five Thirty Three. It's a grungy loft two meaningfully scary blocks away from the terrain of the Downtown Art Walk. Through the former factory windows you can see a "This Is My - OUR - Town" Dodgers billboard with good ol' Villaraigosa beaming. Make what you will of that.

I am a little wary of van der Kolk's Master's Degree. The institution says a lot about dance's recent history. To slug through tuition and academic red tape in order to make warehouse art... If you ask me, it's a paradox. It's undeniably networking-friendly, and preservative to say the least, but seems to counter by its very nature how we stick it to the man. (Can we anymore?)

But hey, I'd have had not a clue of the card-carryin' dancemaker's background if I hadn't asked before the show! So shame on me.

I am thoroughly impressed and relieved to know that my generation can escape sweepstakes and YouTube (awesome though the two may be).

Now please scrap your evening plans, scrap what you learned about what dance should be, and see this performance.

parades & changes, replays (& replays & replays & replays & replays...)

2009-11-11T22:25:00.000-08:00

Every so often I see a dance and I feel I've been given the finger. Well, hi! Anna Halprin, mother of the Planetary Dance and the happy holistic practice of movement arts for one's quality of life, you have put me in my place. I'm not particularly impressed with "parades & changes, replays," nor am I inclined to read the laborious program notes explaining the 1964 original of the 2008 recreation. I am inclined to give you, my darling reader, a play by play. Even if you read it, you'll probably be all right seeing it too.

The white noise of crowd uncontrol hums out of the speakers when a kindly man in a suit takes the stage, presumably for the standard off-with-the-cell-phones chide. Instead he conducts, and dancers sneakily seated rise and speak in French and English and who knows what else about... well, anything? Once they reach the stage, what I will call Part I is already off to a wily start. Off with the suits! On with the suits. Off with the suits again! And so on. Next thing you know there's a brown paper waterfall and a celibate orgy center stage, then the back wall opens and off they all glide, clad in wads of the waterfall. End Part I.

Jerome Delatour

In Part II, the lights are brighter and the composed, near-smirk faces are wilier, and everyone is probably more aware of my formalist eyes bugging out in the back row of the theater. (Will I ever be on time to anything?) A brief flash of Stomp later, the stage becomes aisles of 21st-century-junk-kitsch piles. This I'd been anticipating. The dancers mosey and don wacky costumes. They put wacky costumes on each other!

Jerome Delatour

There is not one pirouette, not one leap or gesture that suggests this came from a classroom. (Although, minor gripe, a few moments feel like a college class learning to make improv scores.) Generally the dance is just... there. Production value be damned, since a huge white balloon lit from the inside and a live musical score are about as complex as things get. As two critters wander out of the theater, having gone from suited to naked to suited to naked to dressed in colorful trash, I wish LA had more pedestrian traffic. It's a little bleak to see two such laissez fair art bodies wander out into the street to find... nothing.

Dense Thoughts

2009-11-10T07:35:00.000-08:00

A few thoughts with erratic-at-best parenthetical citations:

I'm often asked how dance is preserved, then an hour later finding myself still rattling on about Labanotation. (Think of it, simply, as music notation where bodies become sounds that take up time and space.) Despite the thorough work of this written system - even the basics are meticulous - there is a debate within the dance community as to whether the pen can truly record and convey the dance. This is understandable: live concert dance, as any basic art theorist can shrug and mumble about, is ethereal, ethereal, and ethereal. But the dichotomy between dancers and notators is selfish, and far from self-serving; indeed, it makes for a bleak future at best in written dance preservation.

In Arthur Lubow's "Can Modern Dance Be Preserved?" (New York Times, 5 November 2009) the postmodern dances of the late Merce Cunningham receive especial attention. The old age and ailing health of the renowned choreographer sparked a quick plan to preserve his work - one that seemed counterintuitive at best. Cunningham's famous words suddenly spoke volumes to both the value and the preservational carelessness of his art:

Dance gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.

If this is not carelessness, it is at least occupational hazard. As Lubow points out, Cunningham freed dance from dictatorial music, "charged it inventively with the chaotic overflow and technological buzz of contemporary life" (Lubow). These two steps (so to speak) both set his works apart from the dance canon prior and made it nearly impossibly difficult to recreate without the maker at the helm. One could argue that for all the details of a notation score there are infinitely more nuances in Cunningham dances, works that convert pure feeling into pure presentation.

Further problems arise with the infrastructure of most modern dance companies (inseparable choreographer and company), and with the teaching of dance "primarily from one dancer to another, 'body to body'" (Lubow). The alternative method - one taken by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, for instance - is to adopt new works into a repertoire, honoring gestalt over byline. (This of course presents its own problem, perhaps another issue entirely: with one choreographer or ten, artistic attitudes may be as nebulous as trends in the arts or as heavy as Martha Graham's heart. [In the case of Cunningham, chance and indeterminacy put an already abstracted process through a kaleidoscope.]) But in a single choreographer's work, for one company or otherwise, there must be a compromise. I am not convinced that preserving teh dance and honoring the dancemaker are mutually exclusive endeavors.

Lubow refers to the common reliance upon videotaping, the notion that it captures movement and presentation, if incompletely. But performances are not exact, and intentionally or not, Dick Caples (witty and wise Lar Lubovitch Dance Company's executive director) articulates exactly how choreographers hinder their own preservation when they fail to engage notators. "'No choreographer I know can do (Labanotation),'" he says, "'They don't trust giving it over to someone and saying "I can't check on you, but I am going to trust you"'" (Lubow).

A risk is already being taken when a choreographer places movement in the proverbial hands - the literal, risky bodies - of dancers. I accept the artistic distrust of a stranger fitting elaborate thoughts into columns, but there is no rule that this notator be a stranger. What if dancers could preserve their own steps? What if learning to dance and notate were the same as learning to speak and write? Without this dual endeavor, dance culture is making itself one of orators and no written language.

The "dance capsules" in the Cunningham trust are progressive, containing everything from choreographer's notes to pictures of stagecraft to videotapes and dancers' advice (Lubow). Leave it to the theorists to decide whether this threatens the fresh choreographic approaches that made work in the first place - now it's the responsibility of the recreator, a legacy left to the able and willing artists who can reinvent Cunningham indefinitely.

It is painful to consider that a life’s work will disappear, but it is also hard to think that it will be diminished by inexact performances, as fuzzy as fourth-generation photocopies. In establishing the trust and endorsing the extinction of the foundation, Cunningham seemed to be creating a structure as intelligent and farsighted as a Cunningham dance. But as any of his dancers will tell you, his steps are fiendishly difficult to carry out.

!!!

2009-11-08T08:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/magazine/08cunningham-t.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all

cheating.

2009-11-07T00:48:00.000-08:00

I apologize for the basic copy-and-paste (see below) from what'll be on Culture Spot tomorrow. I am very, very tired and took "To Be Straight With You" very much to heart - where I will keep it 'til thoughts thereof become conversational. If you see the performance, please tell me what you think. Good night!

DV8 Physical Theatre

2009-11-07T00:47:00.000-08:00

It is an art to express oneself, calibrating instinct with expectations and behavioral parameters.

It is an art to project a sphere of blue and green Earth out of thin air and spin it at a dancer’s fingertips.

It is an art to let an audience forget about “dance” or “performance” and instead submerge it in a vision so thorough, so absolutely clear-sighted that town hall meeting, support group, feature film, and personal journal meld into each other and onto the stage. It is this art that makes DV8 Physical Theatre so much greater than the sum of its parts. At another west coast premiere in Royce Hall, UCLA Live presented the English troupe and its latest work, “To Be Straight With You,” on Friday night.

Every word comes from an interview conducted to create the piece. Sentimentality is left at the door for eighty minutes of movement, stories, facts, meticulous lighting and sound, and costumes as subtle as the DV8 craft itself. What remains is the raw nerve of cultural shame. Part of this is beyond native comprehension: there is a sense of post-colonial guilt, a confused responsibility that belongs uniquely to the English heritage. Men and women must flee to England for refuge from blind atrocities in Nigeria, or from families in India that will not accept homosexuality the way London will.

But “To Be Straight With You” does not make generalities. Instead, facts are acknowledged as the force of so many individuals’ suffering for their sexuality. The 85 countries lit in red beneath a dancer’s hands criminalize, to varying degrees, homosexual relations, and regional prejudices create the private narratives of each vignette. Two women are drawn – literally, by lighting on a scrim – farther and farther from each other as their culture denies them a relationship. An Iraqi doctor relates his devastating story in clinical tones, even as unidentifiable men batter and drag him across the stage. In a passage of the finest staging, classical Indian dancing to pop music helps ease the tragedy of suppression in arranged marriage. One woman revels in her newfound freedom from stringent religion.

Many ask for anonymity outright: their families will find them, or their neighbors will assault them.

For every moment of heart-wrenching fact, there is a moment of physical mastery. The DV8 dancers have precision command over every sinew. Some of the most effective monologues are delivered from bodies seeming possessed, with shaking legs or expressing every single word in an arm, an elbow, a neck. In one awe-striking blink, two men sitting in chairs become two men standing on chairs.

