Boozing, Brawling and Behaving Badly

Posted on April 24, 2011 by admin


By Victoria Looseleaf

From our perch in the front row of the 1,800-seat Ahmanson Theatre, we could almost feel the spray of spit emanating from the New Jerseyed mouth of James (Tony Soprano – we can’t help it, we were Sopranos addicts) Gandolfini. The occasion was the Los Angeles opening of Yasmina Reza’s mordantly delicious play, God of Carnage, which reunited the Broadway cast: Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, Jeff Daniels and the world’s most brilliant mobster, er, wholesaler (toilet seats, anyone?), the fantastic Gandolfini who also stars this month in HBO’s insightful film, Cinéma Vérité, about the making of the groundbreaking 1973 PBS documentary, An American Family, starring our friends, the Louds.

But we digress: Not for nothing did GOC win a Tony Award for best play in 2009, with all the actors snagging nominations and Harden taking home the statuette for Best Actress. Translated from the French by Christopher Hampton and directed by Matthew Warchus (the Brit also copped a Tony), God is about two married couples who meet to sort out a playground fight between their 11-year old sons. Niceness soon descends into nihilism in this 90-minute cross between Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Honeymooners. (You can almost hear Gandolfini doing Jackie Gleason: “To the moon, Alice, to the moon.”)

Ralph and Alice get into it in the 50’s hit series.

Clafoutis, projectile vomiting and tulip-tossing are but some of the physical touchstones in this shifting dance of agitated highs and lows. Reza is a formidable talent, having penned the 1995 Tony Award-winning Art, while the disintegrating marriages we watch in God mirror her own fractured union. Moving from espressos to rum, all to the constant irritating chirping of Daniels’ cell phone, this quartet strikes many a familiar chord, ultimately ending with the blunt realizations that the players are left to fend for themselves, much like we mortals do in real life.

Clafoutis also has a starring role in Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage.

A spectacular night in the theater, the A-list crowd turned out to see this fearless foursome “take on roles that allow them to rip the stuffing out of one another, tear up the scenery, stomp on their own vanity and have the time of their lives”…or so said The New York Times. On hand for the civil disobedience were Brangelina, Will Ferrell, Martin Sheen, Anjelica Huston, Julian Sands, Eric Idle and a host of TV stars unrecognizable to us, big whoop. So, get thee to the Music Center (through May 29), and in the interim, for more dish on the play, here are our KUSC mini-chats with Hope Davis and Marcia Gay Harden; then give a listen here for the full interview on Arts Alive.

Girl talk with two of the best in the biz!

P.S. Roman Polanski is slated to direct the film version of God of Carnage, starring Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly (originally Matt Dillon, but Reilly’s the better choice). Why movie peeps don’t use the actors who brought the work to trenchant life is a mystery, though this cast sounds cool. And the play, originally set in France but changed to Brooklyn in its American incarnation, will again be set in Paris, since Mr. Polanski is ostensibly still not allowed back here.

Posted in AHMANSON THEATRE, BRANGELINA, GOD OF CARNAGE, HOPE DAVIS, JAMES GANDOLFINI, JEFF DANIELS, KATE WINSLET, MARCIA GAY HARDEN, MATTHEW WARCHUS, ROMAN POLANSKI, THE LOUD FAMILY, TONY SOPRANO, YASMINA REZA | Comments Off on Boozing, Brawling and Behaving Badly

What They Are: Edie Brickell Introduces the Gaddabouts

Posted on April 10, 2011 by admin

The Gaddabouts: Pino Palladino, Andy Fairweather Low, Edie Brickell, and Steve Gadd. Photo by Jonathan Mover and Amy-Beth McNeely.

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

Rhymin’ Simon seemed almost at a loss for words to express how he felt about the performance his wife, Edie Brickell, had just given as the frontwoman for the new band the Gaddabouts. “It’s so great to see her in this kind of venue”—Zankel Hall, part of Carnegie Hall—“and with such great musicians,” he told me and Robert Rosen on Friday night, as your TLR correspondents mixed with the crowd congratulating Edie and the rest of the band in a hallway near the 599-seat theater.

