The Brief

One thing you can be sure of in L.A. is that there’s never an excuse to stay home. Just this week, both the L.A. Phil and the Geffen Playhouse announced their new seasons, and there’s tons of great music and theater on the way this fall — and we haven’t even gotten to summer yet!

Even with Dudamel leaving us for NYC (and don’t worry, there are still many chances to see the maestro before then), the L.A. Phil has a lot of special shows on tap, including an evening with Andrew Bird and a tribute to Philip Glass. The Geffen has two plays coming straight from Broadway, including Branden Jacob-Jenkins' Purpose, directed by Phylicia Rashad, and Bess Wohl’s Liberation. Plan accordingly!

More imminently, your music picks for this weekend from Licorice Pizza include Peso Pluma at the Intuit Dome, Conan Gray at the Forum, Ashnikko with Princess Nokia at Shrine Expo Hall, Jeff Tweedy at the Belasco, Inara George at Largo and Peaches bringing her debauchery and sex-positivity to the Bellwether — all on Friday, though Peaches will be effing the pain away on Saturday, too.

Saturday’s a big night, with Jeff Tweedy playing a second show at the United Theater, Maggie Lindemann at the Regent, Spiritual Cramp at the Teragram, Paul van Dyk at Avalon and Yeasayer’s Anand Wilder at Townhouse Venice. If you’re feeling nostalgic, there’s the "I Love The 90s Tour" with Vanilla Ice, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Milli Vanilli, Tone Loc, Color Me Badd and Young MC at Great Park Live. Finally, end your weekend on Sunday with the "Boys 4 Life Tour" at the Forum, Hawthorne Heights at the Belasco or local punk icons Redd Kross at Alex’s Bar.

Elsewhere on LAist, learn where to order your latte with a side of feminist history, read about a queer Latin dance studio and score a ticket for next weekend’s Marketplace Live with Kai Ryssdal.

Events

Ukrainian Egg-Decorating Festival

Sunday, March 22, 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Ukrainian Cultural Center
4315 Melrose Ave., East Hollywood
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy Ukrainian Art Center

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Trust me, your supermarket egg dyes have nothing on the intricate designs of Ukrainian Easter eggs. Learn about the historic tradition of pysanka and try out the craft for yourself at the Ukrainian Cultural Center’s Pysanka (Egg-Decorating) Festival. There’s also folk dancing, singing and delicious Ukrainian food and drink.

Innovation Social

Friday, March 20, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. 
Music Center Plaza
135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown L.A. 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

Learn more about the L.A. art and tech scene by mingling with the people making it happen at the next Innovation Social on Music Center Plaza. While there, check out the latest from Iranian multimedia artist Armon Naeini’s The Music Center Presents ID Pt. III, which uses motion tracking to generate responsive visuals that shift and change as you move.

Venice Love Fest 

Saturday, March 21, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Windward Ave. and Ocean Front Walk, Venice
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy Create Entertainment

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Venice is the place to be this weekend for the annual Venice Love Fest, which moves to its rightful beachside location this year. It’s going to be hot, and the music is going to be rocking, with some of my favorites (including the Midnight Cowgirls) taking the Love Fest stage. Best of all, it’s free. Plus, Passion Pit is playing a free set at the Rivian space at 7 p.m., and the Venice Heritage Museum is reopening in its new location on the same day. Wander over to 1234 Pacific Ave. to check it out on your way to or from.

Jacob Jonas: Keeping Score

Through Sunday, March 22
Broad Stage
1310 11th St., Santa Monica 
COST: FROM $35; MORE INFO

Innovative artist, dancer and choreographer (and Santa Monica native) Jacob Jonas brings a trilogy about illness and resilience to the Broad Stage for a series of unique performances across three days. Jonas, a Stage 4 cancer survivor, has taken his journey onto the stage, creating a visceral piece that “intersects contemporary dance, performance art, musical composition, and theatrical storytelling to explore how early life trauma, illness, and resilience are encoded in the body.” Inspired by The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, the work — which includes a combination of dance, film, binaural sound, meditation and conversation — looks at the before, during and after of illness.

VinylCon

Saturday and Sunday, March 21 and 22
California Market Center
110 E. Ninth St., Downtown Los Angeles
COST: FROM $8.75; MORE INFO 

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Vinyl-heads, this is for you. Head to California Market Center for "the largest record fair in California that anyone can remember," complete with a DJ lineup that includes The Gaslamp Killer and DJ Nu-Mark, plus more rare and vintage vinyl than you can possibly get away with bringing home.