With chairs and scrims and moving sets, the stagecraft in “To Be Straight With You” is integrated so that one might overlook its complexity. Lights find their subject to the thread; sound obeys staging completely. Projection, the bane of graceful tech in dance, seems prepared as its own exhibit. It is a startling complement to what it accompanies. A mobile room becomes DJ booth, living room, or prison cell, and there is a chalkboard on the stage filled with scrawl, the chaos of a world that has thousands of words to describe its own fear of, well, deviation.

The glue of the piece is the tone of Lloyd Newson. When he established DV8 and his artistic directorship in 1986, Newson cast aside the pursuit of abstraction in dance. What results is so closely integrated with its performance and production elements, from monologue to follow spot, that the company truly embodies its “Physical Theatre” moniker. Best of all, there remain the unconventional – or, as with masks, hyperconventional – signatures of the troupe behind “Strange Fish” and “The Cost of Living.” It is direction so well-developed that performance disappears altogether, allowing us to observe our own.

DV8 Physical Theatre will present “To Be Straight With You” again at 8 on Saturday, November 6 in Royce Hall at UCLA. For more information or to order tickets, visit uclalive.org.

Movie?

2009-11-04T12:40:00.000-08:00

Does anyone know how to navigate films in LA better than I do? Because I want to see this.

Dance Around Town

2009-11-04T10:54:00.001-08:00

(I don't understand why my font changed!)

One embarrassingly long hiatus later, I'm back - and the calendar's exploding! Whoops. So here you have a preview/plug for at least halfway trustworthy dance performances, classes, and events (and a performance art piece or two) coming up around Los Angeles. Sorted by date, this should help satisfy your hankerin' for local AND exotic fare for at least half the month. Tie on your tennies (or your ballet flats or your bare feet) and get across town to...

...Tonight (November 4) at 8:30 - "Dancing on Site and on Camera" brings three award-winning choreographers to chat about their work (the how's, the why's) with Alpert Awards director Irene Borger. The event is at REDCAT and co-presented by Dance Camera West.

...November 5 at 12:00 - Kasey McMahon and Emmeline Chang will be dotting now 'til early 2010 with performance art events. In Century City, Help Your Husband Get Ahead is the first. There's a Facebook event up - RSVP if you're performing, and you'll get the full dig on how to be! Or just find yourself at Avenue of the Stars Office Park around lunch time...

...November 5 at 7:30 & November 8 at 3:00 - At the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, Lineage Dance will perform in the Art & Ideas Festival: ORIGINS. It's the brainchild, if you will, of artistic director Hilary Thomas. For tickets, check out the company site or the Art & Ideas one. To learn more, click here! They're a pretty super charity-driven group with dances worth seeing.

...November 6 & 7 at 8:00 - UCLA Live actually seems to have planned their Dance and Spoken Word series around my interests. DV8 Physical Theater is coming to town! Lloyd Newson, consistent purveyor of what no one will talk about enough, is bringing To Be Straight With You to Royce Hall for its cross-disciplinarily envelope-pushin' west coast premiere. I am actually drooling.

...November 6 from 10:00 AM 'til 5:00 PM - As if the weekend could get any better, DV8 is holding open auditions. (Also at Royce Hall - and really, open. Men, women, whoever. Click here.)

...November 6 & 7 at 8:30 PM, November 8 at 3:00 PM - My beloved bumpkin college made me a big fan of gamelan music. That and Balinese dance make Ramayana: An Indian Epic at REDCAT. I don't know the first thing about the performance ensemble, but it looks promising!

...November 6 & 7 at 8:00 PM, November 8 at 6:00 PM - Who knows...

...November 7, 14, & 21 at 11:00 AM's - Neil Greenberg will be teaching at DANCEbank, that steady sturdy stream of dance classes for all at Farm Lab heading out of downtown. Classes are $12 apiece. And, because I think this map from the Facebook group is just so great:

...November 7 at 7:00 - I love this company's website. I dig their origin. I don't like that (for shame!) I've never actually seen them perform. Maybe I'll make it to this! And then maybe I'll make it to this. I can't vouch for it yet... but I'm excited.

...November 8 at 7:30 - Yvonne Rainer, that glorious dancemaker who changed SO so so much in the art (Wiki her) is getting more well-deserved attention with Part 2 of 8 in "Bodies, Objects, Films: An Yvonne Rainer Retrospective." The Egyptian Theater in Hollywood is showing "Film about a woman who...", which Ms. Rainer made in 1974. Parking's near-free with validation; general admission is $10. Check it out.

...November 11-14 at 8:30 PM - Another glorious dancemaker, Anna Halprin, will actually outlive us all. But slightly separate from her holistic and apparently life-elongating dances, parades and changes was as awe- and grumble-inducing a piece of postmodernism as any when it premiered in 1965. Who knows how it'll look among 21st century art confetti? I don't. I'm curious. Will review, if tickets appear... But beware, social conservatives! Like all good art, it was once banned in the US. Features a cast of modern scene all-stars, in case you're curious.

...November 14, who knows when, who knows where - FLASH MOB JANET JACKSON DANCE. Will update.

...November 15, 6:30 - 9:00 PM - Word to my home crew! Okay... forget I said that. But a kernel of cool cats meets every week at 522 Santa Monica Blvd. in the coast town for a Contact Improv jam. (My first LA dance experience.) Better than that (as if it could be), they have a Be Or Bring a Beginner night every month! I think it's on the 15th this month. Sorry if I'm wrong... But hey, pay $7-or-what-you-can-pay and get play time with a group of considerable skill and variety. And even if there's no official class, folks are there to help you learn. Plus you might luck out and land a Swinger's milkshake date with the whole party! I recommend. In case they ever update their site: here.

Okay. Gotta stop. Too much to do.

Love,

LADB

MIA

2009-11-02T14:16:00.000-08:00

Will post again soon! Took a quick break to write about lit instead. Quite an adjustment...

Get Your Freak Off

2009-10-26T22:26:00.001-07:00

Hear hear, LA Times! I wasn't crazy about middle- and high-school dance moves, just because pubescent gyrating and R. Kelly's lyrical euphemisms seemed creepy. (Correction: seem creepy.) Apparently the parental inhibitions about and actions against the dance moves that made me avoid the Prom dance floor (at least until "Hey Ya!" came on) are taking shape around the county. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, officials apparently fret over...

..how to deal with freaking, grinding and other provocative dances.

Their solution: Fight explicit teen dancing with an equal dose of explicitness. Downey and Aliso Niguel are among the first schools to draft "dance contracts," binding agreements that parents and students must sign before a teenager can step onto the dance floor.

Pro-censorship I am not, but I think this is just a remarkable study in cultural dances and the ways they're shaped! Parents have a say in kids' permissions? Well, then parents have a say in kids' dances. And if they're anything like the parents sitting around in my family tree, they're making that say loud and clear at wedding receptions. Just wait 'til "Tricky" plays.

Surely we can't, and shouldn't, always attack the root of a problem. (That is to say, here, the Axe commercials and superstar-straddling music videos that make this stuff seem glamorous, not disturbing.) An impressionable mind, that is to say one under the age of 25 or so, can get pushed around! That's growing up!

But hey, if you're a middle school teacher in need of a solution for a dance problem, follow suit:

Some schools are forgoing contracts in favor of less formal methods. The private Pacific Hills School in West Hollywood will hold a Halloween dance Oct. 30 and if couples are caught gyrating, lights will be turned up or the music changed to Burt Bacharach or William Shatner singing "Mr. Tambourine Man," said Mickey Blaine, the dean of students.

Dance With Me! (And Everyone Else in LA!)

2009-10-25T22:33:00.000-07:00

Yep. It harkens back to high school jazz days. But gosh darn it if I don't love big, cheesy dance - and public, no less! Looking forward to a mob of dancing Janets...

So, America lacks the ceremonial dances of basically every culture that makes up its roots. Let's just forget those crazy moves at every social event I attended as a t(w)een, shall we? (Collective cultural whoops much?) We had swing for a while! We've adopted parts of tango. If you run in the crowds I run in, Contact Improvisation ain't bad; and, if I have anything to say about it, we'll always relate over the Jackson family. (May Rockin' Robin inspire one heck of a line dance at my funeral.)

This Flash Mob thing could flop big time... but I doubt it. If YouTube isn't a 21st-century cure for its own sloth-inducement, I don't know what is! So, even as one who ponders a dissertation on that shirt-flip in the video for "Scream," I give in to my affection for dances that couldn't care less about the high-brow. Keep me posted, Flash Mob!

...

Ah, what the heck. It's right at 3:22.

Spoiler Alert!/Links Galore for Perez in Pasadena

2009-10-24T13:50:00.000-07:00

The Rudy Perez Dance Ensemble, with brain-tickling composer Steve Moshier and his Liquid Skin Ensemble, are at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena for one more night, part of the Armory Center for the Arts' Inside/Out installation series. For a great little piece on Rudy Perez, click here! If you want to try for a ticket (they're free, but few), click here. If you're stuck at home with swine flu and YouTube... well, you're out of luck. The company is, as far as I can tell, under the web video radar. But I do hope your swine flu goes away.