In January, Brickell—who has recorded only sporadically since marrying Paul Simon in 1992 (they have three children together)—released two CDs: The Gaddabouts, from which most of Friday’s set list was drawn, and Edie Brickell, with a different band. At that time I did a phone interview with her for vanityfair.com, but I hadn’t yet met her. As I waited after the sold-out concert for a chance to introduce myself, I watched a middle-aged woman put out her hand to Edie and say, “Hi, I’m Larry Linden from Dallas, Texas.” “Hi,” Edie said graciously, taking her hand. A little later Edie introduced the woman to me as “my mom”—“She was just jokin’ with me before,” Edie explained. (Yes, her mom’s name is Larry.)

The 45-year-old Brickell, still sharp-cheekboned and thin (she wore skinny jeans and a billowy salmon-colored top onstage), is endearingly unaffected. “I was so nervous about playin’ guitar,” she confessed to the audience at one point. “Could y’all see that?” During the set she occasionally strummed an electric guitar while seated, supplementing the flashier playing of Andy Fairweather Low—who had a tendency to shout out minor complaints, almost as though he had a form of Tourette’s (“This is in B-flat?!”). It was that kind of a show, WFUV-sponsored, intimate, casual. The hefty fellow sitting next to me slapped out a song’s rhythm on his thighs; once in a while someone let out a whoop or a loud comment. And at the end we all sang a specially written birthday song to Steve Gadd, drummer and founder of the band—bassist Pino Palladino is its fourth member—following lyrics written on cardboard and tooting noisemakers for emphasis. “I am beyond grateful to Steve,” Edie told us, “because he got me recording again.”

For his part, Gadd informed us that songs were just “pouring out” of Brickell; indeed, some of them, such as “Good Day,” she wrote the same day they were recorded (“I had a train ride into the city where I could puzzle out” the lyrics, she’d said during the interview, as though that explained such speed-writing). Contributing to the easy atmosphere, the songs were more pleasant than exciting—none matched “What I Am,” Brickell’s breakout hit (with the New Bohemians), in intensity and originality—but they’re a good fit for her voice, with its Norah Jones-ish velvety-ness and a hint of grit beneath. My favorites were “Never So Far Away,” about saying goodbye (“so long, sugar”) to someone who’s nonetheless always close; “My Heart, My Head,” done tango-style with accordion; and “Gonna Hold On,” a bluesy number she said she wrote “for my gorgeous husband.” And that would be? Oh yeah.

Posted in Andy Fairweather Low, Carnegie Hall, Edie Brickell, Paul Simon, Pino Palladino, Steve Gadd, The Gaddabouts, Zankel Hall | Comments Off on What They Are: Edie Brickell Introduces the Gaddabouts

Gustavo Goes Hollywood & Then Some

Posted on March 27, 2011 by admin


By Victoria Looseleaf

Could there be anything better than being in the audience at Walt Disney Concert Hall listening to an all-Tchaikovsky program performed by the illustrious Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by ours truly, the Dude himself, Gustavo Dudamel? If there is, please let The Leaf know, as the March 13 concert had it going on. Oh, yeah!

From left: Rose, Burton, Rhys, Dudamel, McDowell, Bloom

Continuing its live telecasting to more than 400 movie theaters around the country in its second camera-ready appearance, the Phil was abetted by some Tinseltown thespians reciting snippets of Shakespeare – all around the hall, no less – to a trio of Tchaikovsky scores. Exuding megastar wattage, Orlando Bloom was Romeo, leaping about with more agility than, well, Spider-Man. Assaying Juliet was Anika Noni Rose. Commanding the organ loft: Malcolm McDowell as Prospero from The Tempest (but who can ever forget him as the thug Alex in A Clockwork Orange). He also took a turn as the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, with weak link Matthew Rhys’ tortured to-be-or-not-to-be titular character strutting in front of first-row patrons.

Orlando Bloom in repose.

Kate Burton directed the actors, but pulling it all together musically was Dudamel and his merry band of virtuosi. Beginning with the 1888 Hamlet Fantasy-Overture, the Dude rocked with riches from his sensuous strings until the horns signaled the entrance of the Ghost. McDowell has presence to burn (and looked dashing in a long black neo-Edwardian coat). The plaintive oboe solo signaling Ophelia, all sweetly sad in B-minor, was also delicious. Then with the Tempest Symphonic Fantasia (1873), came the evocation of the sea: twenty minutes of lush romantic melodies, not to mention a vivid brass fanfare, roiling, indeed, surging with tympani.

