Los Angeles Choreographers & Dancers To Present Louise Reichlin & Dancers In May

Louise Reichlin & Dancers/ LA Choreographers & Dancers will present their fourth performance at the Culver City Senior Center on May 18. It will have both a joyful as well as compelling look at the post pandemic times featuring a Culver City premier Metro Transformation, and a preview of Reichlin's new work HEART.

Also on the program are You Gotta Get Up (2022), Reboot! Reboot! (2021) and the reimagined Urban and Tribal Dances with sections Batida, Wedding, Alone, War, Remembrance, and Together complete the dance multimedia program. 

Culver City has been important in the company's creativity, and projects in the past have ranged from the first children's and family show production at the Ivy Substation where they also worked with students from Culver City (The Patchwork Girl of Oz), to the premier of another family production at the Jazz Bakery (The Better To Bite You With) which was then presented by other cities including Fontana and the Mark Taper Auditorium in the Los Angeles Central Library; the company produced several productions free of charge at the Culver City Senior Center (Tap Dance Widows Club and A Jewish Child's Story),  both of which were then presented by four theaters in the Las Vegas Library System, and subsequently toured to Santa Barbara and New York City.

The Pandemic cut off scheduled live performance of Urban and Tribal Dances at the Ivy Substation, but through a Culver City Grant in 2020 the company rented the theater for a video shoot of three of the dances in their reimagined form, and after streaming in Culver City they were streamed and featured out of New York and then on a national level.

Last year included live productions at the Culver City Library and the Senior Center, and although they were not able to show the complete work with media, they were able to show the two remaining critically acclaimed sections of the early 90's Wedding and War. This performance will include those and other sections that were recorded at the Ivy Substation.

About the premier and preview

In developing Metro Transformation, Director Louise Reichlin played several dozen pieces of music that she was interested in for dance, and she and Jill Elaine Collins improvised to them. When Jill heard a jazz/Latin piece, her Improv already looked like a dance, and under Louise's direction, she and Mcknnly Moren worked out a number of technical lifts, and patterns. Louise suggested a story line about a girl walking past a worker, drilling the streets for a better road, also suggesting movement from different dance forms ranging from the Lindy, Tango, Charleston, E Indian Bangra Folk Dance, and New York Salsa. Again, the two dancers worked out specifics, supplying stunning moves. All three get choreographer credit.

About HEART from Louise Reichlin, the choreographer: I have been having some medical tests lately, and recently I had what is called a TRANSTHORACIC ECHO (TTE) COMPLETE. As I lay comfortably on a table, I was "wired" and a technician took lots of data readings, and when I realized I could turn my head and see the insides of my heart beating (along with her drawings and vectors) it was an amazing experience. She explained what the red was new blood, the blue blood used and returning out another pathway, and about the golden/yellow- something about when it doesn't leave the chamber right away called backflow. I see the world as something like the heart- a hive-like universe with everything connected, and this work with both dance and media.

About Los Angeles Choreographers & Dancers

Los Angeles Choreographers & Dancers (LA C&D) has a mission to create high-quality, innovative concert work and soulful, imaginative dance, communicate to a diverse audience by infusing dance with the cultural influences found in Culver City and Los Angeles, and to enlarge an educated dance audience in populations typically underexposed to the arts, especially youth. By involving audiences with participatory activities, they explore humanistic themes that empower diverse audience members to expand shared understanding of life. In this way, LA C&D is committed to using dance as a unifying force that crosses cultural, generational, language and socio-economic lines. 

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