iPhone app iPad app Android phone app Android tablet app

Debra Levine
GET UPDATES FROM Debra Levine
 
DEBRA LEVINE is a Los Angeles Times dance critic. A Pittsburgh native, she has lived in New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tel Aviv, nurturing her arts passion in all cities. In 2009 Debra led the successful grassroots movement to save the classic film program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Levine blogs about dance, film, music and urban culture on arts•meme.

Blog Entries by Debra Levine

Marsha Hunt's Wartime Saturday Nights at the Hollywood Canteen

(7) Comments | Posted May 10, 2013 | 12:24 PM

bookIt was a touching and exceptional march back through time. Wednesday night at the historic American Legion Hall (Hollywood Post #43 ) just south of the Hollywood Bowl, we attended a marvelous event mixing military veterans...

Read Post

A Great Photographer Unleashed: Bert Stern: Original Madman

(1) Comments | Posted April 3, 2013 | 6:24 PM

Bert+Stern+Dior+Weinstein+Company+Opening+ehGVQYObV50lIt doesn't matter that Bert Stern: Original Madman falls short in depicting the hectic life and work of the '60s go-go photographer. The documentary, a first major effort by Shannah Laumeister, is unevenly told, biased toward the actress-turned-director's...

Read Post

Russ Tamblyn, Child Star of Gun Crazy, Featured on Film Preservation Festival Opening Night

(1) Comments | Posted March 4, 2013 | 12:45 PM

Russ Tamblyn-"I never owned one and could care less about guns," said the gentle-spirited Russ Tamblyn before a sold-out house at the Billy Wilder Theater in Los Angeles on Friday night. The conversation with Shannon Kelley,...

Read Post

John Cusack, Ballet Fan

(0) Comments | Posted February 7, 2013 | 8:22 PM

john cusack It was not possible to miss HuffPost blogger and actor-director John Cusack hanging out in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion lobby during intermission at the Joffrey Ballet last night. He's quite tall, his broad face is...

Read Post

Nijinsky's Wild Ride for Ballet, "The Rite of Spring," One Hundred Years Later, in Los Angeles

(7) Comments | Posted February 5, 2013 | 7:46 AM

Ten thousand dance fans experienced shock and awe, in a good way, last weekend at the Los Angeles Music Center when The Joffrey Ballet performed the vastly influential "The Rite of Spring" (Le Sacre du Printemps) at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Seeing the game-changing ballet one hundred years after its...

Read Post

Mary Blair, Artist Who Inspired Disney's 'Peter Pan' and More

(0) Comments | Posted January 16, 2013 | 5:39 PM

Peter Pan's back! He's flying at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood all this month. The screening marks the 60th anniversary of the classic animation film's release in 1953. At an opening-night panel discussion of...

Read Post

Stones Still Rolling, 50 Years Later, on HBO

(32) Comments | Posted November 12, 2012 | 8:02 AM

One full generation's cultural history floats in the ether now that the great Rolling Stones are marking a half century of existence. When the blues-steeped rock band launched in 1962, I was seven years...

Read Post

L.A. Dance Project's Promising Debut At Disney Concert Hall

(2) Comments | Posted September 24, 2012 | 3:40 PM

2012-09-24-Quintett1.jpgNew kids on the block, L.A. Dance Project, in their highly anticipated company debut, took to the sacred space of Walt Disney Concert Hall in a well prepared and highly professional dance performance this weekend. On a stage where the Los...

Read Post

Jerry Lewis, Amped on Movie Technology

(5) Comments | Posted September 18, 2012 | 3:16 PM

"That was so nice," murmured Jerry Lewis, 86, in acknowledgment of the heartfelt standing ovation that erupted when he stepped onto the Samuel Goldwyn Theater stage on Thursday night. The comedian/actor/producer-director and all-around entertainment legend was being honored at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Still emitting zingers...

Read Post

Why the recent interest in choreographer Jack Cole

(3) Comments | Posted August 28, 2012 | 1:41 PM

There's been a flurry of interest, and an upcoming tribute on Turner Classic Movies on September 10, 2012, for a choreographer whose name is not widely known in the general public. It's Jack Cole (1911-1974), a great pioneer of American dance whose tremendous career started with the Denishawn...

