Jessica Koslow

Performers in “Floor of the Forest.” Winarsh-Documenta, 2007.

Diane Madden, one of the newly appointed associate artistic directors of Trisha Brown Dance Company (TBDC), has been walking around the Getty Center all day. She arrived from New York City the night before, and she’s scoping out the landscape where Trisha Brown’s Roof Piece will be performed this Saturday afternoon.

Roof Piece originated in 1971 atop buildings in a 10-block area of New York’s SoHo. Twelve dancers transmitted movement from dancer to dancer, roof to roof. This will be ne of only a few re-mountings of the piece and the first time it will be seen in LA.

Roof Piece is just one of the works presented this week as part of CAP (Center for the Art of Performance) UCLA’s Trisha Brown Dance Company: The Retrospective Project, which includes eight proscenium choreographies and several site-specific works from one of the most widely acclaimed choreographers in postmodern dance. During Brown’s five-decade-spanning career, she was the first woman choreographer to receive the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, in 1991. She was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2002 and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 2011.

Kristy Edmunds, artistic and executive director of CAP UCLA, planted the seed for the retrospective at the end of 2011.

“Kristy saw where we’re at, where Trisha’s work is at in history, what’s going on personally with the company,” says Madden. “She saw this was a moment to really do a very big, broad overview of the work. She’s right. She’s got good timing.”

“Trisha’s from the Pacific Northwest,” continues Madden. …

Read full article at LA Stage Times

Cedar Lake performs “Orbo Novo,” choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. ©Julieta Cervantes

Two days before the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet performs, I am opposite Artistic Director Benoit-Swan Pouffer at l’Agora, cité internationale de la danse in the charming French city of Montpellier. We are sitting in a corner of the courtyard on a warm July afternoon, and Pouffer is visibly amped that his company is touring in Europe. The renovated 14th-century monastery is the headquarters for the 2012 Montpellier Danse festival, and its five studios and outdoor amphitheatre serve as venues for many of its performances.

Pouffer, who’s been dancing since age 6, is Parisian, but he has spent equal time (18 years) in New York. After studying at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse, he moved to the Big Apple to follow his dream of joining Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, where he remained for seven years.

“It went so fast,” Pouffer says. “From Ailey, I took one day off and went to Cedar Lake as a resident choreographer. I stayed there for nine months. …

Read full article at Artillery Magazine

Wadada Leo Smith and Oguri in “Notaway: A Quest for Freedom.” Photo by Roger Burns.

March begins on Friday. Cue another round of the popular block party in Venice called First Fridays. This month, besides mingling in a stylish crowd and eating from a flurry of food trucks or high-end restuarants, jazz and dance fans may want to walk half a block east of Abbot Kinney Boulevard. At the solar-powered Electric Lodge, longtime collaborators dancer/choreographer Oguri and composer/trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith present the premiere of Notaway: Quest for Freedom.

Joining the duo for the weekend run are Japanese choreographer Yasunari Tamai and Smith’s Golden Quartet, featuring Anthony Davis on piano, John Lindberg on bass and Pheeroan akLaff on drums. Notaway: Quest for Freedom is part of the Flower of the Season 2013 series, produced by Arcane Collective and Body Weather Laboratory (BWL), a forum Oguri uses to teach contemporary movement known as Butoh, which utilizes the study of nature as source material for dance. BWL planted roots at Electric Lodge in 1997 and has continued to host workshops and productions there.

The Notaway cast has been consumed with rehearsals since Saturday. That was the first day the Japanese dancers heard Smith’s compositions. …

Read full article at LA Stage Times

Arcosm Co. presented “Traverse” at Theatre Raymond Kabbaz on Feb. 1. / Photo courtesy of Arcosm

When the lights go up at Theatre Raymond Kabbaz for the French performance company Arcosm’s “Traverse,” lead Emilien Gobard is slumping in his recliner. He rises and repeats a seemingly uneventful daily routine again and again. He lives a ho-hum life, complacently lulled by its monotony. Yet his humdrum existence is the audience’s delight. His movements are graceful and precise; his body control impeccable. Gobard is a mime. Watching him do even the simplest acts is enjoyable. Surprisingly, there is also something amusing about the process of repetition when enacted poetically by a mime.

For the next hour, visitors pop in on Gobard unexpectedly: one beautiful woman who enters and exits, wrapped in a skin-tight dress, and two frenzied guys, who also come and go sporadically. They inject chaos into Gobard’s world, pushing him out of his comfort zone. It’s easy to lose yourself within Gobard’s disquieting journey, and feel the discomfort of the shove.

Read full article at Culture Spot LA

Meredith Monk in “On Behalf of Nature”/Photo by Spencer Davis

Fifteen students in wonderfully white outfits are strewn about the courtyard next to Freud Playhouse. Each one embodies a character of his or her own choosing. One woman’s hand is lightly pounding on a door she leans on. A few stragglers crouch just outside the entrance. Sounds erupt sporadically, sometimes simultaneously. It’s Tuesday evening, and the group is holding its third and final rehearsal for a pre-performance installation before the premiere of Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble’s On Behalf of Nature, this weekend as part of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA (CAP UCLA) season.

