Director/choreographer/performer Liz Hoefner seems to bring her life to the stage. While this isn't a new or different way of making theater, Ms. Hoefner's life is filled with humorous moments that surround the challenges of being alive in our 21st century. Performed this past weekend at the Diavolo Dance Space downtown, her new work, Fear of Drowning/Fear of Flying, included a large cast of dancers, actors and musicians. These people loaded the stage with big......

photo courtesy of artist Local independent dance artist Liz Hoefner has directed and choreographed Fear of Drowning/Fear of Flying and will present its premiere this Friday through Sunday at the Diavolo Dance Space in the Brewery Arts Complex. According to her, the new dance theater work is a collection of stories, dialogues and dances that relate to actual and metaphorical fears of traveling, flying, drowning and dying in a post 9/11, tsunami, and Hurricane......

The LA Improv Dance Festival exploded onto the downtown scene last week with classes and jams from Tuesday on though the weekend. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, audiences were treated to some amazing performances by the workshop faculty and local dancers/improvisers. I was lucky enough to get there on Friday night for the In-Site Collaboration Performance. When performers find their groove in these improvisations, it’s hard to tell that they are improvising. It looks like they’ve......

Jazz performers improvise in front of an audience all of the time. At each sitting, different combinations of instruments and players create unique variations of existing sounds and tunes or develop something brand new to our ears. It’s thrilling to listen to the artists search for their individuality within the known arrangement of tones, scales, rhythms and meters. Or, it can fall flat. Still, when you bring the best together, even flat can be amazing......