Tag Archives: The Wallis

L.A. DANCE PROJECT — MILLEPIED PREMIERES

The L.A. Dance Project–company-in-residence at The Wallis for 2017-2018—is tripling down for its fall season, with three Los Angeles premieres of work by choreographer and artistic director Benjamin MillepiedIN SILENCE WE SPEAK and ORPHEUS HIGHWAY, both from 2017, and CLOSER, a 2006 piece with music by Philip Glass.

In addition, the company will dance the U.S. premiere Noé Soulier’s SECOND QUARTET, which features music by the choreographer and Flemish DJ Tom De Cock.

 

L.A. DANCE PROJECT, Thursday through Saturday, November 2–4, at 7:30 pm.

THE WALLIS, 9390 Santa Monica Boulevard, Beverly Hills.

thewallis.org/show-info

ladanceproject.com

Current company members include Aaron Carr, David Adrian Freeland, Jr.Kaitlyn GillilandAxel Ibot, Daisy Jacobson, Nathan Makolandra, Francisco MungambaRachelle Rafailedes, Janie Taylor, Miranda Wattier, and Patricia Zhou.

L.A. Dance Project, in performance at The Wallis, November 2, 2017. From top:

Second Quartet, Nathan Makolandra and Rachelle Rafailedes; In Silence We Speak, Rafailedes (left) and Janie TaylorSecond Quartet, from left, David Adrian Freeland Jr., Makolandra, and Aaron Carr. Performance photographs by Lawrence K. Ho.

Benjamin Millepied. Photograph by Morgan Lugo. Image credit: The Wallis.

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Image result for in silence we speak millepied LA dance project

TURN ME LOOSE AT THE WALLIS

“Do you ever get the feeling that the planet is a bit wobbly? Like you’re waiting for something to happen? Well, don’t worry. You’re already in the equation.” — Joe Morton as Dick Gregory in TURN ME LOOSE

The Lovelace Studio Theater at The Wallis—home until mid-November to TURN ME LOOSE: A PLAY ABOUT COMIC GENUIS DICK GREGORY—was not a stress-free comfort zone the other night, and all the better for it. Occasional audience discomfort aside, Morton’s embodiment of Gregory’s attitudes, activism, and humor was a cathartic reckoning for the venue’s fortunate patrons, and recognized as such.

“My tongue was my switchblade. My humor was my sword.” — Morton, as Gregory

This empathetic look at show business through the prism of one man’s battle against the toxicity of racism was written by Gretchen Law and directed by John Gould Rubin.

“America is a country that puts on a new suit every year and never takes a bath.” — Morton, as Gregory

TURN ME LOOSE

Through November 12.

Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

9390 Santa Monica Boulevard, Beverly Hills.

Joe Morton as Dick Gregory in Turn Me Loose; with co-star John Carlin (below). Photographs by Lawrence K. Ho.

DORRANCE DANCE

Last summer at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Michelle Dorrance and her electrifying piece 1-2-3-4-5-6 opened Tiler Peck’s Ballet Now program with a bang, and Dorrance is back in  town with a three-dance, three-night (plus matinee) stand at The Wallis.

Dorrance’s pieces from 2011–2012, Jungle Blues and Three to One, will open the shows, followed by her highly anticipated new work Myelination., a collaboration with Ephrat Asherie and Matthew West.

 

DORRANCE DANCE, Thursday through Saturday, October 12 through 14, at 7:30 pm.

Additional matinee on Saturday, October 14, at 2 pm.

THE WALLIS, 9390 Santa Monica Boulevard, Beverly Hills.

thewallis.org/show-info.php?id=298

(Dancers for this engagement include Chris Broughton, Elizabeth Burke, Warren Craft, Claudia Rahardjanoto, Byron Tittle, Gabriel Winns Ortiz, Nicholas Van Young, Asherie, Dorrance, and West. Music for Myelination is composed and performed by Prawn til Dante (Donovan Dorrance and Gregory Richardson, joined by Young on percussion), with onstage vocals and keyboards by Aaron Marcellus.)

Upper two: Byron Tittle and Michelle Dorrance in Myelination. Photographs by Kevin Parry.

Bottom: Michelle Dorrance, Dorrance Dance. Photograph by Ian Douglas.

