The closing program of the fifth annual New Original Works Festival (NOW) ended this weekend at REDCAT with a trio of works-in-progress. Composer Anne LeBaron with librettist Douglas Kearney, choreographer Rosanna Gamson and performance artist Kristina Wong presented excerpts from projects they’re currently working on in all their not-fully-edited, let’s try this, and I-wonder-if-this-belongs-here glory. Not surprisingly, the results were both good and not so good. Are they teasers for REDCAT’s next season? No comment... [continue]

Moving into the third and final weekend of REDCAT's New Original Works Festival, the program is at its most varied--music, dance and performance art. Included in this evening of innovative projects are alumni of previous REDCAT productions Anne LeBaron (with Douglas Kearney) and Rosanna Gamson/World Wide with one woman bundle of fury and fun Kristina Wong! Award-winning composer Anne LeBaron and poet/writer Douglas Kearney present a theatrical song cycle they call Sucktion, telling the story... [continue]

Program Two at the New Original Works Festival at REDCAT revealed a challenge in the programming department. With two modern dances placed side by side, the audience was asked to watch the second piece without being overly affected by the first. Difficult job for any viewer. If the performance pieces are even minutely similar to one other, the initial act is always a hard one to follow. Lionel Popkin opened the show with a duet... [continue]

Photo by RJ Muna Out-of-towners blow in like a breath of fresh air when they remind you of things that we forget are possible within our daily lives. In the dance world, it's always exciting when an artist shows us what interests her or him, particularly, and how it's slightly different from what we expect or what other people find fascinating. Lean To Productions' Rachael Lincoln and Leslie Seiters did just that as they... [continue]

The first program of the 5th annual New Original Works Festival at REDCAT opened last week with a whiz-bang! To start, the three member Cloud Eye Control—Miwa Matreyek, Anna Oxygen and Chi-wang Yang--filled the stage with six feet high screens upon which they projected their two works: Subterranean Heart and Final Space. In the first, mostly black and white animated images traveled across the screens and, with Oxygen singing high-toned sounds and lyrics, we began... [continue]

Under Disney Hall this week, there's more movement afoot with Dance Magazine's one of “25 to Watch” (2007) Holly Johnston, along with Trisha Brown alumnus Lionel Popkin and, in a more theatrical bent, the wild, humorous and nearly chaotic Poor Dog Group. Johnston, creative force behind Ledges and Bones Dance Project will present a new quartet she calls Politics of Intimacy. Embracing her uniquely powerful movement style—built on muscle, risk and visceral thrill-- the dancers... [continue]

photo by RJ Muna In what their promotional materials call "a theatrical tour-de-force," Hollywood's Unknown Theater continues its 2008 Dance Series with Lean To Productions' evening length An Attic An Exit for two weeks (Thursday-Sunday July 17-27). Describing the work as Looney-tunes comedy meets magical-realist mystery in a single room crammed full with riddles, levitation, baking supplies, and two meticulously explorative twins, An Attic An Exit follows white-faced, white-haired longtime collaborators Rachael Lincoln and... [continue]

Cloud Eye Control, courtesy of CalArts Photography Since its opening five years ago, REDCAT programming has maintained a space for local artists to show their work at the state of the art theater below Disney Hall. The NOW Festival is the highlight of this community-aware programming. This first week of the three week series includes interdisciplinary projects that bend traditions and investigate new visions of work for the stage. The artists in this first... [continue]

photo of Sam Kim by Ryan McNamara, courtesy of Show Box New York modern dance artists performing in Los Angeles are always exciting contributors to the local scene. They bring energy and an up-to-the-moment snapshot of diverse and, hopefully, compelling ideas. This past month has seen a small handful of gems with Tere O’Connor’s Rammed Earth at the Skirball, recent resident Stephan Koplowitz’s Liquid Landscapes at California Plaza and other sites throughout the city/county... [continue]

