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......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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.......