Benn Widdey

Bringing international artists onto the Westwood campus, UCLA Live is presenting Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite this weekend at Royce Hall. With her company Kidd Pivot Frankfort RM, the artist continues her investigation into the metaphoric implications of movement and performance. Promotional materials say that in Lost Action, the evening length work they’ll perform here, the dancers “sculpt space in real-time, working inside a form that is constantly in a state of vanishing.”

Starting tonight and running all weekend, our very own home for new and exciting performance, REDCAT will host a four evening “contest” for audience-decided best (modern) dance in the area. Part of a national six-city event created in New York in 2005, The A.W.A.R.D. Show! presents the work of 12 local dancemakers chosen by a national panel of cognoscenti.

Bringing homemade spacecraft, live dancers and film together with an exploration of a Mississippi Delta sharecropper’s life, Ralph Lemon/Cross Performance takes up residence at REDCAT this week. As part of a nation-wide tour, the company will present How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? for five evening performances in our local citadel of theatrical surprise.

After having made and presented dances in local sites including a laundromat, a dry river bed, a jail, a condemned but history-infused hotel and a handful of international locations, Collage Dance Theatre will bring its army of artists into our very own iconic city hall for three performances of Governing Bodies starting this Saturday.

The Barclay Theater in the OC is doing some big things right these days. Last weekend, they hosted the local premiere of a beautifully elegant evening of Sankai Juku, the award-winning Japanese company that is a highpoint of the dance form known as butoh. This week—only on Thursday—they present French contemporary dance with Ballet Preljocaj, a world renowned group under the direction of its celebrated choreographer, Angelin Preljocaj. Interestingly enough, the company will perform...

image courtesy of IO-Factory Established in 1975 and having performed in 700 cities and 40 countries since then, the Japanese butoh company Sankai Juku brings its 1998 award-winning work, Hibiki, to the Irvine Barclay theater this Saturday for a single show. Under the direction of western-trained Ushio Amagatsu, the company will present Hibiki (translates to Resonance From Far Away), accompanied by a lyrical and electronic score by Takashi Kako and Yoichiro Yoshikawa. For the...

Photo courtesy UCLA Live and Helios Dance Theater Opening up the UCLA Live dance series for 2010/11 season is the local contemporary company, Helios Dance Theater, led by choreographer Laura Gorenstein Miller. The group is the first Los Angeles-based troupe to grace the Royce Hall stage in a decade and they will premiere the seasonally-inspired Beautiful Monsters this Saturday night! Promotional materials describe the new work as a “haunting dance dreamscape [that] reveals the...

Dancing in the Parks photo by Ally Voye OK, here we go! A group of adventurous dancers are slipping into the Baldwin Hills Overlook in Culver City to run, dance, jump and move in planned and unplanned scenarios this Sunday, October 17 at 5pm. In a free performance entitled, simply, Dancing in Public Parks, choreographer/performer Christine Suarez and Public Practice Performance Artist Paige Tighe, in collaboration with Rebecca Alson-Milkman, Gillian McGinty, Ally Voye and...

Photo by Ryutaro Mishima As it continues to bring in artists with impact, REDCAT hosts a four performance run of multiple award-winning choreographer/company Tere O’Connor Dance this Thursday through Sunday. Presenting the West Coast premiere of Wrought Iron Fog, the five dancers move to an original score by longtime collaborator James Baker within a set designed by Walter Dundervill and O'Connor. Known for his intricate compositional layering, the choreographer makes work that is usually...

courtesy of the artist, Sardono Kusumo Our local home for adventurous theater, dance, music and combinations thereof, REDCAT begins its eighth season of presenting new and daring performance work this weekend with the international dance and lighting spectacular, Rain Coloring Forest. A collaboration between Indonesian visionary dance artist Sardono W. Kusumo and renowned American lighting designer Jennifer Tipton, the evening length work runs for only four performances at the downtown venue. Described as an...