The closing program of the fifth annual New Original Works Festival (NOW) ended this weekend at REDCAT with a trio of works-in-progress. Composer Anne LeBaron with librettist Douglas Kearney, choreographer Rosanna Gamson and performance artist Kristina Wong presented excerpts from projects they’re currently working on in all their not-fully-edited, let’s try this, and I-wonder-if-this-belongs-here glory. Not surprisingly, the results were both good and not so good. Are they teasers for REDCAT’s next season? No comment......

Moving into the third and final weekend of REDCAT's New Original Works Festival, the program is at its most varied--music, dance and performance art. Included in this evening of innovative projects are alumni of previous REDCAT productions Anne LeBaron (with Douglas Kearney) and Rosanna Gamson/World Wide with one woman bundle of fury and fun Kristina Wong! Award-winning composer Anne LeBaron and poet/writer Douglas Kearney present a theatrical song cycle they call Sucktion, telling the story......

Program Two at the New Original Works Festival at REDCAT revealed a challenge in the programming department. With two modern dances placed side by side, the audience was asked to watch the second piece without being overly affected by the first. Difficult job for any viewer. If the performance pieces are even minutely similar to one other, the initial act is always a hard one to follow. Lionel Popkin opened the show with a duet......

The first program of the 5th annual New Original Works Festival at REDCAT opened last week with a whiz-bang! To start, the three member Cloud Eye Control—Miwa Matreyek, Anna Oxygen and Chi-wang Yang--filled the stage with six feet high screens upon which they projected their two works: Subterranean Heart and Final Space. In the first, mostly black and white animated images traveled across the screens and, with Oxygen singing high-toned sounds and lyrics, we began......

Under Disney Hall this week, there's more movement afoot with Dance Magazine's one of “25 to Watch” (2007) Holly Johnston, along with Trisha Brown alumnus Lionel Popkin and, in a more theatrical bent, the wild, humorous and nearly chaotic Poor Dog Group. Johnston, creative force behind Ledges and Bones Dance Project will present a new quartet she calls Politics of Intimacy. Embracing her uniquely powerful movement style—built on muscle, risk and visceral thrill-- the dancers......

Cloud Eye Control, courtesy of CalArts Photography Since its opening five years ago, REDCAT programming has maintained a space for local artists to show their work at the state of the art theater below Disney Hall. The NOW Festival is the highlight of this community-aware programming. This first week of the three week series includes interdisciplinary projects that bend traditions and investigate new visions of work for the stage. The artists in this first......

By Roger Park On Saturday night The Actors’ Gang performed a production of George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT). Adapted for the stage by Michael Gene Sullivan and directed by actor-writer-director Tim Robbins, 1984 depicts a terrifying world where people fear their opinions cannot be expressed freely, where citizens are constantly monitored and lied to by their government and a perpetual war is waged against an unseen......

By Roger Park On Friday, May 30th a full house at REDCAT was treated to a special live performance of American composer Harry Partch’s (1901-1974) complete score of “Plectra and Percussion Dances: Satyr-Play Music for Dance Theatre" directed by John Schneider. Partch was known for his innovative desire to use a different system of tuning, which inspired him to mutate and beautifully craft custom microtonal instruments. The last time “Plectra and Percussion Dances: Satyr-Play Music......

Highlighting the combination of dance and film/video, the 7th annual Dance Camera West festival begins its month long series of screenings, ceremonies and related events this Friday at the REDCAT Theater downtown. Presenting a wide variety of short, feature length and documentary work, the events will occur at locations that range from the American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica to the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood to films shown with......

Believe it or not, there's more going on in LA than basketball these days. / Photo by consiglieri80 via LAist's flickr pool. PERFORMANCE Largo, one of our favorite little clubs in the city, is closing on Fairfax. But don’t cry just yet because it will reopen in a bigger space on La Cienega in a few months. But the last shows on Fairfax, like tonight’s Greg Proops Chat show, are sure to be memorable......

