Benn Widdey

photo of Rae Shao-Lan Blum & Tashi Wada by Mark Lannen After the opening week of performances at REDCAT’s 7th annual New Original Works Festival, I get the picture more clearly. Articulately described by curators as “a vibrant performance laboratory,” I now see that as a “heads up.” Be prepared for just what that means. Though the artists selected from the throng of applicants come with good credentials and great ideas—on paper—not everything always...

Killsonic photo by Christopher Donez The seventh annual New Original Works Festival opens Thursday at REDCAT, our city’s center for cutting edge and experimental performing arts. Housed below the statuesque Disney Hall, the festival runs for three weekends and showcases the work of eight adventurous local artists in music, theater, dance and multimedia, with mixtures of all the arts abounding. The three distinct programs include works by Maureen Huskey and Killsonic in week one,...

The ninth annual Dance Media Film Festival produced by L.A.'s own Dance Camera West jumps out of the starting gate on Friday with three collections of choice short films. Entitled “ScreenDance: A New Visual Language,” the selected cinematic anthologies are presented over two nights at REDCAT, our homegrown source for...

photo of Lionel Popkin "bacon" by Scott Groller Who knew local choreographer/dancer Lionel Popkin has such an interesting background? I did know about his New York tenure with the iconic Trisha Brown Dance Company and his shorter stints with smaller downtown groups, but none of that revealed his unique heritage and its influence on his recent dance making. A few years ago, he presented a duet as part of the summer NOW Festival at...

photo by Monique L'Heureux One of the big things that choreographer Bradley Michaud mentions in his company's promotional materials is his aesthetic austerity. He’s interested in the movement, the energy and the physical abandon. He’s not looking for music, text or other visuals to tell his not-a-story. At the Bootleg Theater, he and his performing collaborators in Method Contemporary Dance followed that prescription in their weekend production, See If You Still Love Us. We...

It's unusual for a ballet company to explode onto the international scene as quickly as the "overnight" successes in other arts. To do so, there needs to be a philanthropic supporter who gets the ball rolling and stays there, like Lincoln Kirstein and the NYC Ballet or Baroness Rothschild and Martha Graham. So, for an American company to do this in our economically-challenged 21st century is an unexpected wonder! But "Hello!" to Cedar Lake...

Method Contemporary Dance photo by Keith Weng Choreographer Bradley Michaud does not want to say more than what we see or feel when we look at his dances. His promotional materials highlight the lack of embellishment to the dancing--no text, no video, no acting--and emphasize the "pure, high velocity, idiosyncratic, unbridled movement and momentum." So, I'm not sure if I can tell you what he and his company, Method Contemporary Dance will be dancing...

Photo by Sylvio Dittrich Acclaimed New York choreographer John Jasperse brings his five member company to REDCAT this week for a handful of performances of his newest evening length dance theater work. Presenting the west coast premiere of Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat-Out Lies, the work includes a score composed by Hahn Rowe and played live by the string quartet (with electronics) called ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble). As clearly indicated in the...

Independent LA dancemakers and small companies struggle with all the non-artistic elements (production, fundraising, audience development, etc.) while they persevere in paying the rent, feeding the family and staying sane in a dynamic world. A quartet of such artists--women and men who have created intelligent, thought-provoking, visceral and compelling modern dance in their noteworthy careers--have banded together for two performances they call Four Headed Dance III

Rosanna Gamson/World Wide leaves no stone unturned when the company explores the creator's own personal history and ancestral connections in Tov, which continues its performance run at REDCAT through Saturday. Layered with the fatal story of the tarpan horse, the work is a collaboration with Polish theater company CHOREA Theatre Association and includes a cast of 17 dancers, singers, actors and other musicians. This hour-long event brings a Eurasian environment to the re-configured theater...