I am his Mistress Keira Knightley as Anna Karenina
Exceptional films are those films where everyone involved takes a chance. Joe Wright‘s Anna Karenina is breath-taking, luxurious, magical and pushes to the edge every element of movie making. The staging, cinematography, costumes, lighting, and acting etc. every inch of this film is sumptuous and in particular it is the choreography (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui) that captured my imagination and made the unreal real for me.
See the movie, it is really much bigger then the trailer.
Ms Primus, 1919 – 1994, often referred to as “the grandmother of African-American dance”, will have an evening devoted to her contributions on 5/24/12 at the Schomburg Center in New York City.
“Youth dancers from the Harlem School of the Arts will open the evening with a performance of Primus’s signature work, “Bushasche, War Dance, A Dance for Peace.” Afterwards, there will be a discussion conducted by Peggy and Murray Schwartz about their book, The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus.
Kirvn James Boyd -Photo by Andrew Eccles - Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater 2012
Painting, Music, Fashion, Dance and Theater appears to launch itself from New York. This is not necessarily true and yet the feeling that if you want to experience something first, that you have to live in that Big City. If you live some place other then New York, you are always waiting for the traveling show, or the movie to hit your area and eventually they do come.
The traveling shows are most often missing something, that few cities can duplicate and that is the inconvenience that big cities pose. Walking to the theater or exhibit with what seems like thousands of people all wanting to get something that is not at all physical. The sitting uncomfortably in a rather chilly old theater with your coat wrapped around your legs to keep warm as you watch something that is truly extraordinary.
When you see The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York, you see an exceptional event where the power and grace displayed can not be ignored and you feel that you could dance and soar with implacable grace. This feeling stays with you as you leave the theater to have dinner or on your subway ride home, still warmed by the evenings events. For days and possibly even weeks later you will still be moving gracefully from your desk to the copier and back again, well aware of the eyes that follow you.
For those who love their local comfort, Alvin Ailey travels well. Just remember to not jump immediately into your car after the performance with out first practicing your strut, grace and balance before going home.
If you like the theater and/or you dance sing, act – you know about the audition process and how nerve wracking it can be.
“Every Little Step” is a very entertaining documentary about that very same weeding out process – whittling from thousands, down to the very few special people who were chosen for the final tryouts to be in the 2006 revival of “A Chorus Line”. This legendary 1975 Broadway musical about dancers and their lives was conceived and directed by the late Michael Bennett. (Although in order to make the final cut, these young hopefuls had to be triple threat material – dancer/singer/actor.)
The film gets the viewer involved and invested early on so that you start to root for them all to win the few prized spots in the show.Their passion and hard work is awe inspiring.These performers love what they do regardless of the disappointments. As one young lady said, “If you don’t have something to ‘fall back on’ you won’t fall back – you just keep going.”
“What I did For Love” (by Marvin Hamlisch, Edward Lawrence Kleban):
“Kiss the day goodbye
Point me t’ward tomorrow
We did what we had to do.
Won’t forget, can’t regret
What I did for love…”
Choreographer and Artistic Director Jawole Willa Jo Zollar-photo by: Antoine Tempé
Some anthropologists believe that the first form of human communication was dance. Embedded in the dances’ message was and still is the basic need of any community to stay together. Dance always tells the truth.
Urban Bush Women’s mission is to create dance and to create community.
“Urban Bush Women Resistance & Power” at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse , there are still tickets available for tomorrows’ performance. Sunday May 1st, 2011 3PM
Our first introduction to Ms. Kitt may have been her 1953 hit record “Santa Baby” and her unusual featured live performance on the Ed Sullivan T.V. Show. Eartha Kitt passed away recently-Christmas Day 2008 to be exact. Eartha Kitt shattered (at that time) my limited beliefs about what it meant to be a “Negro”.