Earlier this year, choreographer Meg Wolfe received a Lester Horton award for her tireless work for the Los Angeles dance community. These Horton awards are akin to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) citations, in that the artists, themselves, make the selections and vote for the awardees. Ms. Wolfe took it all in stride, smiling while keeping track of the monthly Anatomy Riot showcases that she curates, the weekly DanceBank class program she organizes and a... [continue]

photo by Paula Court, courtesy of the artist Jordan Peimer, program director at the Skirball Cultural Center, does a great job of bringing interesting non-mainstream dance talent to our city. In the recent past he brought Neil Greenberg, Liz Lerman, the Sitelines series and international companies and artists that don’t fill the seats in the large venues, but who, nonetheless, expand the art form beyond its traditions and conventions. Always interesting, if not mind-blowing.... [continue]

Highlighting the combination of dance and film/video, the 7th annual Dance Camera West festival begins its month long series of screenings, ceremonies and related events this Friday at the REDCAT Theater downtown. Presenting a wide variety of short, feature length and documentary work, the events will occur at locations that range from the American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica to the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood to films shown with... [continue]

Photo by Paul Antico, courtesy of the artist You know you've experienced it, talked about it or even watched it somewhere along the line, but Christine Suarez DanceTheater is taking female orgasm and, together with an intergenerational group of women, she's presenting dance theater about it in the ecologically-sound Eco Cottages this Friday and Saturday nights on the Venice Beach.... [continue]

Anne Plamodon & Victor Quijada | Photo by Natalie Galazka Victor Quijada started dancing when he was a student at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, taking his first classes with postmodern dance pioneer Rudy Perez. Known as "Rubberband" in the clubs and streets of LA, he began breakdancing with the best and soon found himself dancing for Twyla Tharp, Eliot Feld and Les Grand Ballets Canadiens de Montreal. Put it... [continue]

When you're a teenager, there are several big moments in life--when you turn 16 and you can legally drive, 18 when you can vote, buy cigarettes and get pierced without parental consent and then the next big moment is 21. Hold On!! Highways Performance Space and Gallery, one of our local internationally renowned centers for new performance (dance, music, performance art and any hybrid thereof) is turning nineteen this weekend!! And, in this day and... [continue]

Photo of Holly Johnston by Andre Andreev The Los Angeles concert dance community's Lester Horton Dance Awards, our hometown answer to the Oscars, New York's Tonys and Bessies, and San Francisco's Isadora Duncan awards were announced on Sunday at a humble event at the Jensen Recreation Center in Echo Park. Attended by a few hundred dancers, choreographers, collaborating artists and other supporters, this 17th annual occasion drew cheers and smiles from most of the... [continue]

Photo by Jean-Pierre Stoop, courtesy of UCLA Live Having broken into the international dance scene in 1987, Belgian choreographer/director/filmmaker Wim Vandekeybus is bringing a quasi-retrospective of his work to UCLA Live and Royce Hall for two performances of Spiegel on Friday and Saturday, May 2-3. Translating the title as "Mirror," the ninety minute intermissionless work includes excerpts from his groundbreaking What The Body Does Not Remember (1987) and six of his twenty subsequent creations.... [continue]

Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann, courtesy of the company In 1989, then modern dance bad boy Mark Morris took a seventeenth century opera and turned it into a cause celebre in staging the work for his dance company, then in residence at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. Almost twenty years later, and in a precedent-setting collaboration between the now-world renowned Mark Morris Dance Group. the Irvine Barclay Theatre, the Pacific Symphony... [continue]

Twenty years ago, former champion equestrian Judith Smith became involved with a movement class for wheelchair-bound women. She, herself, had injured her spinal cord in a car accident and could no longer ride. The class created its first choreography, which piqued people's interest and received a hugely popular positive response. So began AXIS Dance Company. Including both able-bodied and physically-challenged performers, the company has since performed throughout the United States, Europe, Russia, China and into... [continue]

Photo of Kristen Smiarowski by Derrick Bruce, courtesy of the artist With a press release that begins with "a South Korean, an Indonesian and two Jews walk into Highways Performance Space ," locally-based Kiha Lee, Sri Susilowati, Keith Glassman and Kristen Smiarowksi take over the intimate Santa Monica theater to premiere new dances April 10-12 at 8:30 pm. Known around town, nationally and internationally for making work that transcends the limitations of "eye candy,"... [continue]