In "Open Suite/WHOOSH ... the traffic," six plainly dressed dancers puzzle over and lie on white painter bib overalls on the floor - yep, the floor - before covering up with them. And when the musicians upstage play, it's as if the dancers were hearing it all along. Movement is so specific that it stands alone and creates the beats left out of Moshier's score. Furthermore, the dancers are right there to be watched, like a life-sized portrait moving just under the collective nose of the audience. The faces and runs and frontal ta-dams that make me crazy on a proscenium stage are effectively made good when the dance floor is under my feet.

Weaving in and out of a pleasingly stable, asymmetrical light, the dancers pose and jump and run through a series of motions so engaging, so inexplicable, that I nearly embedded a picture of Snoopy hugging a valentine just to express my satisfaction. So, I'm a sucker. I really loved this piece. The patterns and shapes were so engaging, the dancers so focused and calm, the dance and the music so exactly what they needed to be for each other that I can review no more. I'm too smitten! I won't even tell you about the wacky ending and that rare and awesome thing, the pleasing use of undressing in dance. (In lieu of YouTube, some slightly vintage NPR! Thank you, Professor Seiters... erm, Leslie?...)

As for "Surrender, Dorothy!," the second piece on the bill at All Saints... well, I'm not crazy about it. I may regret saying this, but: the faces, runs, and frontal ta-dams here are better suited for a traditional stage space.

Oh, look! Someone else thought so, too:

Photo: Jeannette Harshbarger

The lavender-grey costumes, subtle motifs, and sung poem (key words: "women and elephants never forget") are awfully effective, as are the two black boxes being moved around the stage throughout the piece, subtly but powerfully changing the space. But I'm kept from total inundation by "Surrender, Dorothy!" when Mr. Perez's choreography interrupts itself. It's a tic of sorts: the jump in place. It is so perky, so energized and resilient, that my otherwise thorough sense of something slow and sad is continually interrupted, like a mellow Miles vinyl with a scratch. Furthermore, there are melancholy solos that imply narrative in an otherwise lyrical piece. I simply can't follow. Perhaps my attention span was short; perhaps I'm just sensitive about jumping in place? Perhaps this may have been solved by the good ol' thrust stage, but as for the All Saints Episcopal Church, I felt alienated from the people right in front of me.

Lest I leave the impression that grey feelings displaced gay ones:

WHOOSH!

Meta Moments and Putting the Past to Work

2009-10-23T07:51:00.000-07:00

I'm less than up-to-date about Gregory Maqoma's artistic partners in "Beautiful Me," the solo(-and-musicians) piece up at REDCAT through a Sunday matinee. I'm only very slightly more up-to-date on South African politics, but, in a manner deft and pleasant, Maqoma's piece converts these facts into tools for relating to and educating his audience.

The Thursday audience nearly became part of the performance. Maqoma's hummingbird-quick hands, dexterous footwork, and eloquent clicks and poetics drew sighs, whoops, clapping, and laughter in turn from one of the most apparently wide-ranging assemblies I've seen at the venue.

I don't read autobiographies, I am wary of one-man-shows and, but for the brilliant quartet of musicians upstage right, Maqoma's is a little of each. There are those vast lulls of generally-lit stage meandering (self-indulgent, I think) that make my eyes and my mind wander far from the stage - beware, all ye who are easily distracted. However, Maqoma stays commendably engaging by picking apart his own work as it's being performed.

This is not new. I recall (thank you, Professor Mason) a meta moment of Bugs Bunny drawing himself out of a cartoon. Maqoma's extracts the bare bones from the work he has done with Akram Khan, Faustin Linyekula, and Vincent Mantsoe. (I link because I care; also, because I have a lot to learn.) A new skeleton of artistic theory is built on the stage, fleshed out with Maqoma's identity as a South African and as that ubiquitously unique thing, an (thank you, Professor Lentz) individual mind. Ta-dam! New art, his but also not his, representative without simplifying.

I am especially pleased with the role of the incredible quartet Maqoma is bringing on tour. They make his hands flutter - or do his fluttering hands speed the drumming? It is this give and take, the two often indiscernible, that bring about the signature and, I think, best qualities of music and dance that are often lost (or, at best, only vaguely recalled) in dance outside of the African continent.

Without the past, "how do we know where we come from? How do we confront ourselves? Each other?... The past is not dead!" (The audience swoons.) The process Maqoma allows us to see and the product it makes create an almost-workshop, albeit in its late phases, between creator and viewer. He does not evade my autobiography miffs, but Maqoma presents an impressive array of what he has made, and how others have made him - an idea too often forgotten as part of the process, then left out of the performance.

Photo by Steven Gunther

The Hook

2009-10-22T09:00:00.001-07:00

In my post-bike-accident stupor, and the subsequent belatedness of everything - and I mean everything - on my to-do list, I somehow managed to miss opening night of the new dance event at REDCAT. Tonight, then! From the event site:

"Maqoma invited three of the world’s most refreshing and articulate choreographers to contribute their unique artistic voices to Beautiful Me—Akram Khan (U.K.), Faustin Linyekula (D.R. of the Congo) and Vincent Mantsoe (South Africa)—forging an expansive movement vocabulary that layers the influences of contemporary Kathak, Afro-fusion, and visual dance theater with breathtaking precision and lyrical warmth"

This raises a few questions, such as: Who wrote such a perfect preview? Do they want to go out for coffee soon? And oh WHY did I leave all my notebooks and textbooks back east?

I'm sure I've seen Akram Khan back in Ohio. I'll brush up on my history and try a few Kathak moves (be still, my quivering ankles!) before heading to REDCAT tonight. See you there?

Hofesh Shechter Company Overkill

2009-10-17T14:02:00.001-07:00

I'm not even going to post a new link to the performance. (Ha! Fooled you.) But below are some of the mental interjections I managed to edit out of the more formal review. Many thanks to the editor at Culture Spot LA - my bleary late-night typing skills were spotty at best.

After this, I'll put the thing to rest and spend some time on local dances. (By the way, kudos to the DRC for event calendar updates! It's a start...) Ahem. The review, but longer:

A dance performance requires many feats. What a pun! There are rehearsals, technology, tour arrangements, box offices, and (in LA, anyway) maddening Friday evening traffic. Never, never, never drive a car on a Friday evening. Once these come together, it's easy to forget an important little question: Why? But in their West Coast debut at UCLA Live, Hofesh Shechter Company seemed to have built the query into the first dance on the bill.

The program notes for "Uprising" opt out of expository artist statements. And what a relief. I find few performance elements more irritating than not allowing the pieces speak for themselves. "Seven men emerge from the shadows to bombard the stage with furious energy," and so on. (And with dancers ever poised to roll, spar, or run, the energy in Shechter's work is not to be ignored. [Bombard would be the buzz word here if the program mentioned Shechter's use of the Paris youth riots as source material. But that's neither here nor there.]). What truly makes the piece, though, is its fragmentation, even if it took me the whole car ride conversation home to realize it. A stage of modern dancers becomes a circle of runners (cue my favorite snarky technical director: "why the hell are they running if it's a dance?" But again, neither here nor there.); the whole group devolves into a circle of back-patting, then slaps. (Cue the audience's organic, then awkward, laughter.) These quick shifts are so jarring that it's natural to ask what's really on view: Is this a political rant? Is it an over-energetic boys' club? Is it a show of the total control these dancers have over their limbs?

It seems like a bit of each in turn, as Shechter's accompanying music drives the piece along, almost forcibly. (Well... not almost. Just forcibly. Mark Morris would be proud. Throughout the evening, physical dynamics are frustratingly obedient to musical ones.) But the reminder to question is omnipresent. The "why" in "Uprising" has as many answers as audience members, as my viewing buddy reminded me on the drive home; added to the appeal of group mentality, tableau, and precision dancing, it makes the piece a worthwhile mental jog and aesthetic delight. Thirty minutes (or so?) flew by.

"In your rooms" certainly begins with a mental jog, when a voice chatters on about cosmic philosophy. The piece also makes incredible use of theatrical tools, most notably with shafts of light, and live musicians coming in and out of sight on a raised platform. This makes musical obedience slightly more tolerable... sometimes. But despite its impressive introduction and stagecraft, the piece fails where "Uprising" succeeds. Solitude and routine are so impressively stylized that plain kisses, embraces, and looks of concern seem like cheap tricks, and Shechter's greatest strength - the power of contrast - is lost.

This is not to overlook the dancing itself - every glance, every movement from the performers appears absolutely natural and exquisite. There are ensemble movements that recall Shechter's work with the renowned Batsheva Dance Company - without overshadowing his originality, which I think says a lot about his artistic integrity. And in the end, "In your rooms" pairs so well with "Uprising" that the performance would feel incomplete without the double bill.

With contrasts and questions, the work pleases and challenges. The question of "why" is invaluable (all the time, and everywhere - it's how we grow) and the changes in "Uprising" keep it coming - even if it slows down for "In your rooms." Though this is the company first West Coast performance, it certainly won't be the last. Shechter's style is a refreshing one, and an invitation to remind ourselves what we're seeing... and why.