Annual Vegan Chili Cook-Off

Saturday, March 21, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. 
Tony’s Darts Away
1710 W Magnolia Blvd., Burbank 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Enjoy chili and craft beer at the vegan chili cookoff, where favorite spots like Highland Park Brewery and Ogopogo Brewery will compete for the crown at Tony’s Darts Away in Burbank. Your entry ticket includes five servings of vegan chili, so come hungry. Plus, you’ll get to cast your vote for the People's Choice Award!

66th Annual Swallows Day Parade

Saturday, March 21, 11 a.m. 
Downtown San Juan Capistrano
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy San Juan Capistrano Fiesta Association

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The Swallows — Las Golondrinas — make their way back to California from Argentina like clockwork every March, and San Juan Capistrano is ready. This year’s Swallows Day Parade includes equestrian units, historical reenactors and community groups celebrating the heritage of the historic Orange County town.

Art Jam 

Sunday, March 22, 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. 
Boomtown Brewery 
700 Jackson St., Downtown L.A. 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

Maybe the next Linda Lindas will be discovered at this year’s Art Jam, an all-ages youth arts and music event at Boomtown Brewery with a teen battle of the bands, live car painting, hands-on art workshops, a photo show, art vendors and more — all benefiting Mount of Angels and their free art programs for L.A. youth.

Sake tasting 

Friday, March 20, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. 
The Gamble House 
4 Westmoreland Place, Pasadena 
COST: $50; MORE INFO 

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It’s sakura season in Japan, but you can celebrate without hopping a plane to Tokyo at this sip and learn event at Gamble House. Coinciding with the exhibit From Strand to Sculpture: Contemporary Japanese Basketry, the event includes a lecture from Asian art historian and former Curator of East Asian Art at Pacific Asia Museum Meher McArthur about the 2,000 year-old tradition of sake-making in Japan and the art that evolved around it, followed by a guided sampling.

The conversation around the cultural relevance of ballet and opera — sparked by Oscar-nominated actor Timothée Chalamet’s recent dismissive comments about the art forms — came to a culmination at the Academy Awards on Sunday, with a joke about the backlash from host Conan O’Brien and a performance by celebrated ballet dancer Misty Copeland.

While the Copeland appearance was planned before Chalamet’s remarks went viral, the fact that a ballet dancer (one raised in SoCal, we should note!) took center stage on Hollywood’s biggest night seemed to fly in the face of Chalamet’s assertion that ballet, as opposed to movies, is something “no one cares about [...] anymore.”

It got us here at LAist wondering about the state of ballet in Los Angeles, so we reached out to leaders of ballet companies who explained what sets the ballet scene in Los Angeles apart, and where it stands in terms of cultural relevance right now.

‘His remarks come from a place of insight’

Maybe surprisingly, neither Julia Rivera, executive director of Los Angeles Ballet, nor Lincoln Jones, founder, choreographer and director of American Contemporary Ballet, took offense to Chalmet’s remarks.

Rivera told LAist that while  ”it's not very neighborly of one artist to bash the other's art form,” once she learned that Chalamet’s grandmother, mother and sister studied ballet and performed with the New York City Ballet, she had more understanding for where he may have been coming from.

“I think his remarks come from a place of insight,” she said. Because he probably heard conversations “lamenting [how] we're always trying to fund these organizations.”

“It is a daily struggle,” Rivera said. And “for a young person, wanting to have a career,” it’s understandable that they may not want to be involved in a nonprofit industry where funding is always a challenge.

‘Like watching ballet in IMAX’

Jones, who co-founded American Contemporary Ballet in L.A. 15 years ago, said Chalamet’s remarks were relatable.

“What I understood him to be saying was that he wanted to be part of an art form that was central to the cultural conversation,” Jones told LAist. “And I actually agree with that. When I was choosing what to do artistically myself, I actually struggled with that a lot.”

While Jones said he was enthralled by ballet from a young age, his brother made a career shooting cover photos for magazines like Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone and later directing film and TV. And he saw the appeal in that as an artist.

“You want a big audience, you want to have people understand what you're doing in a visceral and vital way,” he said. “But  I just couldn't get myself away from ballet. I just loved it so much. And so my big thing became ‘How do I do this in a way that is culturally relevant?’”