Malcolm McDowell from Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant A Clockwork Orange (1971)

The intermissionless concert roared to a conclusion with the thrilling tone poem on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The harp sang, the cymbals clanged and doomed love soared (again in B-minor), excizing the familiar melody from staples of late night infomercials and turning it into sheer heaven. The genius of Dudamel, then, is to make the old new again. Fresh. Rapturous. Sparkling. A sonic orgasm, if you will.

The following week, the pianist was to have been Martha Argerich. But, as is her wont, she cancelled at the last minute (blaming back problems), with the Phil bringing in Jeremy Denk, a wonderful keyboardist and, well, long-time blogger. What took so long? Denk was an absolute revelation in Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, letting trills emanate from his fingers as if from God. The cadenza (Beethoven had actually written three for this 1798 C-major work), was electrifying, and as the music continued, Dudamel let loose in his usual potent manner: big, bold, beautiful strokes of lovingly wrought melodies filled the hall like so many Champagne bubbles. When Denk returned to the stage for his second bow, he then graced us with an encore from Charles Ives. Unmitigated bliss.

Jeremy Denk doing what he does best.

The concert, which had begun with Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music, closed with his 1782 Symphony No. 35 (Haffner). Talk about jubilation! Everything about the work sang, from its gallivanting principal motif to its dancing scales. With a minuet of gentle friskiness moving to the dazzling finale, this was Mozart as it was meant to be played – and heard – a simply delectable 20 minutes not soon to be forgotten.


Nor will we forget Milos Forman’s brilliant take on Mozart in Amadeus (1984)


P.S. As of this post, the Dude and his gorgeous wife, Eloísa Maturén, are one day away from having a baby. And how does The Leaf know the precise due date? She had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Maturén, a former dancer, backstage at the Pavilion after the final performance of Nederlands Dans Theater. (Click here for my post which links to my L.A. Times story and my KUSC radio interview with NDT’s artistic director, Jim Vincent). The lovely mother-to-be added that she was having a boy who will be named Martín Dudamel Maturén. Mazel tov to the glittering couple and, again, to the Los Angeles Philharmonic for helping bring the best music to lucky Angelenos.

Posted in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, ANIKA NONI ROSE, ELOISA MATUREN, GUSTAVO DUDAMEL, JEREMY DENK, LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC, MALCOLM NCDOWELL, MATTHEW RHYS, ORLANDO BLOOM, STANLEY KUBRICK, WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL | Comments Off on Gustavo Goes Hollywood & Then Some

LA Opera Gets “Screwed"…

Posted on March 18, 2011 by admin


By Victoria Looseleaf

…so to speak. Not wishing to show her age (The Leaf arrived in the City of Angels as a mere babe, trust her), but to prove she’s been a cultural maven for some time now, she was actually in the audience when Los Angeles Opera last presented Benjamin Britten’s wonderfully eerie opus, The Turn of the Screw, in – egad – 1991. But what a difference two decades make. This new production (originally created for Glyndebourne Festival Opera and directed by Jonathan Kent in his L.A. Opera debut), was mounted by Francesca Gilpin, and it is a stunner.


Based on the 1898 Henry James novella (there’s no dearth of adaptations, from films and TV versions to plays and a graphic novel), this is an ostensible ghost story. Set in the English countryside, the plot features a Governess (the divine Patricia Racette), who arrives to take care of two children (both making LAO debuts, Ashley Emerson’s Flora and the astonishing 12-year old Michael Kepler Meo as Miles, whose poise and artistic demeanor recall a pubescent Dirk Bogarde).

Doomsday: Miles & The Governess as the spectral Quint lurks about

Simple enough. Not! Swimming in homoeroticism (homophobia?), the two-act, 16-scene work deals with truth and lies, that omnipresent plumbing the depths of the human psyche and…the big one, good versus evil. So, too, does Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance 3D film, which I recently covered for the L.A. Times – read my review here – and should definitely not be mentioned in the same breath as Britten, but The Leaf can’t resist the shameless plug thing.)

Yeah: Bring it on!

Britten and his life partner and muse, Peter Pears

Britten, who was gay and lived with the tenor Peter Pears, for whom he composed a number of roles, including the Narrator/Peter Quint in Screw, provides an abundance of glorious orchestration. No matter there are only 13 players in the pit, Maestro James Conlon coaxed a precise, textured sound, especially pronounced in the harp – to give the story (libretto by Myfanwy Piper), a shining, thrilling accompaniment. So: When the Governess arrives, she is greeted by a staid housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (Ann Murray, in yet another LAO debut), and shortly thereafter encounters those creepy specters, the dead valet Quint (William Burden, ditto re his debut) and the erstwhile governess, a wild-eyed, Elvira-becoiffed Miss Jessel (Tamara Wilson), who had met her unfortunate demise by drowning.

