BOTTOM LINE: An incredible dance show, unlike anything you’ve seen before.
The Groovaloos are a dance company from LA. They’re hip-hop dancers with diverse backgrounds who came together a while back as a community of freestylers who liked to jam with one another. They’re perhaps the most talented group of hip-hop dancers out there, at least as far as I’m aware. You’ve probably seen them on TV in one way or another, as they’ve been featured on several of those reality talent shows over the past couple of years (Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance, MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew). Their autobiographical show, Groovaloo, has grown and changed since its inception in 2003, and it now comes to New York to play at the Joyce Theater after a successful run in LA. After its brief stay in New York — it plays though September 27 – Groovaloo will tour the country beginning January 10.
Performance-wise, Groovaloo is an athletic, energy-packed 90 minutes that gets the audience’s attention and doesn’t let go. Each of the 14 dancers is better than the next, and with men and women of all cultural backgrounds, the cast is totally captivating. Each dancer gets a solo moment, and as the show reveals itself, the audience learns each dancer’s story and how they got to where they are now. Although there are many featured moments for each dancer where they can break and freestyle and do their own thing, there are also many synchronized and choreographed moments where some or all of the dancers perform the same steps or tricks in smaller groups or as bigger production numbers. The variety keeps the production moving along at a nice pace.
BOTTOM LINE: Just like Dancing With the Stars. With more dancing. And fewer C-Listers.
Let’s say you’re a major celebrity like oh, Elton John. And let’s say it’s your 50th birthday and you’ve recently become a big fan of contemporary ballroom dancing. Maybe you like the sparkly costumes. So your peeps decide to honor your special day by hiring amazing dancers to create a show for you to be performed at your soiree. Now let’s say you’re a power-player with money who happens to be a guest at Sir Elton’s birthday party. And you see this show and you think “this is both awesome and potentially lucrative.” You put your monacle back in your eye, take out your checkbook and adapt the show into a worldwide hit called Burn the Floor.
I’m not totally positive that’s how it all went down, but suffice to say this show got its roots in 1997 in Sir Elton’s honor. After a decade of developing and re-working, it has played in England and pretty much traveled the rest of the world on various tours. Burn the Floor has now set up shop at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre for a limited engagement through January 2010. (more…)
Godzilla doesn’t turn up anywhere in the three-film Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection, but the movies are so terrifically entertaining he’s hardly missed. Godzilla and friends stomped across my childhood and continue to leave their imprint courtesy of beautifully handled DVD editions like these. As a kid, I didn’t mind the awful dubbing, dreadful image cropping, careless content removal, and obnoxious replacement of music scores that afflicted them when they aired on Channel 7’s “The 4:30 Movie” or on Channel 9’s and Channel 11’s weekend monster movie programs here in New York. I was enthralled by all that city-smashing excitement—and disappointed that the ’70s films took place largely in barren rockscapes. Not even the Big G was immune to downsizing and budget cuts.
But the themes also made an impression. The original Godzilla (1954) ends with a scientist sacrificing himself with his own doomsday weapon to destroy the menace, an act that haunted me as a boy (and one that made for lively conversation when I screened the film for my movie-watching group in 2004). The fraternal bond at the center of 1966’s War of the Gargantuas, my favorite non-Godzilla Toho picture, is unexpectedly moving—you don’t figure on being touched by a movie about two genetically mutated trolls. It’s gratifying to revisit the films in the “Icons” set in uncut, original-language versions that restore the colorful Tohoscope (2:35:1 aspect ratio) framing and unique scoring, allowing the imagery and ideas to put their best claws forward.