3 - Dorrance Dance_ Myelination_Pictured (l-r) Byron Tittle and Michelle Dorrance_Photo Credit Kevin Parry for The Wallis_preview

2 - Dorrance Dance_ Myelination_Pictured (l-r) Byron Tittle and Michelle Dorrance_Photo Credit Kevin Parry for The Wallis_preview

org_img_1493872613_L-WEB_Michelle Dorrance_Credit Ian Douglas

EZRALOW DANCE

Los Angeles choreographer Daniel Ezralow doesn’t do angst. His troupe EZRALOW DANCE brings athletic grace and joy to whatever stage it tackles. This week Ezralow and company return to The Wallis in a program titled PRIMO PASSO (“first step”), a reconsideration of many of his early pieces—including BROTHERS (1982), choreographed by Ezralow and David Parsons when they were both dancers for the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Of particular interest are two works Ezralow choreographed for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago: SUPER STRAIGHT (1989), and SF (2004).

EZRALOW DANCE: PRIMO PASSO, Thursday and Friday, July 13 and 14, at 8 pm.

THE WALLIS, 9390 Santa Monica Boulevard, Beverly Hills.

thewallis.org/ezralow

From left, Re’Sean Pates and Gerald Espinosa in Brothers. Photographed on July 13, 2017 by Dan Steinberg for The Wallis.
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THE PRIDE AT THE WALLIS

Inside its Lovelace Theater space, The Wallis has constructed an ingenious crystal boîte, an infinity mirror of a stage surrounded by witnesses in close proximity. “Theater in the round” is the usual term, but in the case of director and designer Michael Arden’s brilliant new production of THE PRIDE—a Los Angeles premiere at the Wallis—“drama cubed” are the operative words for all involved.

Although playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell doesn’t belabor the point, THE PRIDE falls very much within the tradition of the British ghost story. Surfacing in literature, if not in life, at the most opportune moments, these conjured phantoms—exponents of damage and dread—serve a different purpose in THE PRIDE: as a prod toward self-revelation. A skeletal finger points the way, and if we’re brave enough to follow its indicated course, we may, eventually, learn enough to “get it right.”

The play opens with cocktails in a London drawing room in the late 1950s, but the only thing the three main characters are getting right is the Coward-esque repartee they employ to disguise everything they might actually be thinking or feeling. Whether these are desperate apparitions projecting a bourgeois illusion, or middle-class shells protecting their own ghosts, something is rotten in Pimlico.

Sylvia (Jessica Collins, riveting) is a book illustrator entertaining the author she’s currently working for, Oliver (Augustus Prew, a dignified, heart-wrenching clown). They’re joined by Sylvia’s realtor husband Philip (Neal Bledsoe), and it is telegraphed that Oliver and Philip recognize an immediate attraction for one another—which, for Philip, means repulsion.

When a figure of transition and transgression (Matthew Wilkas) enters the scene, the action shifts to the present day (the play was written in 2008). The new Oliver and Philip (the same age as their antecedents from 50 years earlier) are boyfriends on the verge of divorce, and Sylvia is their best friend and, in particular, Oliver’s sounding board. Contemporary Oliver is a sex addict with a dangerous need to debase himself with rough trade (or hustlers hired to portray the type). He’s not sure why he can’t break this destructive pattern, or even how it started in the first place. It may be connected to a voice he often hears in his head. Nevertheless, he invariably finds himself on his knees in front of strange men, and Philip has had enough.

The subsequent scenes alternate between 1958 and 2008, the past informing the present, the future a premonition of honesty too fantastic to contemplate—although Sylvia (who, after all, wasted a life with a closeted husband) does seem to grasp the effort, the sheer consciousness it will take to rid herself and her friends of their delusions.

Whether we are seeking liberation, or a quiet corner to hide in, we are often encouraged to ignore the opinions of those who would seem to stifle the expression of our individuality. One of the many questions this very intelligent play raises is: What happens when “I don’t care what they think” goes too far? When identity shades into alienation? As the three protagonists of THE PRIDE amply demonstrate, a voice without an echo is lost.

THE PRIDE

Through July 9.

Nightly Tuesdays through Saturdays; matinees on Saturday and Sunday.

Dark July 1–4.

Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

9390 Santa Monica Boulevard, Beverly Hills.

From top:

Augustus Prew and Neal Bledsoe.

Jessica Collins.

Matthew Wilkas and Prew.

Bledsoe and Collins.

Prew and Wilkas.

All photographs by Kevin Parry, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.