When they first started dancing together, Noam Gagnon and Dana Gingras used to lock themselves in a studio for somewhere between five and seven hours a day. Together, they tried to make their bodies react in \”authentic ways,\” irrespective of how high they could jump, how fast they could turn or any other techniques their dance training had already taught them.
While other photographers have sought to document Chasidism from more of an insider\’s perspective, Maya Dreilinger purposefully maintained her distance as an outsider. She wandered around the La Brea area dressed as she normally does and refused the occasional invitation to dinner at someone\’s home.
The dance, called \”Missa Brevis,\” premiered the following year in a bombed-out church in Budapest and would become a masterpiece of the Limon canon. The June 1958 issue of Dance Magazine declared \”it has been a long time since modern dance has produced a work so profoundly stirring and exalting.\” Carla Maxwell, artistic director of the Jose Limon Dance Company since 1978, called it \”one of those rare, perfect dances. Poland moved Limon profoundly, and from it, he created some of the most glorious choreography.\”
The Naumanns are the central characters of \”Bee Season,\” which opens this week in theaters. The film explores the dissolution of the Naumann family after the youngest member, 9-year-old Eliza (Flora Cross), discovers she\’s a spelling prodigy.
Jerry Herman doesn\’t play favorites with his musicals. Ask him to rank \”Mame,\” \”Hello, Dolly!\” or \”La Cage aux Folles\” and he\’ll tell you, \”I love them all.\”
Although he became famous for graphic, sensationalist and emotionally raw photographs that simultaneously exaggerate and illuminate human folly, Weegee never forgot his Lower East Side roots as an immigrant Jew.
Schlitt spent the past five years transforming a midlife crisis, a professionally disastrous trip to India, and his burning and failed ambition to make a movie about that disaster into a one-man show called, \”Mike\’s Incredible Indian Adventure.\”
For the past four years, Kadosh and Alfi have been meeting regularly to exchange pedagogical advice, offer insight into each other\’s communities, pay visits to the other\’s turf and, above all, continually affirm how educators of different faiths can help each other.
These two women have formed a solid friendship, and whether or not that will eventually lead to an enduring bridge between Jewish and Arab educators in Los Angeles, they have set an important precedent.
Growing up in Syracuse, N.Y, Eileen Douglas lived for the moments she could climb into her grandfather\’s lap and find the pennies he brought — special for her. He faithfully visited his grandchildren every day after leaving his work as a butcher. Yet he never really spoke about his upbringing in Kovno, Lithuania.
\”I thought we weren\’t allowed to talk about it, that if you did, you would hurt the family,\” Douglas recalled. \”My grandfather died suddenly when I was 12 and I never got to say goodbye.\”
Some 25 years after her grandfather died, Douglas paid a visit to her childhood home and stumbled upon a series of forgotten family photographs.
Opportunities to view Jewish-themed dance by contemporary choreographers, however, do not occur every day and, in the case of Duckler, \”Narrow Bridge\” represents the first time she has explored issues of Jewish identity.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.