That’s led Jones to a unique, more modern approach to ballet that’s designed to be more cinematic, and at the same time more intimate.

Much of what sets American Contemporary Ballet apart from other ballet companies is that they always perform with live music and in unconventional spaces, like warehouses and soundstages, instead of in theaters.

 ”So it's not like you're sitting in this room where there's darkened chandeliers, and you're looking through a frame, which feels a bit 19th century to me,” Jones said. “Instead, it's sort of like, for lack of a better term, like watching ballet in IMAX. The dancers are larger compared to where you are, you're in this shared space and it just feels much more majestic to me.”

The pros and cons of staging ballet in L.A.

As for the state of ballet in Los Angeles, Rivera described it as “appreciated, valued and growing.” The company received its first seven-figure gift from a donor just last season.

“Audiences are very interested,” Rivera said. “The more ballet that is offered in L.A., the more audiences want. That is very good news.”

But she said there are also some challenges for a ballet company that are specific to Los Angeles:  ”We are a company town and the company is screened entertainment. But the arts also compete with theme parks and sporting teams and the weather and things that have significantly larger budgets.”

Navigating that “and finding ways for the voices to break through some of that noise,” Rivera said, “is really tricky. It can be done, but it's a challenge.”

Lincoln Jones agreed that running a ballet company in Los Angeles does have its challenges, but said he also saw a unique benefit to founding his ballet company in L.A.

While Jones first incorporated American Contemporary Ballet in New York, he’s originally from Southern California, and every time he would come home he felt “there was an energy and an openness [here], and a lot of that came from the film industry.”

And his view is that ballet has the potential to be just as exciting as popular films can be.

“When I was growing up, people were lining up to see the second Matrix, the first Matrix blew their mind. And now, ‘Oh my God. We have to see what happens in the second one.’ And that doesn't happen in ballet, but that is absolutely what I'm striving for.”

Los Angeles Ballet has also had some fun with the firestorm Chalamet’s remarks ignited, offering a ticket promotion with the code “SUPREME,” a reference to Marty Supreme, the film the actor earned an Oscar nomination for this year.

So far, Chalamet’s comments seem to be having a positive effect.

Rivera, who’s been with the company for 11 out of its 20-year history, said they’ve seen an uptick in ticket sales and donations in recent weeks.  

“Any time we can talk about opera and ballet is a good day,” Rivera (who also previously worked with L.A. Opera) told LAist. “I'm sorry that it's at one artist's expense, but he opened the door.”

Where to see ballet in L.A.

The next Los Angeles Ballet performances (of Giselle) begin April 30.

The Music Center is hosting the New York City ballet in June.

American Contemporary Ballet has remaining performances of Balanchine: Twin Masterpieces running this Thursday, Friday and Saturday and next Thursday through Saturday as well.

“ I guarantee you've never seen ballet like this,” Jones said. “And if Timothée Chalamet wants to come, I will get him a ticket.”

Big Bear’s famous bald eagles — Jackie and Shadow — are often in the spotlight, but they’re not the only wild bird nests in Southern California starring in their own livestreams and capturing human attention.

There are dozens of bald eagles with more than 20 nests across the Channel Islands, clinging to cliffs and tree-like bushes from Santa Catalina to Santa Cruz off the coast of Ventura.

Among them are Jak and Audacity, the resident duo on Santa Cruz Island whose nest is featured in a livestream and followed by dedicated viewers.

“Before Jackie and Shadow, there was Jak and Audacity,” according to the Institute for Wildlife Studies. “Before Jak and Audacity was Chase and Cholyn.”

Several decades ago, there were no bald eagles left in Southern California, according to the institute.

But after years of work by the Northern California-based nonprofit, the population has returned to its historic coastal habitat and grown to an estimated 60 birds across five islands.

“Here's this great success story of nature coming back, and it's happening, you know, really close to one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the world,” said Brian Hudgens, vice president of the Institute for Wildlife Studies.

Lay of the land

According to the institute, the Channel Islands eagle population is stable and could grow. As many as 25 eaglets fledge, or leave their respective nests, each year.

But challenges linger for Southern California’s only remaining coastal population of bald eagles. Some pairs continue to have failed nests.