This week’s classical pick comes a little earlier in the day since one of the events is in the early afternoon. The picks showcase two well-recognized Germans, one of whom is making a rare visit to LA and one who has made his presence known in Los Angeles as the “Poet Laureate of Skid Row”. The Goethe-Institut of Los Angeles is collaborating with Monday Evening Concerts to celebrate the life and works of Helmut......

Yeah, this is how I feel. / Photo "Supervisor Zirves" by db via LAist's flickr pool. This morning was a rough start for everyone and we still got a little sleepies in us, but we'll definitely be awake for these events tonight. After another latte. CLASSICAL* The LA premiere of "The Axe Manual" happens tonight at Zipper Concert Hall as part of the Monday Evening Concert series. The program includes important recent works by......

Lots of old school films happening around town tonight. / Photo by get directly down via flickr. THEATRE You have a hand at commenting on the Theatre of NOTE’s play selection this week and next. NOTEwood is their comprehensive series of public readings featuring new, original works. The 2009 season will be chosen from the 30 scripts selected to be read aloud at the year’s NOTEwood reading – but there’s a talk back session......

Don't be angsty like this lady...go out tonight! / Photo by Plankton 4:20 via LAist's flickr pool. FILM “Animation Nite: From Halifax with Love” is a program at the Echo Park Film Center that features short animated and semi-animated films by women who’ve all lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, eh. The screening includes work by host Siloën Daley and six others. Music by local band Foot Foot follows. 7:30 // Echo Park Film......

photo courtesy of artist Local independent dance artist Liz Hoefner has directed and choreographed Fear of Drowning/Fear of Flying and will present its premiere this Friday through Sunday at the Diavolo Dance Space in the Brewery Arts Complex. According to her, the new dance theater work is a collection of stories, dialogues and dances that relate to actual and metaphorical fears of traveling, flying, drowning and dying in a post 9/11, tsunami, and Hurricane......

Louis Allen as Christopher Walken and Amy Kelly as Robert DeNiro/Photo courtesy of Patrick O'Sullivan. COMEDY* All About Walken: The Impersonators of Christopher Walken is back on a new night and new venue (running only on Thursdays until April 3). Conceived and directed by Patrick O’Sullivan, the comedy show has an entire multiracial cast playing the same guy (Chris Walken, duh) picking up his tics and cadences to a tee. Tickets go fast for......

We can't think of a better way to celebrate a new book than to invite musicians, poets, visual artists, performance arists and writers to respond to the new book. This is exactly what Maggie Nelson has done for her new book Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions and tonight is the night. Nelson's book is considered one of the first extended works that examines the roles that women played in and around......

Life doesn't stop in LA because it's raining. / Photo by kristi.nicole via LAist's flickr pool FILM The American Cinematheque’s Outfest Wednesdays continue at the Egyptian. On the big screen tonight is With You! -- director Yaniv Dabach’s documentary on the formation of New York City’s first gay rugby club, the Gotham Knights. A discussion with Dabach follows the screening – plus there’s a reception hosted by Absolut. 7:30 pm // American Cinematheque at......

photo courtesy of the artist This Thursday through Saturday, award winning Argentine choreographer Diana Szeinblum is bringing four performers to REDCAT to present "Alaska" in its theater below Disney Hall. In her promotional material, Buenos Aires-based Szeinblum calls the work a "container of memories where everything that has not been said regarding a personal experience is kept." With original music by Ulises Conti for piano and viola and a physical language Szeinblum calls "extreme,"......

Get Your Lit On: The Week in Bookish LA includes some outstanding readings this week from some fine, fine writers including Maggie Nelson, Anne Enright, Colm Toibin, Toby Barlow, Amy Hempel, Peter Carey, John Rechy, Martha Grimes and Russell Banks....

Pickle just about anything at the Machine Project tonight. / Photo by ccarlstead via flickr. Sure there are a lot of places closed for President’s Day, but nightlife does exist in LA...even tonight: FILM Roman Polanski’s Chinatown focuses on an intricate water scandal and an even more twisted family backstory. Starring John Huston, Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson as Detective Jake Gittes – the city of Angels plays a major part of this nourish......