The second (and final) Hofesh Shechter Company performance at UCLA Live is tonight (Saturday, Oct. 17) at 8 in Royce Hall. Tickets are $24-$28; for more information or to order tickets, visit www.uclalive.org.

The Cliff Notes

2009-10-16T08:59:00.001-07:00

In case you're on the run:

http://culturespotla.com/2009/10/ucla-live-presents-hofesh-shechter-company/

The History: UNCUT!

2009-10-15T20:45:00.001-07:00

I'd been missing the arts center closest to my darling alma mater, and in my nostalgia nearly overlooked this weekend's performance: Hofesh Shechter Company!

No, it's not local fare. And I'm not unashamed to be swept up in celebrity! But in the end, this company is part of a heritage I think is invaluable to understanding dance. And God knows ya can't talk about modern dance, in LA or elsewhere, without mentioning Martha Graham. She's this company's grandmama! So let's get a little history lesson going, shall we?, before tomorrow night's review. And like the totally gross tap water coming out of the kitchen sink these days, here you have it sans filter. (I'll post the cliff notes tomorrow.)

If you're not practicing elaborate yoga poses to do your daily blog-browsing, kindly sit up (or stand up) straight. Find that center-of-gravity spot somewhere near your navel. Exhale and make it the target for an imaginary sucker punch: oof! Now inhale and puff back up like a balloon.

Congratulations on a very simplified version of contraction and release! Many of the modern dancemakers (a word I'll never decide how to type) of the early 20th century based their movement on dynamic opposites - contraction and release, fall and recovery, and so on. It all gets back to exhale and inhale. And this wasn't just breaking away from the upright rigidity of ballet! With this new language, dance began responding to breath - one of the most telling involuntary functions of the body.

This trait is so ubiquitous in contemporary dance history that it's easy to take for granted. But look! Performance technology has evolved so far as to have breath define the very music of the performance!

I digress.

Contraction and release are the underlying physical idea in the work of Martha Graham. (Okay, so I linked the PSA. Americans for the Arts was really on to something!) To make a long, amazing career into a sentence of accomplishments: Graham ushered in one of the most explicit dynamic contrasts in modern dance, fostered the early careers of countless influential dancers - including you-know-who, worked with iconic composers and artists - including this one, locals - made dances about fierce women, American-ism, and those crazy Greeks, and, perhaps most importantly, created one of my favorite pieces of modern dance, "Steps in the Street." The overtly political response to fascism in 1930's Europe has more stick-it-to-the-man-itiveness than a Rage album on repeat, and I'd dare say with more tension by its poise.

Which is why I'm hoping that Hofesh Shechter's "Uprising" carries on the family legacy. You see, in the 1960's Martha Graham helped establish a group in Tel Aviv called Batsheva Dance Company. (It was named after its philanthropic baroness co-founder - thanks, Wiki!) This is now one of the world's most influential and pertinent sources for dance equal parts physical, emotional, and cerebral. It even furthers the breath patterns by "gaga" training, engaging equally natural, less apparent impulses of the body.

Shechter danced with Batsheva for years before creating his ensemble. Remembering "Steps in the Street," I'm hesitant to expect as much from "Uprising." The 2006 youth riots in France were terrifying, to be sure, but seem somewhat isolated as source material. At any rate, that's what we're up for: "Uprising," and a piece called "In your rooms" that will indulge my taste for dances about frustration.

Wait, you haven't seen the event site yet? Here.

I look forward to the performance.

The Basic Requirements

2009-10-15T08:09:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling very grateful lately that I have strong little legs. But then... maybe they aren't necessary?

DV8 Physical Theatre is coming to LA!

For the love of the arts and all things intellectually proprietary, buy the whole piece and screen it with friends.

Well hi there, press releases!

2009-10-06T23:55:00.001-07:00

Below are three press releases I've written for Art Share Los Angeles, this great organization in the Downtown Arts District. There are some great links buried in there, and none of the events have happened yet, so get a move on!

“Recent Works” from a Long-Time Friend of Art Share Los Angeles

2009-10-06T23:47:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles, CA – Celeste Prince may first come to mind for her singing career, but it is her paintings on display this month at Art Share Los Angeles. After many years as an instructor and board member, Prince is returning to the Downtown Arts District venue with “Recent Works”: a range of Prince’s newest explorations of feng shui principles in art.

Curated by Martha de Pérez, the show gives a fresh perspective to portraiture and painting. Prince paints with wind and water in mind, the literal translation of feng shui, often creating an atmosphere for an individual piece after its completion. She has also created an installation at Art Share, sourcing Auguste Rodin’s relationship with his mistress and fellow sculptor, Camille Claudel, in the late 19th century.

Despite having started an art career “on the side,” Prince’s work has quickly gained success. A class at the Huntington Library in San Marino led to work and commissions, including a Soho, New York showing alongside Joni Mitchell and art for Disney’s retail offices in Shanghai and Tokyo. “Recent Works” is her first showing of a large body of work, and the beginning of a career orientation between Prince and her art.

With Prince’s return, Art Share demonstrates its role with emerging artists. At 4th Place and Hewitt downtown, its 30,000 square feet of renovated warehouse space provide not only free arts outreach programming, but also studio, stage, rehearsal, and gallery spaces for artists – a resource perfectly suited to the Downtown Arts District.

The exhibit will be open from October 7-21, including an official opening on October 15th and an artist reception on October 17th, from 7:00 until 11:00 PM. For more information, visit www.artsharela.org or www.celesteprince.com.

Boasting a 90% high school graduation rate, Art Share Los Angeles offers a free, multi-disciplinary art program, changing the lives of underserved teens. Through the collaborative work of instructors, social workers, and volunteers, the center operates during peak violence hours. It not only provides a safe haven for creative expression, but also offers a starting point for emerging artists, space for gallery shows, and low-income housing for artists. With 30,000 square feet of renovated warehouse space in the Downtown Artist District, Art Share Los Angeles serves as a community arts incubator, promoting cultural excellence and shaping lives through, art, education and community action.

The End of a Series for the Artist Behind LA’s Most Obvious Interchange

2009-10-06T23:46:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles, CA – An overpass on the 110 Northbound received a makeover three years ago. In a combination of public service and public art, arguably making the two synonymous, Richard Ankrom installed new guide signs to an existing structure, making one of LA’s countless cryptic interchanges a relative breeze for so many commuters.

Before and since, though, the Los Angeles-based visual artist has pursued a project somewhat less subtle: the Gra’Ma series. It is a collection of resin-cast hatchets, created between 2001 and 2008 and filled with ephemeral would-be junk from candies to Zoloft to silk flowers. Martha de Pérez, a curator at Art Share Los Angeles, has worked with her student and assistant curator Enrique Lopez Garcia to give the series its final display in the Downtown Arts District venue at 4th Place and Hewitt.

Art Share, perhaps best known for its free arts outreach programming, also uses its 30,000 square feet of renovated warehouse to provide artists both storied and emerging with work and gallery space. “Richard is so kind to do this,” says de Pérez. “He is an incredible artist.” After showing this and other works all over greater Los Angeles, Ankrom will end the eight-year project with a closing event on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at Art Share. From 7:00 to 11:00 PM, the hatchets will end the month-long stay there and a long-held place in Ankrom’s active repertoire.

The event will include light fare and a chance to meet Ankrom, as well as to learn more about Art Share as a venue. For more information on the artists or the event, visit www.artsharela.org or www.ankrom.org.

Boasting a 90% high school graduation rate, Art Share Los Angeles offers a free, multi-disciplinary art program, changing the lives of underserved teens. Through the collaborative work of instructors, social workers, and volunteers, the center operates during peak violence hours. It not only provides a safe haven for creative expression, but also offers a starting point for emerging artists, space for gallery shows, and low-income housing for artists. With 30,000 square feet of renovated warehouse space in the Downtown Artist District, Art Share Los Angeles serves as a community arts incubator, promoting cultural excellence and shaping lives through, art, education and community action.

A Teacher and Three Students from Art Share Los Angeles Help Bring “Phi’LA The Musical!” To Club Nokia

2009-10-06T23:44:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles, CA – With the arrival of “Phi’LA: The Musical!”, three students from Art Share Los Angeles (Art Share) will help spread its message against racial tension in Los Angeles. After crisscrossing the city for weeks of rehearsals, they will premiere the new musical, written and directed by Jamal Speakes, Sr., at Club Nokia on October 12th.

A native of Philadelphia and a drama teacher at Susan Miller Dorsey High School in South Los Angeles, Speakes wrote the musical story of a black student who moves from Philadelphia to LA and falls in love with a Latina peer, stoking interracial tension. With the real threat of such violence looming over youth in LA, often exploding in the media, the fiction hits home for Art Share student David Estrada, a member of the show’s ensemble. “I hate violence… You are taught to take pride in your race (but) some people just take it too far.”

He and castmate Coreen Ruiz, both from East LA, agree: the musical teaches a strong lesson. “I hope the audience is all ages,” says Ruiz. “Everyone can learn from this.”

