The Superhero and his Charming Wife: It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a play

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Based on his own dream, Aaron Hendry, artistic director of Not Man Apart, wrote and directed The Superhero and his Charming Wife, running through May 18th at the 18th Street Performing Arts Center in Santa Monica.

This vibrant performance includes incredible dance and physical moves by an absolutely first rate cast. You’ll never look at sheets of plastic the same way again after you see them transformed into living waves. Performers dance on boards carried by stagehands/background performers, there are leaps, dances, and feats of daring-do as passionate as any that could be created by a caped hero.

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The fear of the unknown is the theme; demons, witches, wives that appear and disappear, whether a person is more than who he or she appears to be – all of these elements are addressed. Choreographed superbly by Michelle Broussard, you have a superhero who works for a living just like your average cop on the street, and his volatile marriage, made the more so by the fact that his wife can morph into different women. Played by Jones Welsh, the superhero craves order and reason; his wife Julie is either simply looking for herself or under the spell of a witch or demon.

This is both a lively if surreal hero’s journey and a pop cultural tour de force, complete with off-the-wall humor and fierce action.

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Not strictly plotted, this is a dreamscape and visual landscape on which emotions from fear to heroism to passion are writ large, scenes and set pieces resemble pages torn from a graphic novel, and the collective experience of the performances is magical and mysterious, evocative of the true superhero which is the human heart.

THE SUPERHERO AND HIS CHARMING WIFE  runs through May 15 Friday/ Saturday at 8:30 p.m.; and May 8 and 15 at 3:30 p.m. at Highways Performance Space at 18th Street Arts Center, 1651 18th Street, Santa Monica, 90404. For reservations and information, call (310) 315-1459 or visit http://highwaysperformance.org/.

  • Genie Davis; Photos: courtesy of production

Heidi Duckler’s Site Specific Dance Classic: Parts & Labor

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“At the car wash…talking about the car wash…” that’s what audiences will be doing on Saturday, May 7th, when the Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre stages a classic dance performance at the Santa Palm car wash in West Hollywood.

Presented in part with a grant from  City of West Hollywood and its Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission through WeHo Arts (www.weho.org/arts), and support from Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, this exciting piece features four dancers staged on a vintage 1970s Cadillac Coupe de Ville. The Cadillac is more than a stage and a prop – the percussion trio Antenna Repairman will be miking it and using the car as an instrument, too.

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Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre creates deeply innovative dance experiences in non-traditional, site-specific locations, inviting its audience and artists to connect with their community in a fresh way. Duckler founded the troop in 1985, and the choreographer has earned the moniker “reigning queen of site specific performance.” Each staging is a contemporary art experience that integrates audience and performers.

Duckler has created more than 200 dance pieces around the world, receiving awards from the City of L.A. Department of Cultural Affairs, the California Arts Council, and the National Endowment of the Arts. With original percussionists Bob Fernandez and MB Gordy of Antenna Repairman still performing, Duckler felt the time was right to re-stage “Parts & Labor.”

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Originally performed in 1993, “Parts & Labor” explores our love/hate relationship with cars, and our dependency on them. The theme is more timely than ever, as LA highways grow increasingly congested and alternative transportation becomes more and more relevant. The piece was originally performed in a Studio City car lot, where dancers performed on an amplified Cadillac, a used car salesman tried to sell Caddys to the audience, and vintage film clips of Detroit’s view of the future screened in the background.

Percussionist Fernandez came up with the original idea to mic the car as a resonant instrument after visiting Cuba and noting the metal in pre-60s era vehicles driven there.

The 1992 performance featured four women in long black veils cradling gas pump nozzles, then changing into doctors’ scrubs, with the Cadillac going into labor and giving birth to a hood ornament. The current iteration will focus on the car as a symbol of freedom, as well as having the potential for entrapment.

“We live in our cars,” Duckler notes. “The car is our home.”

