This weekend, in a shared bill at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, choreographer/performer Jamie Benson (with his "Project Runway" real-time partner/designer Andrae Gonzalo) and choreographer/new mother, Carmela Hermann (with gay retiree/accidental dad/grandfather, Terrence Luke Johnson) will beam from the stage in Mixed Marriages / Homestretch.
The Human Swiffer Will Sweep the Stage at Highways Performance Space
Get Out: Visit Metropolis Books Before It Closes, Commune with Betty Hutton's Spirit, See How Chicano Art Stormed the Establishment
Get out! Visit Metropolis Books one last time, reapply your lipstick until someone gives you a reason not to and learn about how the art establishment loves it when you tag their buildings — but they might take a few decades to admit it.
kDub Dance Returns Home
Having recently toured to New York City and points north (SF), contemporary choreographer Kevin Williamson brings his LA-based company kDub Dance to Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica this weekend for three shows. As part of Highways’ BEHOLD: A Queer Performance Festival, Williamson will present LIMINAL BUST in its southern California premiere.
Pencil This In: Poetry @ The Geffen, Green Tamale Season Opens
REDCAT presents filmmaker Zoe Beloff in the program “Conjuring Specters.” The New York-based artist specializes in variety of cinematic imagery: film, stereoscopic projection performance, interactive media and installation. She is fascinated by phantoms, images that aren’t really there. According to her bio: “She would like to think of herself as an heir to the 19th century mediums whose materialization séances conjured up unconscious desires, in the most theatrical fashion.” A few of her short, experimental films will be screened, and Beloff will be there in person to discuss. The event begins at 8:30 pm and tickets are $9.
Dance in Santa Monica: 'Tender Demolition' comes to Highways
The contrasting title sounds ominous. Artist-run production company Show Box is presenting the premiere of Tender, a new dance by local choreographer Meg Wolfe in collaboration with dancer Gregory Barnett with visiting artist Karen Sherman's Demolition Boy (from Minneapolis). All this is happening at Highways Performance Space this Friday through Sunday nights.
Vets Tell the Real Story
As the culminating event of a fifteen week workshop that joined veterans, performing artists, and activists in a series of verbal and physical conversations about their lives and aspirations, "Action Conversations" was presented at Highways Performance Space for only three performances, February 8-9. Through a collaborative process under the direction of UCLA professor and choreographer Victoria Marks, the performers revealed some of the highlights of their explorations of identity, heroics, mortality and civic responsibility in this sixty minute work.
Four Cheese Dance: Performance Review
When I waited tables in New York City, we had a very popular item we sold called a quattroformaggio pizelle--a thin crusted pizza made from a flour tortilla with mozzarella, asiago, parmesan and fontina cheeses. It was light, it was tasty, but Barbara Walters once asked me if it was low fat and I could only smile and bring her a salad. That’s my history with the four cheese idea.
Notable Theater this Week
A list of some of the current critics' choices around town. Click on the show title for a review. Click on the theater name for info on tickets. Hotel C'est Lamour (The Blank Theater Company) References to Salvador Dali Make me Hot (Theater Planners at Art/Works Theater) Side Show (La Habra Depot) Tale of 2Cities: An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks (Freud Playhouse) Rocks in my Salsa (Highways Performance Space) The Beastly Bombing (Steve...
Quick Weekend Roundup
Yesterday, we recommended Papa but if you want to get some culture another way you you can go to the opening of Carol Es's Hybrids and Mongrels at the Highways Performance Space and Gallery tonight. The reception is from 6:30 to 8:30 PM tonight.