No fairy tale here, where trouble had obviously been afoot (as well as in, er other bodily parts), which then makes for the continued presence of doom. Indeed, it seems that Quint had had his way with both spinster Jessel and Miles. The lyric, “The ceremony of innocence is drowned,” sung by Quint and Jessel at the top of Act 2, define the work as deliciously decadent. It’s also shot through with sorrow and resignation.

As the screw turns, and turns again, there’s decidedly no going back.

Paul Brown’s fabulous minimalist set (a large moveable panel of reflecting windows; an enormously forlorn looking bare tree branch), and Mad Men-like costumes add to the emotional fervor so exquisitely rendered in Britten’s score. David Manion’s sumptiously moody lighting also complements.


And more good news: LA Opera is embarking on a Britten festival to commemorate the composer’s centennial in 2013, with Billy Budd and Albert Herring both on tap again. It would also be beyond wonderful if Britten’s Death in Venice, which I was privileged to see at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice in 2008 (read my essay, Debt in Venice, here), was also slated for the multi-year celebration. In the interim, bravo to Los Angeles Opera, in its 25th anniversary season, for this deliciously daring production.

The dreamy dancing boyz in Britten’s Death in Venice

In the interim: Go get screwed, dear readers. You have just four more chances (March 20, 25, 27 and 30), to catch this marvelous work by Benjamin Britten.

Posted in ANN MURRAY, Benjamin Britten, HENRY JAMES, JONATHAN KENT, L.A. OPERA, MAD MEN, MICHAEL FLATLEY, MICHAEL KEPLER MEO, PATRICIA RACETTE, TAMARA WILSON, THE TURN OF THE SCREW, WILLIAM BURDEN | Comments Off on LA Opera Gets “Screwed"…

Going Dutch: Dance & Otherwise

Posted on March 17, 2011 by admin


By Victoria Looseleaf

 

Who knew that Den Hague, home to the World Court and Vermeer’s fabulous Girl With a Pearl Earring (the painting, not the flick starring Scarlett Johannson and recent Oscar winner Colin Firth as the sexiest artist to pick up a palette), is a hotbed of dance! A short train ride from Amsterdam (where pot smoking, hookers and bicyclists are omnipresent – read my Los Angeles Times Dispatch From Amsterdam here), this picturesque town is where the great ballerina Anna Pavlova died of pneumonia at the Hotel Des Indes while on tour in 1931 at age 50. (Allegedly, the prima’s last words were “Bring me my Dying Swan costume.”).

 

The canal-dotted burg also gave birth to the Holland Dance Festival (read my Dance Magazine reviews from 2009 and 2007 here), with the ’09 theme celebrating 50 years of Nederlands Dans Theater.

Ah, NDT: I love everything about the company, from the choreographers the troupe spawned and its astonishingly gorgeous dancers, to its newest artistic director, New Jersey native, Jim Vincent. When the company made regular appearances in Los Angeles – at the Wadsworth, Wiltern and Royce Hall from 1995 until 2003, and in Orange County in ’04 – I was always in attendance. But when the economy tanked, NDT’s 2009 Music Center gig was cancelled (and your faithful scribe had been booked to do the pre-concert talks. Bah!).

But better late than never: NDT returns. Sure, Jiří Kylián may be gone (boo-hoo, but, hey, nothing lasts forever, especially in such an ethereal art form as dance), so get thee to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion next week. There you will have an evocative, emotional and exceptionally rich aesthetic experience. First read all about NDT here, in my Los Angeles Times preview story, listen to my KUSC-FM interview with Jim Vincent here, then come for the pre-concert talks, which, happily, I am doing, before you catch the show. To quote Bob Dylan, “It’s all good!”

P.S. Beach bunnies may not find Scheveningen Beach (a resort town near Den Hague) to their liking, but it’s positively primordial, especially in November. And then there’s the gambling. Go Dutch and tell them The Leaf sent you.