Don’t be put off by the packaging. The artwork is hodgepodge and, much worse, the three discs are mounted on a single spindle hub, all but guaranteeing frustration and scratches. Once (carefully) removed, they prove a fitting homage to “the father of Godzilla,” as director Ishiro Honda is referred to on the front cover. Indeed, the trio—The H-Man (1958), Battle in Outer Space (1959), and Mothra (1961)—celebrates the complete paternity of the Toho Company’s illustrious kaiju eiga (monster movie) legacy, including special effects wizard Eiji Tsuburaya, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, the various composers, and the iconic actors who appeared in the films, like the avuncular Takashi Shimura (who led The Seven Samurai for director Akira Kurosawa, Toho’s other giant talent, and appears in Mothra) and Yoshio Tsuchiya, who specialized in neurotics and bad guys and always stood out. (more…)
April 15, 1990, is Easter Sunday. The nuclear-armed nations of India and Pakistan remain nose-to-nose over the disputed province of Kashmir. At Cape Canaveral, preparations continue for the April 24 launch of the space shuttle Discovery, which will deploy the Hubble Space Telescope. Eruptions continue at Mount Redoubt, a volcano in Alaska. This series of eruptions will be the second-costliest in American history behind Mt. St. Helens in 1980. Redoubt won’t erupt again until 2009. The New York Times publishes data showing that the median price of a house in the United States was $95,400 in February. A world record for tallest sand sculpture (17 feet, 5 3/4 inches) is set in Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia.
Movie icon Greta Garbo dies at age 89, and U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga of Hawaii dies at age 73; future Harry Potter actress Emma Watson is born. The top movies at the box office this weekend are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Pretty Woman, The Hunt for Red October, and Ernest Goes to Jail. The Miss Universe pageant is held in Los Angeles; the winner is Miss Norway, Mona Grudt; Miss USA Carole Gist is first runnerup. Payne Stewart wins the MCI Heritage Golf Classic, but Greg Norman continues to lead the world golf rankings; Nick Faldo, who won the Masters last Sunday, is ranked second. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum tops the paperback best-seller lists.
The sketch comedy series In Living Color premieres on Fox. Also on Fox tonight, The Outsiders, a series based on the S. E. Hinton novel, the 21 Jump Street spinoff Booker starring Richard Grieco, and The Simpsons. NBC airs an episode of The Magical World of Disney. In the first-ever Sunday night baseball game broadcast on ESPN, the Montreal Expos beat the New York Mets 3 to 1. On MTV, 120 Minutes features videos by Depeche Mode, the Cure, and Stone Roses. On the radio, The Dr. Demento Show features music and comedy bits about television, but the top song on the weekly Funny Five is, once again, “Fish Heads” by Barnes and Barnes. (more…)
Last week Marti Jones was back in Washington, DC – the city where she and I had our greatest moments together during her career in pop music. (Actually, she was always on a stage with a band and her husband, while I was in the audience with my wife, but whatever – we’ll always have DC, Marti.) This time she wasn’t in town for a concert; she was preparing for the display of several of her paintings as “ambiance” (her word) on the set of a new play, After the Garden: Edith Beale Live at Reno Sweeney. The play re-creates a series of cabaret-style performances given in 1978 by the eccentric Beale – whom you might remember as “Little Edie,” the younger half of the peculiar mother-daughter duo portrayed in the 1975 documentary and 2006 Broadway musical Grey Gardens. Jones, serendipitously, had chosen the Beales as subject matter for her painting a couple years ago, and as a result she’s now receiving some of her biggest exposure to date as a visual artist.
It’s been a long time – nearly 20 years — since Jones had a major-label record deal, and nearly as long since she and Don Dixon ceased being regulars on the touring circuit. Over the last couple weeks Popdose has cast a spotlight on her music career, including a review of her recorded output last week and a recollection of her tours with Dixon the week before. Jones recently agreed to rehash her career during a phone interview, while sitting around her home outside Canton, Ohio. Perhaps because far too few music writers have sought her out recently – or perhaps because she (like Dixon, who’s also beenquite generousto Popdose in recent months) is simply a terrific human being — our conversation resembled a reunion between old friends more than a run-of-the-mill interview.
Popdose: Are you in your studio today? Marti Jones: No, but later I’m heading off to a recording studio. Dixon roped me into putting a generic female voice on a recording of our friend Jim Wann’s new play – it’s called The Great Unknown. [Wann is a longtime colleague of Dixon’s – the two performed with Bland Simpson as the Coastal Cohorts in their musical King Mackerel and the Blues Are Running.] I have to sing a song about climbing Mount Everest in my high-button shoes! His songs are always fun to sing, and this one’s great – Dixon keeps singing it to me as he dances around the room. And I’m getting paid – this time – which is nice.