Estrada learned Hip-Hop and Jazz Theater at Art Share before joining the cast of “Phi’LA”. After a hesitant start in acting, Ruiz’s enthusiasm for the non-profit community center grew: “from the first day I was hooked!” Located in the Downtown Arts District, the center brings in students from across the city, blurring lines of race and class.

Roberto Perez, Jr. plays an East LA gang member in “Phi’LA,” but his own story is quite the opposite. He was drawn to Art Share after a hip-hop performance by instructor Ray Basa. “I stopped hanging around some of my bad influences,” he says, “because I didn’t want to miss a single day.”

Estrada, Ruiz, and Perez, as well as Art Share’s administrative assistant and teacher, Danyol Metcalf, have been rehearsing for weeks – giving Metcalf, an Art Share alumnus, the chance to be “both cast and mentor.” With its powerful message of racial unity and its cast of powerhouse students and performers, “Phi’LA” is estimated to draw an audience of over 7,000 from LAUSD students alone at the Club Nokia premiere, a red carpet event. “We have all worked very hard,” says Ruiz, “and this is such a great reward for all those long rehearsals.”

The Nokia event begins at 7:00 PM on October 12th, and the show will run from October 15th-18th at Dorsey High School’s renovated ICM Foundation Performing Arts Center. Premiere tickets are $25-35, or $10 with a student ID. For more ticketing information email philathemusical@yahoo.com and visit www.philathemusical.com.

Other “Phi’LA” supporters include; Rainbow PUSH Entertainment Project Los Angeles and Rev. Jesse Jackson, Marguerite P. La Motte (LAUSD District 3 Board Member), Mayor Villaraigosa, Lisa Nichols (Author), A Place Called Home, West Adams Neighborhood Council, Congresswoman Diane Watson, Councilman Herb Wesson, Gang Alternative Program/Gang Free, The Reverence Project, UNTYONE , Attain Design & Marketing Communication and Dave Wiesman (DAX foundation).

Boasting a 90% high school graduation rate, Art Share Los Angeles offers a free, multi-disciplinary art program, changing the lives of underserved teens. Through the collaborative work of instructors, social workers, and volunteers, the center operates during peak violence hours. It not only provides a safe haven for creative expression, but also offers a starting point for emerging artists, space for gallery shows, and low-income housing for artists. With 30,000 square feet of renovated warehouse space in the Downtown Artist District, Art Share Los Angeles serves as a community arts incubator, promoting cultural excellence and shaping lives through, art, education and community action.

I'm a multi-blogger now!

2009-10-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

Ahem: from www.culturespotla.com...

In a handily symbiotic event, Lineage Dance will be holding a performance to benefit (it) magazine this Sunday, Oct. 4, at the Colony Theater in Burbank. An online publication, (it) focuses on “solutions-driven stories,” working to support and encourage pro-social action on a local and global scale by spotlighting “social causes, charities, innovations, and people making a difference” — a cause not lost on the Pasadena dance troupe. Its own mission is to make dances that are accessible and purposeful, putting local and global issues at the forefront of its work. From the Lineage website:

“We seek… to support our community through dance, by partnering with, and raising awareness of, the service work of many diverse organizations.”

Sunday’s program will be a retrospective, kicking off the impressive 10th anniversary season for Lineage. As founder and artistic director, Hilary Thomas has choreographed all of the company’s works being performed.

With degrees in psychology and dance from Santa Clara University, Thomas established the company in 1999 alongside her father and her sister (hence, “Lineage”), and has seen it grow steadily ever since. The dancers are now paid per performance, making the company a professional one cast entirely with women who have other, mostly full-time jobs. (Thomas’ is teaching science and dance at Flintridge Prep in La Cañada-Flintridge.) But as their pleasingly pointed feet will tell you, the dancers all have a ballet background. The apparent technique and the impressive touring history make the company’s professionalism clear.

Parts of Thomas’ “Healing Blue” are included in Sunday’s program. Inspired by stories of experiencing cancer, the evening-length series began in 2005 and has since become a signature piece. According to Peggy Burt, the company’s managing director and an early member, it has grown and changed with the company. A lovely duet in Sunday’s program, “From a Sister’s Length,” is one of its parts. Based on the story of Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles photographer Annie Wells and her sister, this dance retells a familial battle with cancer. The frontal facing and virtuosic tics don’t always mesh with the piece’s more charming idiosyncrasies — arms up-flung like a child’s, subtler indications of mortal threat. But Thomas’ work nevertheless satisfies expectations, meeting the Lineage goal to make dance accessible and cause-oriented. (As Burt points out, “Healing Blue” remains an effective tool for cancer research awareness and fundraising.)

Sunday’s program also includes preview sections of “The Brain in Motion,” which will be performed in its entirety (on Friday, Oct. 30, Thursday, Nov. 5, and Sunday, Nov. 8, at the Pacific Asia Museum) as part of the Pasadena Art and Ideas Festival. The final work will be an evening-length piece about the human brain, complete with the sequential motion of a firing synapse in dance form. And this is much of the Lineage appeal: because of its objective and the simplification it entails (frontal presentation, situational pantomime, extensive pre-performance clarifications), the Lineage approach to dance and dance-making creates a unique experience. A brain saves some effort by having dances explained to it, but reconsidering the community role of dance is a mental exercise in itself. In mission and in work, Lineage makes it clear that approachable art can be a tool for awareness and for change. With that in mind, proceeds from the full “Brain in Motion” performance later in the season will go toward Alzheimer’s research through the Travis Research Institute.

The retrospective Lineage Dance concert will kick off the company’s 10th season on Sunday, Oct. 4, at the Colony Theater, 555 N. Third St., Burbank. Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door.

Edgy?

2009-09-19T09:22:00.001-07:00

After weeks of meaning to, I finally got around to a class at The Edge Performing Arts Center! The West Hollywood studio is crammed a la Being John Malkovich into an old TV studio (I think?) on Cole Street, next to the gleaming Gold's Gym of the area.

I felt like a rock star.

Level 2 jazz classes are my calling: in the brick-walled pipe-ceilinged Studio E (or D, or G, or E again? Get it?) I felt the music was pushing me around, the Death Cab for Cutie bassist making each Graham contraction a little deeper. I've taken, what, two jazz classes? Three, tops, in about four and something years, so it felt good to do some hair-flickingly expressive 5-6-7-8 reaches. I'm inclined to send Mia Michaels my thin performance resume and ask for a spot on primetime Reality TV.

Of course by "it felt good" I also mean that it felt excruciating. Arabesques and Baryshnikov jumps, going through the motions of a deep plie in second... Who knew how many gluteal muscles I'd forgotten about in four years? At one point I think I actually fell over from sheer inability to hold a passe in releve. Oof.

My usual take on "edge," those fringy smarty pants dancemakers and their work, will be back. But for now my inner FAME wannabe feels good!

And sore. Very, very sore.

New Project

2009-09-10T21:59:00.001-07:00

I don't know if anyone in LA reads this, but on the off chance anyone DOES: want to get in on a big venue project to make a home base for LA dance? Send me a message...

...or encouragement...

...or checks...

...In the meantime, I'll be blasting away on the great spaceship Arts Proposals. Wish me luck.

Motion, Music, Family

2009-09-09T21:24:00.000-07:00

I've never so enjoyed watching hands as I did tonight. At a concert she conducted in a college recital hall in the city, my dear cousin gently, firmly guided her musicians from the Tchaikovsky on the page to the Tchaikovsky I could hear. The baton in her right hand, she closed off passages and egged on the swells with the most articulate motions of her left. Secondary though it may have been to sound, there was a dance to it.

I'm a-gonna be a teacher!

2009-08-23T13:45:00.000-07:00

If you can control even ONE of your limbs, come to...

SUNDAY BOOGIE!

It will be glorious.

11 AM - 12 PM

900 E. 1st St.

(Los Angeles)

Studio 100

Be there or be square,

pay by donation.

(Hooray!)

Faith and Art

2009-08-16T21:58:00.000-07:00

A whopper: in typical 20-something fashion I've forgotten or abandoned ecstatic faith. My former Christian enthusiasm could be ignored but for this: I can still see, perhaps more vividly than lifelong non-believers, the reverent joy of religion. It makes people wave their arms in church and play their guitars (or, on the Red Line last week, the kazoo) for Christ. Tonight's Streetlamp Studio performance, the annual "When Justice and Peace Kiss" at Marlton School, brought together a slew of adults and the lucky kids they mentor to demonstrate that ecstasy through crude but endearing krumping, rapping, guitar-strumming art. I didn't come prepared for a religious event--maybe I missed something in the Facebook ad. But how peaceful and good to see kids from south LA, the risk-laden hub for the city's infamous gang culture, praising something that feels at least as empowering as the communal violence being side-stepped.

I spent most of this weekend in a eating chocolate and brie and catching up on Mad Men. (Where has it been all my life? But I digress...) After so much time in the narrow parameters of fiction, I feel refreshed by the vibrant energy of Streetlamp, by the live arts. In what but the nervous vulnerability of a teen-aged boy's song could the fear of unquestioning faith get across to a person? I feel grateful to glimpse the world the way these amazing kids see it. There's no goose egg on my forehead; I don't feel Bible-thumped, even Bible-tapped. I just feel grateful for arts and the people who help it to happen.

