Benn Widdey

photo by Paulo Focardi and Tim Agler Bradley Michaud's Method Contemporary Dance Company is opening up its season with "Remarkaly Content Free" at the Diavolo Space this weekend. Presenting three premieres and one work from the repertory (all choreographed by Michaud), the company of eight relishes the off-center, high speed world of sheer abandon without a need to embellish with artifice or explanation. Having performed at several showcases over the past few years-- including...

photo Cameron Wittig courtesy of Walker Art Center MacArthur Genius Award winners Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton are bringing their Songs of Ascension for a Los Angeles premiere at REDCAT for five shows this week! Originally inspired by poet Norman Fischer's translations of the Psalms and by an eight-story sculpture and performance space created by Hamilton called Tower, the recently created work includes Hamilton's raw, sensuous video imagery, Monk's Vocal Ensemble, a string quartet...

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...

Cloud Eye Control, courtesy of CalArts Photography Since its opening five years ago, REDCAT programming has maintained a space for local artists to show their work at the state of the art theater below Disney Hall. The NOW Festival is the highlight of this community-aware programming. This first week of the three week series includes interdisciplinary projects that bend traditions and investigate new visions of work for the stage. The artists in this first...