Painting takes much more of your time than music these days. How did you go from pop star to painter?
My whole life, I wanted to be a painter. My grandmother was a painter, and my parents would always encourage me to take after her. I majored in art at Kent State, but meantime I had also started singing in clubs, and I did that for a livelihood through college. Then, you know, the music thing happened, and I had to put off the painting. I was actually very frustrated by it, and I would think all the time about picking it back up. But when I’d come home from a tour I would only be in one place for a couple days, and it was hard to grab onto anything and stick with it. (more…)
I’m a big believer in simplicity where simplicity is called for. As cosmopolitan adult audiences, we’re supposed to sneer at simple stories in favor of works more conceptually-intricate and morally-engaged works. We are all postmodernists now, for good or ill, and we have no patience for “kids’ stuff.” Indeed, even children’s cartoons have a self-aware, metafictive absurdity. Not for us gooey love stories or unironic boy’s-own adventures. We want subtext. We want resonance. We want complexity.
The problem is that conceptually-intricate, morally-engaged works are hard to come by. They always have been, of course; but that was okay, because they were a niche product, fodder for PBS and the Ecco Press. But as audiences grow more sophisticated — or perhaps simply more jaded — the perceived demand for such works is higher than ever. The mainstream has responded as it always does; by co-opting the surface elements of the avant garde — by bolting labyrinthine plot structures onto what are, at heart, very simple stories: A skeptic and a believer must work together to uncover the truth behind seemingly paranormal events; survivors of a plane crash find themselves in an environment where normal laws of time and physics seem to no longer apply; individuals with newly-acquired superhuman powers encounter forces conspiring to exploit or destroy them. Simple stories all; the hairpin twists and plot reversals in which they are dressed serve only to make them complicated, not truly complex. And to the extent that these examples succeed or fail, they do so despite the convoluted storytelling, and because of their strong, simple hooks —and not the other way around.
Turok made his comic book debut in 1954. A Native American hunter, Turok and his young nephew Andar stumble upon a hidden valley where prehistoric creatures still dwell. It’s a simple premise — aggressively simple, even: Indians fighting dinosaurs. Throughout its run, the series rung only minute variations on its basic formula. Turok and Andar would occasionally run into trouble with cavemen, or erupting volcanoes, or sabretooth tigers and whatnot. But for the most part, it was Indians killing dinosaurs, issue after issue. No overarching plot, no character development as such, no evolution in the status quo — not even any real attempt for Turok and Andar to escape the valley. Just single-issue, self-contained stories about Native American braves putting the smackdown onto giant lizards. Couldn’t be simpler. (more…)
Through the eyes of my son, I’ve been reliving a part of my youth in the form of colorful costumed super heroes from cartoons and the pages of comic books. Because Jacob’s sister, Sophie, and his mom have no enthusiasm whatsoever for this stuff, he and I get to bond over the muscle bound humans out to save the world. With equal parts fascination and wonder, the two of us leaf through my musty old comics from the ‘80s and the glossy new ones we buy once a month.
My personal interest began as a child, around Jacob’s age, when my parents bought me the oversized graphic novel Superman vs. Wonder Woman. From that point on, I was obsessed with all of the big guns, like Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Green Arrow. But my favorite adventures always involved a group of outcasts, teens mostly: The Uncanny X-Men. In my teens, most of my X-Men comics were bought in a Convenient Food Mart located next door to the small music studio where I took drum lessons. In the time between when my lesson ended and when my father would pick me up, I would peruse the comic books held in a squeaking, turning metal rack in the back of the store. With any change I could scrounge from the sofa cushions or whatever I “acquired” from my dad’s dresser, my monthly does of mutant mayhem would always get snuck into the house and immediately taken to the basement, as if I were carrying a Playboy or something worse.