LAist contributer Osmany Rodriguez found a few fresh new Banksy paintings near the New Beverly Cinema. As you may already know, Banksy is the elusive guerrilla street artist responsible for some of the most interesting art in the city (not to mention the entire world). He's a trickster figure who never shows his face, but joined Steve Jones in the Indie 103.1 studios earlier this week (that's how we know he's been in L.A.......

TALK Michael Alexander, author of Jazz Age and the Jews, will discuss Jewish life in the roaring 20s, including performer Al Jolson, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and mobster Arnold Rothstein in the lecture “‘Mammy, Don’t You Know Me?’: Al Jolson and the Jews.” He’ll discuss the 1920s as a heyday of Jewish culture, but why many identified with groups that remained marginalized. Book signing and dessert reception will follow. 7 pm // Davidson Conference......

TALK CalArts and USC have a joint program at REDCAT tonight titled, “Listen Again: Music You Should Change Your Mind About Right Now.” A great panel of writers, musicians and scholars discuss the current state of pop music and celebrate the release of the latest scholarly writings on music issued by the Experience Music Project. Panelists include Neal Pollack (alternadad.com), Ann Powers (Los Angeles Times), R.J. Smith (Los Angeles magazine), Oliver Wang (Soul-sides.com, CSU-Long Beach)......

It’s kinda quiet on the event front, a perfect day to reflect on Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy. But if you're into going out tonight: CLASSICAL Southwest Chamber Music continues its Musical Imagination and Color series with a concert featuring 20th century composers, including Stravinsky, Milhaud, Berg, and Bartók. Violinist Lorenz Gamma, clarinetist Jim Foschia and pianist Ming Tsu are on the bill tonight. 8 // Colburn School Of Performing Arts: Across The Street......

If you're looking for something free and chill, then catch old school acoustic jazz at Crane's Hollywood Tavern or ride the tram uphill for reggae at The Getty. For jazz of a crazier brand (yet still classic), try the Art Ensemble of Chicago at REDCAT. Speaking of Chitown, three hip-hop artist from there will be at Echoplex. Hip-hop of a different brand can be found at the weirdest space in LA, pehrspace. And for some......

FILM A Bloody Aria, a film from Korea about a professor, his pretty student and a possible murder, opens tonight for a one-week engagement in Little Tokyo. It’s been compared to Deliverance, but with a dark sense of humor. (We wonder if there’s any pig squealing in this one?) Times vary // ImaginAsian Center // 251 S. Main St., Los Angeles // $7-$10. MUSIC / SPOKEN WORD Tonight the CalArts Creative Music Festival features......

KRS ONE, one of the greatest rappers out there, will play The Roxy tonight | Photo from his MySpace Two highly recommended Hip-Hop shows take place tonight. Experience the powerful Gospel of Hip-Hop with KRS ONE at The Roxy or explore some electronic Hip-Hop with Sole and the Skyrider Band. And we mean no disrespect to Peanut Butter Wolf who is playing at El Rey with Chromeo, but we know for sure that show......

Tomorrow is the ribbon cutting of the third and newest downtown Famima!! at the California Plaza on Grand Avenue near MOCA. It's about time this part of downtown receive some new food options, even if this is quasi Japanese 7-11 style. However, a made-to-order sushi bar will be the centerpiece of this location. In addition to the few food options at the California Plaza, Performance Row (as we once dubbed it) has a Koo Koo......

The Tangier is hosting Shark Aid and it has nothing to do with saving those sometimes nasty sea dogs. Aaron Finely, a local sound engineer and musician (Rexaquarium, Kennedy, Joe Lies) was attacked by a shark last October, losing a good chunk of his leg. The medical bill is quite steep, so his friends set up this benefit concert to help out (story via Metromix). Lucky for Finely, his friends play great music. Tonight:......