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This Saturday’s car wash location should also add a new look to the piece. “It’s more about relationships,” Duckler relates.

Combining exciting rhythm with progressive dance in a wide range of local settings is hardly a first for Duckler, who has been creating pieces and setting them in locales from the Los Angeles River basin to laundromats for decades.

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Check out her new vision for “Parts & Labor” this weekend, and be prepared for one “driving” evening of stellar dance and riveting rhythm.

“Parts & Labor” will be performed May 7, 2016, at 8 p.m. in the Santa Palm Car Wash, located at 8787 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood.

See http://bit.ly/hddtpartsandlabor for more information and to purchase tickets. Tickets will be available at the door as well, until sold out.

Visit http://www.heididuckler.org/ for more information about the full range of programming planned by this innovative dance group.

Corey Helford Gallery: Something Edgy This Way Comes

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Three new shows opened last Saturday at Corey Helford Gallery:  large scale exhibitions by Japanese artist Kazuki Takamatsu, pop surrealist painter Camilla d’Errico, and Japanese artist Hirabayashi Takahiro.

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Camilla d’Errico’s “Dances with Dreams” is a candy colored trip into the subconscious. Evoking fairy tales and rainbows, these surreal and delicate pieces reveal dreams and the subconscious mind.

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“I wanted to created a relationship about dreams,” d’Errico says. “The girls with eyes open are dreaming. With their eyes closed, that’s a dream the viewer is having, it’s up for interpretation. I want the purpose of those pieces to be that you tell yourself a story. The girls with their eyes covered are waking dreams. That is how we live our lives, in a dream-like state.”

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Inspired as a child by the work of Brian Froud, an English fantasy illustrator,  d’Errico “looked for magic in the real world. It’s more interesting thinking that magic exists.” Certainly her works create their own magic.

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“Decoration Armament,” which spread across the cavernous main gallery at Corey Helford,  is his third solo show for the gallery. Ghostly and ethereal the monochrome images are startling, like x-rays for the soul. But the inspiration for these works is surprising. Kazuki Takamatsu  showed in LA two years ago and was drawn to the fashions worn by visitors to the gallery.

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“It was all so attractive to him,” his translator explained, “that he was inspired to create the figures in this exhibition based on that experience.” Another inspiration, and one more easily observed: “He also thinks about the afterlife. About good and evil. The skull in some works is a symbol of the narrative of evil.”

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Hirabayashi Takahiro’s “Trial of Souls” is lush, hyper-realistic work, dealing with the borders between sky, land and sea, man and nature, childhood and adulthood. The artist chooses young girls as his main subjects, viewing them as guides or guardians for beings in transition.

Corey Helford is often the spot for edgy, interesting, intense, and emotionally consuming exhibitions that defy categorization. This trio of solo shows certainly fits that bill. These experiential exhibitions run until May 21, and the gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday.

Corey Helford Gallery is located at 541 S. Anderson Street in Los Angeles.

  • Genie Davis; Photos: Jack Burke

Calling All Poets in West Hollywood

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Want to be a poet laureate? The City of West Hollywood is accepting nominations for City Poet. The two year term runs October 2016 to October 2018,  following a two-year term served by inaugural City of West Hollywood City Poet Steven Reigns.

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So what does the job entail? The City Poet is the official ambassador of West Hollywood’s vibrant literary culture, leading the promotion of poetry in the city, including the annual celebration of National Poetry Month, which has just ended. The goal: to create excitement about the written word,  and to create a new body of work commemorating West Hollywood, present writing workshops and lectures. The position includes a yearly honorarium.

Interested poets are asked to self-nominate by Thursday, July 14, 2016 no later than 12 p.m.; applications may be submitted here: https://form.jotform.com/60328187326962.

For more information on the City Poet Program, please visit:http://www.weho.org/residents/arts-and-culture/literary-arts/city-poet or contact Mike Che, Economic Development and Cultural Affairs Coordinator at mche@weho.org.