Jak and Audacity have struggled to produce fledglings “not even half” of the years they've tried to breed in their Sauces Canyon territory, according to Hudgens.

Other Channel Islands nests successfully lay eggs and raise chicks almost every year.

“The challenges that they face is this variation from territory to territory and how good they are, and it's one of those things that we don't yet understand,” Hudgens said. “One of the reasons why we want to keep doing this is we're trying to figure out what's causing some birds to do really well, and other birds to not do as well.”

Bringing the birds back

Bald eagles used to be found on all eight Channel Islands, but the population dwindled and eventually disappeared by 1960, according to the Institute for Wildlife Studies.

The damage was driven by long-term exposure to high levels of DDT, a once-popular synthetic pesticide.

DDT and chemicals were dumped in the ocean basins off the coast of Los Angeles starting around the 1940s. Thousands of pounds may have been dumped until 1972, when new environmental regulations were passed by Congress, according to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

The U.S. banned DDT in 1972, largely because of its environmental effects and toxicity to wildlife. For bald eagles specifically, DDT poisoned the birds and caused egg shell thinning that resulted in many failed nesting attempts, according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

That’s where the Institute for Wildlife Studies comes in. In 1980, the nonprofit took on its first project — reintroducing bald eagles to Catalina Island by relocating wild birds from Pacific Northwest nests.

The first eggs from those early breeding pairs were laid on Catalina Island in 1987, but they broke soon after.

“They had problems with their eggshells still being very thin because these birds are now feeding in the waters that are contaminated by DDT,” Hudgens said, adding that the eggs had some of the highest levels of DDT on record.

To help the reintroduced Catalina Island population, wildlife biologists removed the fragile eggs from eagles affected by DDT and replaced them with decoy eggs so the adults would continue to incubate.

The real eggs were then artificially incubated in special chambers, Hudgens said. The chicks that hatched were fostered back into nests on the island, as were chicks from wild eagles and those from the San Francisco Zoo’s Avian Conservation Center.

Peter Sharpe of the Institute for Wildlife Studies places a 2-week-old bald eagle chick in a nest on Catalina Island as part of the Bald Eagle Recovery Program via helicoptering to cliffs.

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Dozens more juvenile bald eagles were released to Channel Islands National Park, and by 2006, some of the birds started hatching eggs on their own. It marked the first known natural nest hatching on Santa Cruz Island since 1950, according to the institute.

“So we stopped going in and interfering because the idea is always to do as little as we need to,” Hudgens said. “Ever since then, they've been hatching well and [the] population has been growing quite steadily.”

SoCal’s ‘unique’ coastal habitat

The Channel Islands are now home to 60 bald eagles and nearly two dozen breeding pairs, according to 2022 estimates from the Institute for Wildlife Studies.

Institute for Wildlife Studies biologists work on banding a bald eagle on Santa Cruz Island in Channel Islands National Park in July 2004.

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A biologist with the Institute for Wildlife Studies carries a juvenile bald eagle to a hack tower on Santa Cruz Island in 2005.

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Erin Weiner, the nonprofit’s eagle project lead, told LAist the islands’ largely undisturbed coastal habitat is "pretty unique," especially for California.

Rather than sticking to tall trees as seen in Big Bear or Alaska, a lot of the Catalina eagles nest on cliffs, using sticks to shield from the sheer drops, Weiner said. On Santa Rosa, some of the birds build their nests in bushes.

“On the islands, you get a lot of, like, gigantism,” Weiner said. “So, things that are bushy and small on the mainland become tree-like on islands, and so you have eagles nesting in these tree-like bushes.”

As part of the organization’s efforts to study the Channel Islands eagle population, Weiner hikes around all the known historic territories during breeding season to research the adults, eggs and chicks.

Trail cameras are set-up to keep track of the nests when humans aren’t around. Weiner occasionally has to repel down cliffs to maintain the equipment when the birds are no longer breeding.

There are also livestream cameras on a few nests through a partnership with Explore, featuring eagle pairs like Chase and Cholyn in Two Harbors or Andor and Cruz in Fraser Point.

Cruz was the first known chick to hatch naturally on the Channel Islands in decades, but Jak and Audacity in Sauces Canyon are probably the most famous pair right now, Hudgens said.

“I really appreciate the people who spend the time to watch those birds, and often they're telling us what's going on before we have any idea,” he said with a laugh.