Read Post

The Academy Wishes Gene Kelly A Happy 100th Birthday

(6) Comments | Posted May 21, 2012 | 9:51 AM

2012-05-21-GeneKellycolor.jpg A parade of Technicolor-tinged dance sequences enchanted a full house at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater Thursday night. "A Centennial Tribute to Gene Kelly," the first of a two-part event hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored...

Read Post

Screen Siren Peggy Cummins Returns to Hollywood for TCM Fest

(1) Comments | Posted April 23, 2012 | 5:13 PM

2012-04-18-GunCrazyCummins.jpgIt was wild watching Gun Crazy (1950) projected on the humongous screen of the Egyptian Theatre as I did on April 14 at TCM Fest.

Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo's pulpy film noir concerns a couple of newly weds; played by John Dall and...

Read Post

TCM Fest: "Frankenstein's Gonna Bite Me and Kill Me," Said Five-Year-Old Mel Brooks

(0) Comments | Posted April 18, 2012 | 12:22 PM

2012-04-18-melbrooks11.jpgIn a TCM Fest curtain talk with UCLA costume historian Deborah Nadoolman-Landis (she's married to film director John Landis) prior to a screening of Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra (1934), designer Bob Mackie (pictured at right) described an early influence. It was...

Read Post

To Cher, With Love From Travis Banton

(0) Comments | Posted April 18, 2012 | 2:11 AM

2012-04-18-bob_mackieTCM.jpgIn a TCM Fest curtain talk with UCLA costume historian Deborah Nadoolman-Landis (she's married to film director John Landis) prior to a screening of Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra (1934), designer Bob Mackie (pictured at right) described an early influence. It was...

Read Post

Jazz Review: Keith Jarrett At Walt Disney Concert Hall

(0) Comments | Posted April 5, 2012 | 3:44 PM

2012-03-30-Jarrett300.jpg

Keith Jarrett, the 66 year-old jazz legend, opened his solo concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall Tuesday night by plucking on his Steinway's strings, avant-garde style. He closed the evening with a love letter to Los Angeles: "Somewhere Over the Rainbow,"...

Read Post

After "The Artist" Wins Best Picture, Mary Pickford, Silent-Film Icon Orphaned by Parent Foundation

(0) Comments | Posted March 22, 2012 | 9:12 PM

The Mary Pickford Institute for Film Education (MPI), a ten-year-running nonprofit organization that preserves the silent film legacy of producer/actress Mary Pickford and uses her example to teach young children about film history and socially conscious filmmaking, has had its funding yanked by its long-time supporter, the Mary...

Read Post

Dance Review: Paul Taylor Dance Company at the Koch Theater

(0) Comments | Posted March 21, 2012 | 2:50 PM

2012-03-20-paultaylor030.jpgLast week was heady for American modern dance in New York. The Martha Graham Dance Company performed historic works from the great one's canon at the Joyce Theater. Further uptown, in both geography and symbolism, the Paul Taylor Dance Company closed...

Read Post

Paul Taylor Dance Company Moves Uptown

(4) Comments | Posted March 6, 2012 | 12:21 PM

2012-03-05-PaulTaylor2.jpg

A joyous event for modern dance takes place at Lincoln Center next Tuesday evening, March 13, when the Paul Taylor Dance Company will plant its collective bare foot onto the hallowed stage of the David H. Koch Theater. A massive...

Read Post

Classical Underground Rocks

(0) Comments | Posted February 17, 2012 | 2:00 PM

2012-02-17-IMG_4223.JPGClamor filled the central-Los Angeles industrial loft last Thursday evening, when the Russian expatriate painter, Alexey Steele, and his wife Olga, opened their funky-junky, atelier-style home to the music lovers of Los Angeles.

Amidst a clutter of books, art supplies, burning...

Read Post

Between Pina and a Hard Place

(1) Comments | Posted January 12, 2012 | 6:49 PM

2012-01-09-STILL4.jpg

Heavy-hitting filmmakers are turning their cameras on dance and it's an honor. It's also a puzzlement, to the dance world. It surprises us. We thought that the only folk attending dance performances were fellow dancers, parents, and dance critics. But clearly...

Read Post