To get to know Streetlamp, visit their homepage. To give money, click here. For updates on my favorite culturally alternative arts organization, click here.

For a new addiction, find the pilot o' Mad Men and a few hours (days) to catch up for Season Three. Enjoy your week.

LADB

Song Discrepancy

2009-08-13T16:46:00.000-07:00

The title's Dixie Chicks. My morning jam was Martina. Never fear for my knowledge of country artists' repertoire.

Wide Open Spaceeeeeeeeeees!!!

2009-08-13T16:08:00.001-07:00

Fact: I listen to country music in Los Angeles. But in praise of local heterogeny I'll say that, depending on the street and the time of day, I can feel totally local with Martina McBride oozing out the windows of the White Shark. I don't push it. But there's that.

Once you're done judging me, read on.

...

.

{I don't know if anyone in LA proper is reading this blog (pass it along to my neighbors?), but I've got three venues I'm trying to fill with dancers and movers and performance artists and yoga teachers and dance-for-camera types and pretty much anyone who needs an affordable space at a time when affordablility is high on the proverbial list.}--single sentence.

One: BOXeight. It's an art gallery situated in the fashion district of south downtown. It's of the poured-cement-floors-and-brick-walls persuasion, but the space is big (and inspiring) enough for major movers. The people are incredibly supportive artists who are interested in widening the scope of their events and collaborations. It's ideal for site-specific work (and, for me, maintaining my sanity outside of a totally anti-social day job). I love it. End of story.

Two: The 16th Street Dance Space. It's just around the corner from BOXeight, owned by the same benevolent property manager. There are two sprung marley floors of 2,000 and 5,000 square feet, respectively, state of the art sound equipment and lights, conference rooms, showers--the whole nine yards. This is more of a residency space for a company or studio (or companies or studios). It retains the flavor of south downtown but provides for all the basic needs of a traditional dance company. Also gorgeous.

Three: my home!! The glorious zoning of arts buildings in downtown LA permits the stage in my apartment and its rental. Carnegie Hall it is not, but we've got sound and mirrors and an elevated stage, two (soon another!) glorious roommates in management, and majorly open minds. Call me.

No, seriously.

Please.

LADB

And why

2009-08-08T13:18:00.001-07:00

I'm still so overwhelmed by Lauren Weedman's "Off" as to feel unfit for writing. (I think the prior capital letters were a formatting decision, not the artist's?) She portrays twenty-plus characters with conviction enough to suspend my disbelief for me. Director Jeff Weatherford, who deserves just as much awe and applause as Weedman, has her perform in everything from a tattoo parlour to a home "like an Italian villa" with his lighting, and the duo create a range of scenes tied powerfully to a theme I'd rather not spoil for you. Add to this Weedman's interstitial dancing, the animalistic lunges and shouts of an angry and agonized female creature, and "OFF" becomes a complete piece of theater.

Although the explicit second piece, "P.I.G.," made me decide against sending my friend's small-town parents to the Saturday production, it was also pretty remarkable. Zackary Drucker, Mariana Marroquin, and Wu Ingrid Tsang performed in front of Rhys Ernst's video work, engaging group and private therapy techniques and language to dizzy one's perception of gender and gender politics. The layers of media and the incredible styling work of Math Bass, Marco Prado, and Nicolau Vergueiro created a powerful environment for fresh thoughts.

Meg Wolfe's "Watch Her (Not Know It Now)" took a different direction, and perhaps the concert order can be blamed for my frustrations with it. After two piece that made me forget what I thought and where I was, Wolfe's minimalist exploration of the stage space and the body joints brought me back to the REDCAT venue and the usual dance crowd and co., the easily traced legacy of post-modern moving bodies. It wasn't bad work--not at all!--but it certainly took a back seat to "Off" and to "P.I.G." I hope to re-attempt a Wolfe experience in some other setting.

Again I say that even if I did avoid laying down a few dollars for some fresh art these past two weekends, I'm glad I bit the bullet and did so for this one. REDCAT. NOW. I love Los Angeles...

LADB

REDCAT NOW

2009-08-07T22:54:00.000-07:00

TOO MANY CAPITAL LETTERS.

Lauren Weedman's "OFF" (capitals again!) absolutely thrilled me tonight in the final set of eponymous New Original Works at that downtown theater in the posting title.

I haven't a clue whether a single Los Angeles person reads this, but if you're that, Weedman's got it going on. See her tomorrow night.

$%&@(!

2009-08-05T19:37:00.000-07:00

As always, foul-language apologies to my dear polite grandmother and family.

PS, I Love Merce

2009-08-05T19:10:00.001-07:00

Same day, different post. I'd simply like to express my thoughts and feelings on the passing of Merce Cunningham. His name was a part of my academic and, if less directly, physical education for four years, and I had my first opportunity to watch his company perform just months before graduation. Have you ever opened the window to feel the cross-breeze it makes with the door? (This city has instilled me with a new apprecation of such things.) The theory of his influence made its live manifestation all the more effective.

The man lived to be ninety years old. His death had none of the shock of AIDS- or other (and recent) tragedy-related passings. It is the record of his life that creates the impact. A person can make a life out of dance in a world that pushes it to the furthest margin of the arts, sure. I commend that in anyone. But that Cunningham could do as much and use his major works to usher in a new perception of art itself--its formation, its collaborations--speaks volumes of his ingenuity and his commitment.

I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said. He was as well-known as any modern choreographer has become. Worse, I can't put words to the vice-grip I feel when I watch mere seconds of Biped. Suffice it to say that in a shitty economy I have settled for a job that keeps me busy and far, far from the arts for most of every day, and I feel a great deal of shame and frustration.

I'm grateful, at the very least, to have such a profound guide in a man who now belong entirely to history.

LADB

Better Late Than Never

2009-08-05T18:50:00.000-07:00

After an extended period of missing in action, I’m back by necessity. I’ll go mad if I don’t exercise my mind. I’ll be a danger to society! Most of this can be blamed on a few roadblocks in the LA transition--I credit my Parkour group for teaching me to metaphorically hurdle them. I moved downtown after some residential fickleness, found a venue to work with, and found a soulless part-time job to keep me on my feet. I'm cheered by two of the three.

That being said, I haven’t been totally absent from classes and performances. (Only mostly absent.) BOXeight gallery on Washington Boulevard in east downtown LA has kindly agreed to let me vend their space to movers: dancers, choreographers, yoga instructors, b.boys. Anyone. (Call me?) It’s a little hurry-up-and-wait, but it’s glorious! I can’t get enough of the creative vibe and solidly local art scene that thrives at the place. The recent encore of last year’s “I Think It’s Art, I Think It’s Fashion” came to pass the Saturday past, and went off without a hitch.

Um... not true.

But the hitches were belated art labels and a little snafu with a wine company, so apart from that the event went off quite well. Great art. Live music. A hell of a performer, Aimee Zinnoni (here's her most pertinent Google result), bringing live installation to an otherwise mostly pose-oriented scene with her performance art and body canvas.

(Now I wonder: is this making sense? My thoughts get compressed when they’re withheld, but I'm not sure they ever get from coal status to diamond.)

Less satisfyingly, but in the same weekend, I biked the two or so miles of Alameda to Farm Lab! The DANCEbank Facebook group and its stalwart manager Meg Wolfe brought a workshop to my attention, one with the pillar of PoMo that is Simone Forti. The gorgeous septuagenarian brought a classic pair of workshops to 2009 from her heyday three decades ago.

That was the good and the bad of it.

There’s a lot to be said for drawing dance material from sources (texts, improvisation, and so on) alternative to traditional codes and norms. It’s created some of the best work in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. That being said, those are $25 I can never have back again, spent on the very most basic extrapolations of texts and improvisation for movement performance. It felt like being transported to the roots of a tree I started climbing in college! I understand that I was aiming for more revolutionary a class, taught by someone I’d assumed picked up some new tricks and re-formed the practices she formed in the first place. Expectations change everything. The workshop was a classic instead—without my prior expectations, I’m sure I’d have been tickled? I think? It was a worthy experience, sure, but only because I was using the same floor as the living, breathing topic of many an academic discussion on dance history.

So that’s that! The third and final installation of new works is coming up at REDCAT this weekend. After two weekends of making excuses for my absence, I’m finally ready to lay down the dollars for a little brain-tickling. Maybe this time my response will be more punctual?

LADB

Fast times, slow going

2009-07-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

The internship turns out to have devoured the majority of the last two weeks, to which my body retaliated with a cough and a fever. :( Will be seeing more and writing more ASAP... I think...

And Elsewhere in the Dance World...