The bald eagle population has spread to other islands in the area, including Santa Rosa and Anacapa. Some have flown as far as British Columbia, while others are setting up territories in places like Anaheim Hills in Orange County, Weiner said.

A bald eagle arrives with a fish to feed two chicks in north Orange County in 2023. The tag indicates it's part of the Institute for Wildlife Studies project to rebuild the bald eagle population on the Channel Islands, was hatched in 2013 at Santa Rosa Island and given the name La'i.

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Allen J. Schaben

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The unions representing Los Angeles Unified teachers and support staff have given the district a "red line" of April 14 to reach a deal for new contracts or face an open-ended strike.

The walkout was announced at a rally Wednesday in downtown Los Angeles that brought together thousands of members of United Teachers Los Angeles, SEIU Local 99 and Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, an increasingly active union that represents principals and other education leaders.

“We have a common vision, and we're in it together,” said Maria Nichols, president of AALA. “We’re understaffed, we're overworked, we don't have the necessary resources to really say we have safe schools and to really say that we're servicing students.”

All three unions have been negotiating with the district over pay, benefits and additional support for students for more than a year.

In response to the rally, LAUSD issued a statement and plans to hold a news conference Thursday morning.

“Los Angeles Unified is actively engaged in negotiations with our labor partners and remains committed to reaching agreements that balance the needs of students, families, and staff while ensuring long-term fiscal stability,” the statement read.

What happens now?

A strike would almost certainly shutter schools for about 400,000 students, as was the case during a three-day work stoppage in 2023.

Emily Reyes, a fifth-grade teacher at Laurel Cinematic Arts near West Hollywood, said she hopes families understand why a strike may be necessary.

“A strike this year ensures that your children are going to get all the resources that they need in the classroom, that they're given the best teaching resources,” she said.

The unions are seeking increases in pay for their members. The district has said it cannot afford what the unions have proposed.

The unions are still working their way through the bargaining process, but have said the district's offers do not meet their demands. UTLA appealed to LAUSD’s board ahead of a committee meeting Tuesday.

“We can settle this contract before we have to go on strike if you all are active in that process,” Julie Van Winkle, UTLA's vice president said. “But if that doesn’t happen then we’re still ready to go because we need to be able to afford to live in our cities and we need our schools to have basic resources.”

Los Angeles Unified has maintained that it values employees, but needs to make tough financial decisions to reduce an ongoing budget deficit. This month, layoff notices were sent to more than 650 LAUSD employees, including hundreds of support staff.

Danny Martinez teaches art at Mendez High School in Boyle Heights. He’s witnessed multiple strikes over his 20 years in the district.

“They were tough, but worthwhile,” Martinez said. “We did get a certain raise and stuff, but you know what, how the economy is right now, everything goes up, but our pay doesn't.”

How did we get here?

Earlier this year, members of United Teachers Los Angeles and SEIU Local 99 voted overwhelmingly to give their leaders the power to call a strike as negotiations over pay and benefits stalled.

UTLA’s bargaining team has met with the district more than a dozen times since negotiations began last February. The union declared an impasse in December, a legal step that triggers intervention from a neutral mediator appointed by the state’s labor relations board. That stage of the process, “fact finding,” ended this month without resolution.

The teachers union seeks 17% raises for educators over two years and changes to the salary schedule so that newer teachers who complete professional development can earn increases more quickly.

The district has countered with an 8% salary increase and 3% one-time bonus over two years. Here are the other details of the district’s proposal.

SEIU’s contract, meanwhile, expired in June 2024. That union wants 30% wage increases over three years and more hours for workers who don’t have enough to qualify for benefits.

Maria Avalos is a supervision aide at Fernangeles Elementary School in Sun Valley. Avalos said she’s only assigned four hours of work a day and also cleans houses and sells tamales to support her daughter.

“We need more hours,” Avalos said. “I live in an apartment that has one bedroom for 10 of us.”

The district has countered with a 13% wage increase over three years. Here are other details of the district’s proposal.

Associated Administrators of Los Angeles declared an impasse in February, an assessment the district disagreed with, but it agreed to continue negotiating and has another meeting scheduled Friday.

The union’s primary demands include salary increases, a reduced workload and the ability to use flex time more easily.

“Our intent is not to disrupt schools and students and families,” Nichols said. “Our intent is to get a fair and equitable contract, [and] dignity and respect for the folks.”