(l-r) Rachel Whiting, Darby Epperson, Sadie Yarrington, Cristina Florez, and Tiffany Sweat, in Our Dancer’s Project created and directed by Andrew Pearson collaboratively choreographed by the performers. Photo by Winnie Mu. The immersive event, entitled Our Dancer’s Project, produced by the socially progressive company, Bodies in Play, on April 13th at LA Dance Project, is one that a written description can never do proper justice to. Envisioned and directed by company founder and facilitator Andrew Pearson, the ensemble cast (Cristina Florez, Darby Epperson, Celine Kiner, Tiffany Sweat, Dauri ..read more

This March, the 8th Annual International Women’s Day Dance Festival, produced and coordinated by MashUp Contemporary Dance in Los Angeles, featured another stunning showcase of female and non-binary choreographers. The weekend included many events, including classes, workshops, and discussion panels, surrounding the essential topic of access and inclusion for women in dance. This year, the cornerstone performance event included eleven works by eleven choreographers to satisfy the hungry audience at Stomping Ground performance space. With such a large and varied program, I will speak briefly to ..read more

Azuki Umeda’s dance work, how I became kinder, and kinder, closed the six-week dance series Dance at the Odyssey last weekend at the Odyssey Theater. The evening-length work developed her Master’s thesis work from CSU Long Beach as a debut concert work in the LA dance scene. The result of two years of research, the realized performance reflected nuanced attention to both movement generation and abstracted imagery. Jennifer Vieweg (in chair), (l-r) Dante Casarin, Kamryn Funk, Jordyn Apostolache, Torin Cone, Ande Godwin, Isabella Mendozain how i became kinder, and kinder choreographed by Azuki U ..read more

Summation Dance/LA enjoyed its West Coast debut performance last weekend at Los Angeles Dance Project, presenting an evening-length work entitled on our way home, choreographed by company co-founder Taryn Vander Hoop. The hour-long work was presented alongside a new piece by LA-based dance maker Derion Loman, entitled dirty laundry. Presented in the lovely downtown, black box theater at LADP, the sold-out contemporary dance show was an overwhelming success – intimate, personal, and reflective, while also being exciting, dynamic, and at times, even funny. Anna Burke and Agata Grzelak in Loman’s ..read more

Ricky Cole and Byron Bucao brought the heat and hype to Ventura County with their festival celebration of dance called Welcome to the 805. Hosted in Oxnard at the Oceanview Pavilion on November 12, the event showcased primarily hip-hop dance and crew-style performances. Between the matinee and evening performances, Cole and Bucao provided a fantastic dance opportunity for 47 local and regional groups to take the stage, making the event an action-packed day during which hundreds of dancers performed. Elektrolytes at Welcome to the 805 I attended the evening showcase, arriving to a packed house ..read more

Wild Roots Dance presented an evocative night of dance last weekend at ARC Pasadena, titled “Dialogue + Sensations.” Co-directed by Kindra Windish and Vannia Ibarguen, Wild Roots Dance hosted this festival-style performance in which they invited an array of dance makers to enter a shared space with sensitivity and compassion. The result was an evening of dance that was personal and perceptive. In short, it was a space where the artists were invited to tell their stories through movement and design with patience, care, and love. The show opened with a solo, Running Away, choreographed and perfo ..read more

Every year, the San Pedro Festival of the Arts–an event coordinated by Louise Reichlin/Los Angeles Choreographers and Dancers–serves as a smorgasbord of Southern California Dance samplings, and this year was as delightful as ever. The event featured 19 pieces from a selection of companies who took the temporary stage at Peck Park under the welcoming California sun last Saturday.  Interspersed among the program were a great variety of works–jazz, modern and contemporary, and traditional world dance, in small and large ensembles, trios, duets, and solos. There were far too many to cover in ..read more

Photo By Tyrone Domingo featuring Arrieta, Garcia, Morales, Hernandez, Galdamez, Stanley, Lopez, and Aguirre (l-r). This past weekend, Contra-Tiempo swept a rapt audience off their feet at The Ford in Hollywood with the Afro-Carribean rhythms and dance rituals in ¡azúcar! The evening length work envisioned and instigated by company director Ana Maria Alvarez featured a cast of exquisite Latine and black dancers who evoked the history of the colonial Americas as experienced through the enslaved bodies laboring in the sugar cane fields. With creative guidance and contributions by company members ..read more

If you have never been to a Fringe festival, you are missing out! Fringe and Fringe-style festivals happen around the globe in a variety of cities and feature some of the most innovative, entertaining, and wiley performing artists imaginable.  DrumatiX at the Hollywood Fringe filled the Broadwater mainstage theater with funk-based grooves and playful physical comedy this past weekend.  Noa Barankin created this a capella tap and drumming show called Rhythm Delivered as a joyous and infectious dance treat for the Fringe goers.  The audience loved it and the closing show delivered ..read more

Bringing dance into public spaces has wonderful benefits for communities as it reclaims spaces renewing them with beauty and meaning that can be enjoyed both by dance fans as well as casual passersby. Kenneth Walker Dance Project anointed the Brand Library and Art Center this past week as the third program in the 2023 Brand Dance Series, hosted by the Associates of the Brand and curated by long-time dance advocate and teaching artist Jamie Nichols.  The afternoon program featured a series of short dance offerings choreographed by company director Kenneth Walker and performed by a lovely ..read more