August 29, 2008 at 5:57 am · Filed under choreographers, SUSAN, awards, los angeles, event, tutus
(Photo courtesy of danceheritage.org)
On Saturday 13 September, Edward Villella will be honoured at the ninth annual Los Angeles Dance Invitational with an LADI Award for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement. He will also be presenting the Stanley Holden Award for Distinguished Teaching to Los Angeles-based Terri Best on behalf of his late friend.
The evening will also feature works by Terri Best, Genevieve Carson, Marie de la Palme, JT Horenstein, Kim Eung Hwa, Malathi Iyengar, Linda Lack, Christopher Liu, Jose Reynoso and Jia Wu.
To find out more about the event, please visit the official website.
In the meantime, this is pretty neat:
Trees in tutus.
Recent Posts by susan kim
June 10, 2007 at 10:57 am · Filed under ballet, dance, choreographers, dance event, directors, SUSAN, dance and technology, musical theater, specialevents, awards, los angeles, modern dance, music video, youtube, hollywood, choreography, dancing with the stars, contemporary dance, california
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| Susan Kim
On Thursday night, I attended the inaugural Choreography Media Honors at the Director’s Guild of America. The entire extravaganza was presented in association with the Dance Camera West Film Festival. Hopefully, the night’s event will mark the first of many more to come.
It’s purpose: To honor the craft of choreography in and on the film media. As eloquently stated in the evening’s program of events, “Tonight we come together to celebrate the legacy of dance in media over the past two years–dance in all its various forms of expression. We have dance created to sell products, dance to tell stories, dance to make us laugh, dance to make us cry, dance created for no reason beyond that of pure self expression and artistry, exploring its relationship to film and video.”
So, continuing the work of the American Choreography Awards, the event honoured two year’s worth of choreography featured in commercials, television episodes, television variety shoes, music videos, short films, documentaries and feature films. About two hundred stand-out works created from 2004 to 2006 were nominated for recognition. Over the course of the evening, sixty-six of those nominees were revealed as the cream of the crop. Among them were some very familiar names: Fatima Robinson (”Dreamgirls“), Michael Rooney (”Jackass Number 2 Unrated,” “Think,” a Halifax commercial, “Saving Celebration,” a Target commercial, and “Flawless,” a George Michael music video), Marty Kudelka (Justin Timberlake at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards, “Transformer,” a Citroen C4 commercial, and “My Love,” a Justin Timberlake music video), Kenny Ortega (”High School Musical“), Mia Michaels (”Calling You,” from So You Think You Can Dance), Tyce Diorio (”Cell Block Tango,” from So You Think You Can Dance), Shane Sparks (”Tranjie,” from So You Think You Can Dance, and “Push It To The Limit,” a Corbin Bleu music video), Wade Robson (”Ramalama,” from So You Think You Can Dance), John DeLuca (”Tony Bennett: An American Classic“), Rob Marshall (”Tony Bennett: An American Classic“), Travis Payne (”Product People,” a Target commercial, and “Commercial Break,” from Suite Life of Zack & Cody), Robin Antin (”Buttons,” a Pussycat Dolls music video) and Michael Minden (”Buttons“). A full list of all honorees is available below.
My favourite clip of the evening was a Nike commercial, choreographed by Luther Brown and Teresa Espinosa.
I couldn’t help but notice that almost every genre of dance but mine own dominated the ninety minute film presentation. Of those ninety minutes, perhaps thirty or forty-five seconds featured ballet, when “Ballet Russe” received an honorable mention under the documentary category. Even now, many days after the function, the thoughts inside my head are unsettled and my mind has yet to be made up as to how I feel about this. In the meantime, I’d love to hear–er, read–what anyone else might think…
For me, the best part of the entire evening had to do with the format of its presentation. The night’s honorees were not asked to approach the stage one at a time, but were asked to stand and be recognized at the beginning and end of the viewing. Adam Shankman, one of the evening’s speakers, said it best: “This is a true celebration. None of us are here to compete with anyone else to win a specific award. We’re all here to simply honor–and, celebrate–the work of all the honorees here today. (Isn’t this so much better than sitting at home in front of the television, patting ourselves on the back while watching our best works on repeat? It’s so much more fun to do it together in this theatre and cheer for each other, instead.)”
Of course, the night was even more noteworthy because I was sitting in the company of celebrities, some of whom have very recognizable names in the Hollywood community. After the special film presentation, the “real” celebration began and I met and schmoozed with Paula Abdul, Carrie Ann Inaba and Dan Karaty, along with the evening’s honorees.
Good thing I don’t get star struck!
Read the rest of this entry »
Recent Posts by susan kim
January 6, 2007 at 4:19 pm · Filed under SLOAN, awards, article19, dougfox, evilimp, dancewebsites
Posted by Sloan
Just thought I’d share the fun news…
The awesome people over at Article 19 (a UK-based site featuring a wealth of information on mostly contemporary dance, including smart editorial content, beautiful widescreen video of contemporary dance companies, audition listings, reviews, and the Evil Imp) have given The Winger the:
“Lofty Acheivement in Blogging” Award
Thanks guys!
Hopefully 2007 will be a year where more dancers and dance companies will start to put the power of the internet to better use! There are just so many possibilities for getting dance out there, and yet the web is still so underused when it comes to dance. For fantastic ideas, commentary and support, check out Doug Fox’s site Great Dance, as well as the above-mentioned Article 19.
Recent Posts by kristin sloan