Posted in ANNA PAVLOVA, COLIN FIRTH, DEN HAGUE, GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, HOLLAND DANCE FESTIVAL, HOTEL DES INDES, JIM VINCENT, JOHANNES VERMEER, NEDERLANDS DANS THEATER, SCARLETT JOHANNSON, SCHEVENINGEN BEACH | Comments Off on Going Dutch: Dance & Otherwise

Flatley Fizzles

Posted on March 17, 2011 by admin


By Victoria Looseleaf

It’s safe to say that that Michael Flatley did for Irish step-dancing what the late Jane Russell did for the push-up bra. (With gravity eventually bringing them both down – though Ms. Russell actually passed away recently at 89 from a respiratory-related illness).

Whatever!

Michael Flatley as Mr. America (with shades of Cagney’s George M. Cohan)

Undeniably, Chicago-born Flatley can hoof, and seeing him live was worth the schlep to Anaheim for The Leaf (read my 2005 Los Angeles Times review here). It seems, though, that in 2006, the King of the stiff-torsoed/manic leg dance was felled by a mysterious virus, leaving him unable to walk, much less strut around onstage like a preening peacock in between bouts of executing fusillade-style footwork, reportedly 35 taps a second. (Or so saeth the Guinness Book of Records.)

But after consulting 50 – count ‘em – 50 doctors, Flatley says he was miraculously healed. This was a sign, he felt, to put on another Lord of the Dance extravaganza for his adoring acolytes. (A reported 60 million have seen the live version since its 1996 debut, and a direct-to-video flick was released in 1997).

Though this time, Flatley, like Bieber, Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers before him, would have it filmed in 3D, courtesy of Marcus Viner. Oy! Even the film’s intro is pompous, with the Flatster blustering on in clichéd catchphrases: “It’s like pushing an elephant up a hill.” “It’s like going back into the lion’s den.” (Grr!) “There can’t be a great army without a great general.”


There ain’t nothin’ like a dame, even if these chorines are far from the Rockettes!


And he goes on. And so does The Leaf. Click here to read my L.A. Times review of the film. You won’t even need 3D glasses.

(And you won’t see my original last line: “Even the I.R.A. couldn’t have concocted a bigger bomb.” Sure, I knew this was over the top and the apotheosis of bad taste, even pour moi, but since the powers that be at the Times, by consensus, said the line had to go, poof – it was excised from the family-friendly paper.)

Posted in BONO, CELTIC TIGER, DUBLIN, FEET OF FLAMES, JEROME ROBBINS, JONAS BROTHERS, JUSTIN BIEBER, LORD OF THE DANCE, MARCUS VINER, MICHAEL FLATLEY, MILEY CYRUS, O2 ARENA, RONAN HARDIMAN, ST. PATRICK’S DAY | Comments Off on Flatley Fizzles

Slow Dancing…With Spuds

Posted on March 7, 2011 by admin


By Victoria Looseleaf

Buttocks. Beauty. Bach. Welcome to butoh, Eiko and Koma-style. The married couple, who met in 1971 in Tatsumi Hijikata’s Tokyo studio and are two of the most revered artists in the dance world, imbue butoh – a form created in postwar Japan as a response to Hiroshima – with powerful imagery, haunting truths and never-ending revelations. Currently on a multi-city retrospective tour, Regeneration, the duo graced Los Angeles’ black box theater, REDCAT, in a performance of such staggering depth that The Leaf, suffering from one of her massive cluster headaches, was transported to a realm far beyond the physical.

The body as landscape (shades of Andrew Wyeth’s Helga, perhaps?)

The glacial pace that defines butoh does, in fact, seem to not only slow down time, but to halt it. With Eiko (58) and Koma (61), who are now dealing with the aging body, their movement vocabulary offers startling insights into what it means to be human. Beginning with last year’s Raven, set to a bird-cawing, tom-tom accentuated score by Robert Mirabal, the duo cannily moves backward in time during the three-part program. But first it is Eiko, who, topless and chalky white, lies prone amid a stage strewn with straw and black feathers (no Black Swan hysteria here). Arching her back and splaying her toes, Eiko eventually rises to adorn herself with a kind of animal skin before Koma enters in a decidedly more bouncy mode. An incessant urgency prevails, with backwards walks, crouching and an agony bordering on ecstasy all thrown in for purposeful measure.

The shorter Night Tide (1984), a study of the body as landscape, began with a gander at Eiko’s inverted buttocks. Reminiscent of Cecilia Bengolea’s work in Paquerette (seen last summer at the Montpellier Dance Festival – click here to read – wherein Bengolea’s legs were perpendicular to the floor, her derriere upside-down and sporting an elongated Lucite dildo pointing north in mini-Eiffel Tower mode), any further resemblance between these artists soon ceased. What we had in its stead, though, was Koma in reverse gender fashion as a Pieta figure, cradling Eiko like the precious cargo she is, both bodies smooth as polished, albeit veined, marble statuary.