I’m unsure where this feeling that reading comic books was an illicit, depraved thing came from. Particularly in high school, when I was supposed to be poring over the works of Dostoyevsky, Faulkner and Voltaire, I didn’t want my friends to know I was more interested in Chris Claremont, Alan Moore and Frank Miller. Primarily, it was an escape, yet there were strong themes that I identified with, like brotherhood, loyalty, tolerance and redemption. (Ironically, many of these same themes were found in the novels I was reading by those classic authors I mentioned.) The comics also brought me comfort. In early ’88 I holed myself up in the basement to mope about a broken heart and listen to sad Springsteen songs. My one pleasure was delving into the X-Men saga “Fall of the Mutants.”In this epic story, Storm, Rogue, Wolverine and their teammates sacrificed their lives to defeat an evil spirit unleashed on our world. (more…)
I don’t think it’s boastful to say that I know a little bit about music. I’m old, so I’ve been playing and listening to it for many years. In that context, I think I know a few things about Joni Mitchell. She’s a founding member of what I call my pantheon: a group of artists from various disciplines who have, in my opinion, reached the mountaintop. The membership includes the likes of Pablo Picasso, Sam Shepard, Miles Davis, and Francis Ford Coppola. It’s a tough club to get into.
On the other hand, I don’t know a damn thing about ballet. I have very little interest in classical ballet, though I can tolerate modern dance. I once saw a performance by the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, and that was memorable, but that’s where my experience ends. So faced with a DVD that combines the music of Joni Mitchell and the choreography of Jean Grand-Maitre and his Alberta Ballet, I had to call in the cavalry. Luckily, I knew just who to call.
Nicole Vanasse played semi-pro ballet. She never made it to the bigs, but she has an ongoing love of the form and still insists she coulda been a contender. So we made a deal — I’d handle the music, and she could weigh in on the dancing.
The production, called The Fiddle and the Drum (Koch Vision), is a compelling blend of Mitchell’s music, represented here by ten songs, including three from her most recent album, Shine; a video installation she created called Green Flag Song, which is projected on a large canvas screen during the ballet; and the dance performance itself. The package comes with an eight-page booklet with liner notes by Mitchell, and the DVD extras include an isolated look at the Green Flag Song artwork as well as interviews with Mitchell, Grand-Maitre, and several of the company’s dancers.
The themes of the work are humankind’s capacity for love and hate, and its ability to create and destroy. Here’s what Nikki had to say: “I loved the music, the message and the stage production. I always thought it was hard to choreograph ballet to contemporary music, but Jean Grande-Maitre did a phenomenal job.
Hello and welcome back to our three-day Valentine’s spectacular! If you missed yesterday’s introduction, we’re taking time this week to talk about the books, movies, and music we love — and since the focus of yesterday’s post was books, it should come as no surprise to you that today, we’ll be talking about our favorite films.
As you might expect, the staff has fairly wide-ranging taste, and the list of movies we love runs the gamut from Bride of Frankenstein to Bugsy, with a stop for some Coal Miner’s Daughter in between. Which of us would take A Night at the Opera to a desert island? Who has tortured countless souls with repeated viewings of The Music Man? And how many of your own favorite films made the list? Click here to find out!
The Groovaloos are a dance company from LA. They’re hip-hop dancers with diverse backgrounds who came together a while back as a community of freestylers who liked to jam with one another. They’re perhaps the most talented group of hip-hop dancers out there, at least as far as I’m aware. You’ve probably seen them on TV in one way or another, as they’ve been featured on several of those reality talent shows over the past couple of years (Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance, MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew). Their autobiographical show, Groovaloo, has grown and changed since its inception in 2003, and it now comes to New York to play at the Joyce Theater after a successful run in LA. After its brief stay in New York — it plays though September 27 – Groovaloo will tour the country beginning January 10.
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Through the eyes of my son, I’ve been reliving a part of my youth in the form of colorful costumed super heroes from cartoons and the pages of comic books. Because Jacob’s sister, Sophie, and his mom have no enthusiasm whatsoever for this stuff, he and I get to bond over the muscle bound humans out to save the world. With equal parts fascination and wonder, the two of us leaf through my musty old comics from the ‘80s and the glossy new ones we buy once a month.
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