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After its huge success in 2011, REDCAT, CalArts and a large group of local, national and international organizations are bringing back RADAR L.A., a global festival of contemporary theater and dance for only one week, starting tonight.
The full schedule includes 18 productions, with 10 events alone Wednesday night. Just check the schedule.
Along with innovative, inspiring, entertaining and boundary-pushing work from Argentina, Mexico, Japan (with the United Kingdom) and Chile, there are some local free-thinkers sandwiched in and around the out-of-towners. These include the Los Angeles Poverty Department (collaborating with Wunderbaum from the Netherlands), Theatre Movement Bazaar, David Rousseve/REALITY and theCalArts Center for New Performance. Individuals participating extend the line from puppeteer Janie Geiser (with Erik Ehn) to Roger Guenveur Smith, Luis Alfaro and Trieu Tran.
As this writer is most familiar with the dance/theater entry, David Rousseve/REALITY will be showing what is called an "avant premiere" of "Stardust." The fully sculpted production will make its formal appearance in 2014, which gives the dance-maker and his colleagues ample time to reflect after this week-long immersion.
In his masterful award-winning way, Rousseve tells a story with movement, text, video (by Cari Ann Shim Sham*) and music (by d. Sabela grimes) as he observes and comments on today's Twitter generation. Promotional materials assert that '"Stardust' unleashes a full-bodied expression of emotional states that contrast the intimate romanticism" of a never seen central character. The man and his company of ferocious dancers will be hanging out in the theater below Disney Hall almost every night.
It's an intensely packed week of activity that's bound to wake up our sleepy couch-potato-ey lives. Find a way to slip away from the norm and dive into some of these outstanding offerings. Feel free to write back to tell us what was good and what was even greater. Lots of choices . . . so little time. You can purchase tickets online.