Despite the 47-degree temperature, Monk and vocal ensemble member Ellen Fisher walk around slowly, offering individuals notes on movement and sound. Monk appears to be floating in her colorful, quilted, floor-length coat with images of clouds around her shoulders.

“Keep your ears open,” says Monk. “That’s the fun of it. Knowing what’s going on around you and seeing where you can fit in.”

Full article at LA Stage Times

Courtesy of Casa Patas

A female Flamenco dancer with black, fitted pants; a violin player with a Mohawk; abstract movements accompanied by silence; a woman playing guitar; mundane acts performed with hairpins and earrings. “The DeMente Territory” was not a traditional evening of Flamenco at Le Lycee Francais de Los Angeles’ Theatre Raymond Kabbaz. Partnering with the Consulate General of Spain, the 220-seat, intimate Kabbaz presented a forward-reaching Flamenco ensemble from Madrid’s Fundación Conservatorio Flamenco Casa Patas for a two-night run, beginning Nov. 8.

The first clue of the unconventionality to come was the eclectic musical troupe. Violinist Víctor Guadiana sported a Mohawk; one of the two female singers wore deadlocks. Though her heartfelt singing straddled tradition, her wails and cries screamed defiance. The Norwegian guitarist Bettina Flater stood out for just being female. Apparently, only one other woman makes professional rounds in Spain. It’s not often I can identify a particular Flamenco tune, but I immediately recognized the words of popular Cuban singer Silvio Rodríguez. His inclusion suited the rebelliousness of the evening. Rodríguez leans Left. Revolutionary politics inspire many of his lyrics.

The entire company, including director and choreographer Karen Lugo and her dancing partner José Maldonado, exuded fresh-faced energy. …

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Tiffany Sweat, Julie Lockhart, Melissa Schade and Athena Sterig/Photo by Taso Papadakis

A limber male dancer stands on his hands, his legs split into a triangle; leading actor Brad Culver yells out nonsensical sounds, warming his vocal chords as he stretches his mouth. When the five-minute break ends, Kate Hutter, the artistic director of LA Contemporary Dance Company, huddles with three women, demonstrating how red ribbons flow from their hands to the ground.

Hutter’s collaborator, Aaron Henne, artistic director of theatre dybbuk, watches from the front, his 72-page script in hand. The co-directors (Hutter is also choreographer, and Henne the writer) are holed up at Brockus Project Studios at the Brewery, rehearsing Cave…A Dance for Lilith, their third collaboration, which opens tonight next door at Diavolo Performance Space, running Friday through Sunday until November 18.

The dance theater piece experiments with the collision between text, movement and music. “After our first collaboration Body Mecanique in June 2009, I thought it would be great to continue working together,” says Henne. But for their next joint venture, “Wouldn’t it be interesting to do a piece that’s more narrative, more like a play, where the dance is as much text as the play itself? We bandied that idea around a lot. Finally, about one and a half years ago when I decided to start theatre dybbuk, I was really interested in the first piece having to do with Lilith folklore and Hebrew Goddess mythology.”

Cave…A Dance for Lilith unearths the humanity behind the myth of Lilith, the Hebrew name for a demon goddess. …

Read full article at LA Stage Times

Gorilla Crew / Photo courtesy of Korean Cultural Center LA

I was just about the only white person in the audience at “2012 Sounds of Friendship” at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre on Oct. 9. The night’s lineup offered a glimpse at the “hallyu” (Korean Wave), or the surge and spread in popularity of Korean pop culture, with performances by musicians, singers and dancers representing both traditional and modern art forms. The show was free, but interested parties had to pick up tickets at the Korean Cultural Center. Hence, the majority of Korean faces in the audience.

Los Angeles is home to the largest population of Korean Americans and Korean residents in the United States. Diplomacy is best achieved through song and dance. This year, in particular, marks the 130^th anniversary of friendship between the Republic of Korea and the United States, and the South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement took effect in March 2012. “Sounds of Friendship,” the program announces, celebrates the long-standing relationship between the two countries. …

Read full article at Culture Spot LA

Photo by: Spencer Davis

It is not common knowledge that Akram Khan was snubbed by NBC this summer during the American telecast of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London. NBC replaced Khan’s five-minute dance sequence to the hymn “Abide With Me,” sung by Emile Sandé, with Ryan Seacrest interviewing swimmer Michael Phelps. Danny Boyle had it right though, in tapping Khan to present his work for the nearly 27 million U.S. television viewers. On Oct. 5, as part of Center for the Art of Performance (CAP) at UCLA’s dance series, Los Angeles was privy to witness Khan’s work up-close. The British Bangladeshi artistic director of Akram Khan Company debuted the West Coast premiere of “Vertical Road” (2010) at Royce Hall, with a repeat performance on Saturday evening.

Not as close, however, as audience members would have been at a show during UCLA’s previous seasons. Before the performance, CAP Executive and Artistic Director Kristy Edmunds explained how a few rows of seats in the front of the house had been removed in order to present each artist’s work as they had intended. In other words, people were just too close before.

“Vertical Road,” at 70 minutes sans intermission, picks up in intensity and never lets go. …

Read full article at Culture Spot LA