2009-06-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

...You know that star burst thick glass makes when it's struck? I'm pretty sure that's what the Western dance world would look like as a cultural window. Here we have this clear, pristine thing that teaches royalty and wannabes how to do Pavans and Galliards and get the man or get the woman and make the right marriage and keep the act going. Here we have it on show for the kings' pals. Frontal presentation has obvious appeal (look at me! look at me!) so here we have ballet. Here we have Ballanchine bringing ballet to its effervescent extreme (goodbye, cheeseburgers) after his buddies at the Ballet Russes found new ways to jazz up (what an awful metaphor for this context!) the old material, and here--watch closely--we have Vaudeville- and theater- and academically-trained Moderns making that unhappy sound a Mac computer makes when you click somewhere you shouldn't as they run, repeatedly, into this thick glass window that's been built up around an old and now considerably dated form of courtship boogie.

Listen to the satisfying crunch of the window as, after fifty plus years of Moderns' pushing it, Merce Cunningham finally punches it.

That being said, ol' Merce didn't shatter all of dance entirely. The heteronormative frontal performative virtuosic music-obeying smiling presenting dances of dance are alive and well and

(big development)

I like it. I mean, apparently all kinds of viewership like it, since I can't imagine anyone watches So You Think You Can Dance for the inter-dancer drama. But after a BA in the history of that star burst, I think I'd forgotten the virtues of what an old prof might call Miss Trixie's School of Ballet and Tap. This week I saw Carnival: The Choreographers' Ball and Up On The Roof, where--yep, on a roof--the high-kicking kids with huge smiles and often breathtaking dance technique inaugurated the Debbie Allen Dance Academy move to Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Plaza between those two neighborhoods. Miss Trixie must have done something right. These kids are confident, disciplined, happy as very agile clams, and on their way to being the confident, disciplined, happy adults I saw at Carnival. I'm not knockin' the moderns who put more into stage composition and the intellectual question of why dance. I can't. They're brilliant. But brilliant, too, is a program with over 80% of the students on scholarship and 100% of the managerial staff doubtlessly worked to the bone and everyone pleased as punch to be showing or shown a double axle in a number set to seven of the most recent top forty in whatever genre it is that includes the Black Eyed Peas and "If You Seek Amy".

I'd bring back the window metaphor if I could, but it's early and I'm tired and it's off to another day of adventures in sunny CA. Time to test out these pesky lower abdominals and see if I can at least start jamming out in the kitchen again without pain...

LADB

Slacker

2009-06-23T09:04:00.000-07:00

The VideoDanza and DCW event in Van Nuys this past Saturday was lovely! It featured only films from South America, so thanks to the lack of local I watched without taking notes. I haven't been dancing (or doing much of anything else) since it turns out that pulling abdominal muscles hinders just about every kind of activity. All of this adds up to my feeling terribly lazy. But I'll be up and at 'em again ASAP...

Sweating, and the Small Stuff

2009-06-16T22:56:00.000-07:00

Tonight I saw b-boys round robin at LA Valley College, using the sprung gymnastic floor to take falls that might end a dance on concrete. I got Parkour tips from high school boys who’d take a tumble and come back jumping. I watched in awe while girls and women from tween to twenty-something and men nearing middle age worked their rudimentary gymnastics; a group of competitive elderly meanwhile climbed hanging ropes under the clock. It wasn’t concert dance. The lights were fluorescent, not Fresnels. But the bodies were in motion, and I was moved.

Cheese.

However clumsily, what I’m getting at is this: I had a very long day. I’ve heard the words “hiring freeze” too many times, and I—like about 10% of Angelenos, or so I hear—would so appreciate being employed. But for a few well-spent dollars in North Hollywood I could forget about that, warm up, do my body work, and admire others’ as well. The roadblocks of life don’t seem so bad when I’m vaulting over blue mats that are much, much bigger.

LADB

With the Times

2009-06-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

Contra-Tiempo is an LA-based modern dance company infused with Latin dance and a social consciousness, the work of Ana María Alvarez and a devoted collective of dancers, musicians, and other artists. Contra-Tiempo is also Spanish for “Against The Times,” but having heard the urban outcry of this company’s work for the first time last night, I’d say they’re quite in tune with the times—and perhaps even redirecting them. At the incredible converted bank building that is The New Los Angeles Theatre Center (better known simply as The New LATC) on Spring Street downtown, Contra-Tiempo brought out three rep pieces and one new work for a single evening of dance.

“I Dream America”, a 2008 set of seven dances, opened the program. With its exploration of “the tensions, commonalities, strains, and histories between the Black and Latino communities,” it brings to the table both the racial tension of C-T’s (and our) city home and the literal moving and shaking one can do to loosen it. There are b-boy and square dance steps, salsa and solos. In the final progression of exhausted, changed, and empowered movers across the stage, the layers of the piece cohere: the video images with the “I Been ‘Buked” unison, the angry voices with the outstretched arms of the people on stage and, it seems, the people they represent. And that is perhaps the most moving aspect of C-T: they are people. They are incredible dancers making work in a very difficult time for making work, but more than that they are the faces of awareness and outreach in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

The remainder of the program was varied, from the new tongue-in-cheek Fosse-isms of “Plastico” to the sweet duet “Al Alba Ache” and “contra-tiempo/against the times”, a 2006 work that seems to be the company’s signature. Sound credits include the words of Cesar Chavez, Lolita Lebrón, and Pablo Neruda, as well as the impressive sound design of Cesar Alvarez, whose work was used throughout the program. The closer brought to mind again what I enthusiastically scrawled in the margins some time earlier, between clapping and shouting (it’s encouraged): “These are people! Who dance!” Plenty went wrong, production-wise: a late start, a pesky projector logo, a runaway water bottle on stage (twice). But production value isn't the point. The supreme dance technique isn’t the point. (That’s plastic, really.) This is a broad scope of topics and outcries, but that isn’t the point, either. The heart of it, the point I can see, is generating and sustaining the courage to make dances about the facts and the frictions of Los Angeles, tapping into its races and its communities at large. The Latin dances at C-T’s movement base make a foundation for social interaction. Much the same, the subjects the company attacks makes a firm foundation for vivid awareness in Los Angeles.

LADB

It Works!

2009-06-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

Now that I’ve seen dances for humans and intelligent pets, I strongly encourage attendance. The pieces are varied, the setting is deluxe, and whether or not this matters to anyone but me, the dancers and choreographers are really nice. In a world where support for the arts normally means support for orchestras and art classes, work in dance can make a person awfully dour. Not here!

I only acquired program notes after seeing the pieces sans title or credit, but no complaints. Every work spoke for itself. In her opening solo, “Moth – Asomati”, dancer/choreographer Liz Hoefner drapes David Parson’s strobe light work in “Caught” with a sepia dress, making the performer an icon both of vulnerability and of femininity. What might in lesser hands have become a ramble becomes, in Hoefner’s, a series of disjointed thoughts as erratic and engaging as the lights. In one moment she is a whirlwind of limbs and leaps, in the next she is crouched and defensive. In my moment of choice she steps out of the icon altogether when a tic (an exhale, a shake of the head) makes the soloist terribly, tragically human. In retrospect, Hoefner’s process statement makes perfect sense! You can read it when you see the program.

I’m slightly less satisfied with a trio in slickers, but I’m sure that’s only because I wanted a longer time to savor Hoefner’s impression. Maggie Lee’s “Chatter” puts three dancers in skin-tone lingerie and life-sized Zip-Loc bags, and in an exploration of the vast stage floor (which is, I should mention, at the audience’s level) they become a corps de modern with their shadows. Furthermore, the choreography handily isolates the performers from their humanity: it’s there to be seen, as obvious as the lingerie, but somewhere between the gestures and the non-functioning backwards run, the plastic wrap and the performance take precedence over the skin and the performers. I realize that this doesn’t quite mesh with Lee’s program notes, but that’s the fun of objective viewership, and I like the piece both ways.

“The Clandestine Life of Recycled Clothes” arrives just before Intermission. Remembering “Out Fitted” at The Open Space last week, I can’t help but commend how well Rebekah Davidson uses the cloth-and-plastic-cups havoc on stage. A soloist takes on more objects and a slightly modified identity with every dance step: a bathrobe here, a pair of sunglasses there, a plastic cup. When four like-dressed women arrive on the stage with their own plastic cups, we see the whole identity de- and reconstructed in vocal commands, lighting design, and good ol’ contemporary modern stock movement vocabulary. (I want to note that, mid-piece, I thought “Is this Phillip Glass?” It was!) That middle section of the aforesaid stock could be its own piece, but the rest of “The Clandestine…” felt satisfyingly cohesive. I’m just sorry that the regular audience won’t get to see the Intermission dance that followed on Thursday! Like Trisha Brown through a kaleidoscope.

I’m afraid the cup of coffee I got at Brewer’s kicked in during Carol McDowell’s “Surrender”, which really is Trisha Brown through a kaleidoscope. (There are a lot of exclamations in my notes. “I like these angles!” “Dance>Music! Yes!” “AND THE SQUARE IS NOW FIVE AISLES!”) The middle level and the flailing arms got a little disengaging, but I enjoy the diegetic vocal commands. Furthermore, just as I was writing some comment about the lack of contact, there was the most satisfying and unexpected embrace upstage, and I was won. Between that and the final disorientation of the lighting (see this program!), “Surrender” was complete.