Finally, in an excerpt from 1976’s White Dance, in this case a form of meta-theater, the delicious English folk song, Agincourt Carol, was first heard, with Koma in red kimono and Eiko in flowing earth-toned silk. Much skittering took place against a sumptuous piece of fabric as backdrop, the projected images ranging from a moth and wings to a golden-hued watery environment. Koma majestically moved pavane-like before strains of a Bach harpsichord concerto began. Then, in a moment of exquisite folly, Koma began strewing potatoes around the stage. Potatoes! Seriously, what could be better than this?

Butoh: The Dance of Depth (Photos by Steven Gunter)

As the couple inched slowly towards the audience, the sounds of this hearty tuber – yes, those rough and tumble studs were occasionally underfoot – the work drew to a fantastic close: Sustenance, power and love were all in the building.

Ain’t life grand! And good news: Eiko and Koma will be returning to Los Angeles in September, to the Skirball Cultural Center, reprising Offering, their mesmerizing site specific work performed in the water. Yes!

Posted in AGINCOURT CAROL, ANDREW WYETH, BACH, BUTOH, EIKO, HELGA, KOMA, REDCAT, SKIRBALL CULTURAL CENTER | Comments Off on Slow Dancing…With Spuds

Pretty On Pointe

Posted on March 6, 2011 by admin


By Victoria Looseleaf

I’m a balletomane – especially when it comes to the bodies. I also love the art form’s discipline, beauty and history, and have been pushing for Los Angeles to have a world-class ballet company to call its own for years. Unlike New York, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco and other towns that support ballet with big bucks and high-class patronage, our City of Angels has been hard-pressed to get on the balletic bandwagon. (Calling Eli Broad: Would that this modern-day Medici take a fancy to Balanchine and pals…)

Backstage with Colleen Neary and Thordal Christensen of Los Angeles Ballet

In any case, I do what I can. And that is to write about and be an advocate for dance, especially when it comes to championing a homegrown troupe. To that end, I’ve been chronicling Los Angeles Ballet since its 2006 inception (click here for last year’s Los Angeles Times story and here for my Dance Magazine feature), and talk it up whenever possible. And whether or not the troupe, directed by the husband-and-wife team Thordal Christensen (he was the erstwhile director of Royal Danish Ballet) and Colleen Neary (she danced with New York City Ballet and is a répétiteur for the George Balanchine Trust), consistently delivers is not so much the point(e) as the notion that this company is a glorious work in progress – albeit one that should be wholeheartedly supported.

Josie Walsh’s Transmutation, an original rock-and-roll ballet for LAB

From last year’s new works’ program to this season’s risk-taking repertory (in addition to Sonya Tayeh’s world premiere the troupe mounts its first Giselle in May), the company obviously has a vision and is not afraid to execute it. So: Read my Los Angeles Times’ review of last night’s performance at the Alex Theatre in Glendale here, then go see the youthful, ebullient dancers of Los Angeles Ballet for yourself. Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor can ballet possibly hope to take root in a movie-and-TV obsessed town that expends more energy and $ on the train-wreck that is Charlie Sheen, without your help.

Not for nothing did A Chorus Line’s Sheila sing, “Everything is beautiful at the ballet.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Pretty On Pointe

Oscars Brouhaha

Posted on February 28, 2011 by admin

By Victoria Looseleaf

The less said the better about the 83rd Academy Awards presentation, save that James Franco was in uber-slacker mode and, while Anne Hathaway’s gowns were gorgeous, the painful patter coming from her Julia Roberts-like mouth was akin to Anne Boleyn before she got her head lopped off after irking her hubby, King Henry VIII.

Ouch! Where is Ricky Gervais, my comedy God du jour, when you need him. Or Alec and Steve? Even Billy Crystal’s small bit brought back floods of fond memories. Indeed, it was the legendary Kirk Douglas who stopped the show with his improvisational riffing, though it couldn’t have been intentional.

Ricky Gervais, the new King of Comedy

As for who won what, don’t get The Leaf started on Natalie Portman’s one-note performance as that batty Black Swan ballerina. Wendy Perron of Dance Magazine got it right when she Tweeted, “Didn’t Natalie Portman forget to thank one crucial person? Sarah Lane, who did alotta dancing for her.” Of course, since Portman never mentioned it while she scooped up nearly every possible award during the interminable prize-giving season, why would she have begun last night? At least we were spared her freaky Golden Globes’ laugh!

Swanee…how they love ya…

Whatever. I did predict that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross would snag the Oscar for best score for The Social Network, but was sorry that Biutiful didn’t win Best Foreign Language Film. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring the stellar Javier Bardem, who was, alas, destined to lose to an equally incredible Colin Firth, the movie is important and Bardem’s performance is staggering. So, give a listen to my exclusive KUSC-FM interview with the pair here. (And speaking of pairs, could there be a more beautiful twosome than Javier Bardem – who already has a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his badass 2007 performance in the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men – and his gorgeous wife, Penelope Cruz? Hola and check them out in my blog post here.)

In any case, I remember when going to the Oscars was a blast. Mr. Looseleaf and I absolutely loved riding in our limo to the Shrine Auditorium and shooting pics of the stars, something that is verboten at the Kodak, fersure. And dig this: We even thought that the David Letterman Oprah/Uma thing was kinda cool. (Ya hadda be there.)

Hanging with Mr. Looseleaf and Mr. Oscar

But it’s 2011, and by this time tomorrow, the latest Oscars broadcast – a deathly unfunny, tragically unhip, unrelenting ritual of Hollywood glad-handing – will, for the most part, be a distant memory. Which doesn’t mean that I didn’t love The Social Network, True Grit, The Kids Are All Right, Winter’s Bone and The King’s Speech, cuz I did. I really really did. In fact, I want to give a shout out to my new hero, David Seidler, the septuagenarian who won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for The King’s Speech. You rock, dude. But hey – I’m just thrilled I chose to stay home in front of my own flat-screen and totally chill…like Mr. Franco.

Posted in ACADEMY AWARDS, ANNE BOLEYN, Anne Hathaway, ATTICUS ROSS, BILLY CRYSTAL, COLIN FIRTH, DAVID LETTERMAN, JAMES FRANCO, JAVIER BARDEM, KIRK DOUGLAS, KUSC-FM, OPRAH, RICKY GERVAIS, TRENT REZNOR, UMA | Comments Off on Oscars Brouhaha

The Majesty of Martha

Posted on February 28, 2011 by admin


By Victoria Looseleaf

All hail the mother of modern dance: Martha Graham. Though she died in 1991, her company, the Martha Graham Dance Company – the oldest contemporary dance troupe in the country – is now in its 85th year. And The Leaf is happy to report that all is well in Martha land.

She taught us how to think about our bodies in new ways, and was, in fact, the first to codify this new vocabulary. Obsessed, wildly talented, divinely beautiful, Martha was an American original. As such, she attracted major talents, including dancers Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham, who, after leaving Martha’s troupe, both went on to found their own contemporary companies. While Merce died in 2009 at age 90 – and his Merce Cunningham Dance Company will disband next year – Paul and his group keep on keeping on.


Madonna and Martha: The meeting of two icons.


“Movement never lies,” Martha once famously said, with artists, actors, dancers, composers and designers all flocking to her Manhattan studio. Among her many students were Bette Davis, Leslie Nielson and yes, even Madonna. Both Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev guested with Martha – on the same bill as the legendary Bolshoi prima, Maya Plisetskaya, now 85, who, I hear, still dances a mean Dying Swan.

Misha in Primeval Mode: It doesn’t get much better than this.

Everyone wanted to have some of that Martha magic rub off on them. And while the grand dame herself may be gone, her brilliance lives on. How lucky we are to have had Martha Graham helping shape the 20th century, and now, some four generations later, her company keeps the Graham flame burning. Click here to read my Los Angeles Times review of the troupe in its recent Southland appearance, one celebrating her collaboration with the sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

And another former Graham dancer: the late great Betty Ford. Two remarkable and powerful women, Martha and Betty. Here they are with another mega-star, Liz Taylor. Ah, the dancing they did!

Posted in BARYSHNIKOV, BETTE DAVIS, ISAMU NOGUCHI, LESLIE NIELSON, MADONNA, MARTHA GRAHAM, MERCE CUNNINGHAM, NUREYEV, PAUL TAYLOR, PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY, PLISETSKAYA, SOUTH COAST REPERTORY | Comments Off on The Majesty of Martha