The clickclickclick of the rehearsal photographer notwithstanding, “Hit The Spot” did just that, and wrapped up DHIP. I got the impression that the voices in the sound recording were emanating in real time from the dancers’ minds. In an exercise of memory and recollection, this quartet of Hoefner’s, including herself (she might be my hero?) showed the wacky disarray brains will go into when thoughts rain in and out, the same way bodies go into wacky disarray with inversions and lunges and all of the nonsensical things modern dance makes us do. Doris Humphrey said all dances are too long, and she might be right with this one, but if anything it reflects how endless the circular train tracks of recollecive thought are.

Mind status: blown.

Brevity may be the soul of wit, but the blog is about saying as much as I want. I don't get the program title, but I hope I’ve said enough to sell some tickets to DHIP. Again, many thanks to the directors for the accommodating dress rehearsal.

LADB

A Lot to Los Angeles

2009-06-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

I’ve reserved my ticket for Contra-Tiempo. I’ve been giving equal stare time to Sam Rockwell (new movie!) and the postcard for dances for humans and intelligent pets, trying to decide which one will win my Friday night. (Probably the latter--sorry, Sammy.) I’ve filled out two job applications at Children’s Hospital saying that evenings and weekends are for dancing, not working, laughed and cringed at the idea of being a hall monkey for a Disney venue, and eaten half a bowl of tasty hummus thinking about what the heck I can do to be employed here!

The point is, dance is everywhere. For all these long days of not having a job, my time is certainly filling up with dance events. I also emailed a friend of a friend about trying Parkour around the city. Gotta get movin'! What better way?

LADB

No Stranger Here

2009-06-08T08:38:00.000-07:00

Contact Improv LA is one of the reasons I made my way out here. In a studio with skylights and a smooth wooden floor on Santa Monica Boulevard in the eponymous coastal town, a group of bodies as diverse as Steve Paxton probably dreamed meets weekly, and with some variety of attendees, to jam. Last night was my third time (I visited in March). After an academic semester of it dried out the juicy parts, CI has been brought back to life! The atmosphere is casual, the studio is serene, and the post-jam food run is going to be a habit. I think last night’s binge may have actually turned at least my extremities into some of Swinger’s tasty vegan chocolate chip pancakes.

LADB

The Achilles, Unproverbially

2009-06-07T09:03:00.000-07:00

“Hey go to Redcat tonight. Dance for the Camera Festival. Great way for you to meet people and see the scene.” A few Metro stops later and I was at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, in the part my pal called its garage. (I’ll try to think of it as a magical spare room.) The second and third inaugural weekend programs of Dance Camera West's 2009 series were screening, and in spite of the overload of seeing a lot of art in rapid succession, the selections brought out the best aspects of dance displayed through film. Have you ever looked at the backs of a person’s heels? In part of a Finnish film in the second program, the frog’s eye view or so from behind soloist and director Alexandra Campbell’s heels is all we get to see, and it’s a masterpiece. Belling out at the base, arcing up along the tendon… wow. That, I think, is the best part of dance for the camera. Heels are all over the place on a live stage, but Campbell’s direction put their close-up in the metaphorical spotlight. Put to good use, that ability is breathtaking.

As for Los Angeles films, there were two. Rae Shao-Lan Blum and Pooh Kaye directed “Captain”, the last of ten (!) pieces in the six o’clock program. The eight o’clock set of nine then opened with “The Last Martini”, Vicki Mendoza’s USC production. The local art was, in my mind, some of the best at the screening—no small feat, given the international entries and acclaim of the festival and the American aversion to supporting fringe art. (Dance for the camera is still fringe, right?) Blum’s red-sashed romp in “Captain”, like Where the Wild Things Are with invisible monsters, was especially delightful, and Mendoza’s editing in “The Last Martini” was among the most provocative and complex in the evening.

I have met some people, and I have seen some scene, and both speak to why I’m already loving this place.

LADB

Hatched Indeed!

2009-06-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

“Welcome to Los Angeles!” I love to hear that. To me, this city is brand spankin’ new. And speaking of brand new things, here’s to “HATCHED: An evening of brand new dances”.

What a venue. At 209 S. Garey Street downtown, in a district where warehouses galore are converting into sites for art, The Open Space pairs the flavor of the neighborhood with an impressive postmodern performance space. For “HATCHED,” the second story at 209 has been divided in two on the diagonal, giving the stage a corner where the white wall and the high, barred windows of the warehouse meet. The sound and lighting equipment is part of the balancing act, providing a quality stage without compromising the realities of the building. Manager Hassan Christopher has a real gem available for rent.

I was right to infer the Loyola Marymount University background of just about everyone involved. (This seemed to encompass the audience as well, present company and her pal excepted.) The program opened with a video piece that was Alaina Williams’ senior project there, and it handily introduced, in retrospect, the LMU aesthetic. “for your viewing pleasure” put Williams’ tidy physicality at the center of the screen, which itself was beautifully displayed on the white wall of The Open Space. The idea she introduced (verbally) was ownership of one’s body, and while it got a little lost in the collegiate stock of movements (here is a sequential turn, here is a pregnant skyward reach), the conclusion of an on-screen Williams manipulating? manipulated by? a long band of red cloth was a satisfying one. I’d love to see the video serve as a background to that solo; I’d also love to see more of Stephen Lee’s handiwork in video editing.

“Constrained Relieve” brought a trio of women to the floor, and while their steely expressions never matched the emotional pertinence of the stylized three’s-a-crowd partner shuffle, the precision of the dancing nearly made up for it. Both qualities must have been deliberate on the part of choreographer Stephanie Jamieson, but the reasons are beyond me. The qualities of The Open Space went woefully under-exercised, but again, these women are fierce movers. I take my recollection of more movement than music to mean that the piece set the bar high for the autonomy of the dancing.

Unfortunately, Diana Delcambre’s “For Yogi” missed that mark. The ode to the outdoorsy put a cast of six dancers in flannel, the live half fresh out of a tent, the filmed half in the great outdoors itself. The video made modern dance and a topical setting mesh by default, but the live performance never reached that point. Furthermore—and I’ll grant that quality dance with a laugh is tricky business—Delcambre set herself back when the voiceover of Jim Gaffigan’s stand-up took immediate comedic precedence.

My intermission cookie was delicious.

Alice MacDonald, the recent LMU graduate in charge of presenting “HATCHED,” faced the same funny dance challenge with “Out Fitted”. These movers are incredibly skilled, and the set design (an ambient closet of Goodwill pell-mell) was spot-on. But until MacDonald and her quintet decide why silly shoppers turn into trained movers and back again, and why only one only once struts through the proverbial fourth wall (third here), I’m not sure I buy it.

Evan Hart Marsh’s solo “Prana” was a nice change of pace once the Goodwill disappeared: movement for movement’s sake, meet primal expressivity. And dramatic lighting. And musculature. And dance that tells the music what to do, at least for a little while. Solid.

Finally, I love Maurice Ravel. I love “Blues Moderato”. I love the windows at The Open Space, whose black drapery finally came off for MacDonald’s “Frame of Reference” duet. I even love the way the LMU vocabulary was transposed to the ledges, the walls, the light from outside, and even that pesky corner! But I need to see a motive because, in the end, modern dance movement is weird. It’s not a social ceremony or an evolutionary tic, and enrapturing though every dancer was in “HATCHED”, it’s not an exercise in virtuosity. Motives seem to be the Achilles heel of dance in academia, and this performance wasn’t much of an exception.

Nevertheless, I applaud MacDonald’s hard work and her band of collaborators. “HATCHED” was a great beginning for a brand new Angelen(a), and worth all fifteen dollars.

Seventeen if you count the cookie.

LADB

Testing, 5678

2009-06-02T10:36:00.000-07:00

I've moved in, I've Googled, and I've found LA's dance scene to be as sprawling as its neighborhoods. But as an exercise in citizenship, I've decided to take it all in, think about it, and write accordingly.

The first brew on tap is this weekend's "HATCHED," a set of new works organized by Alice MacDonald and what seem to be a lot of Loyola Marymount University graduates. The Facebook event is linked, but in case you've managed to avoid that Internet monster, here's the info from it:

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Don’t miss the opportunity to join us at, Hatched: An evening of brand new dances, an inspirational summer performance!

Alice MacDonald presents Hatched: An evening of brand new dances. MacDonald brings together a diverse group of emerging choreographers, performers and artists to create evening presenting 5 new dance works. Hatched introduces an imaginative and diverse group of choreographers, Alice MacDonald, Stephanie Jamieson, Diana Delcambre and Evan Hart Marsh, exploring unique subject matter ranging from varying perspectives of the feminine psyche to a humorous twist on the presentation of character and a solo exploration of internal forces manifest as movement. In addition, live dance is incorporated with film in a work that explores the human relationship with nature. Hatched also features live music performance in dance by Marc Agostini and Mike Gallegos of The Eternal Return.

June 5th and 6th at 8pm, 2009.

For Ticket Reservations:
Email ajm2905@mac.com OR call (607) 262-0743
$15 Adults and $12 Students
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Can't wait.

LADB