Archive for the ‘ART AND LIT’ Category

Conductor Sonia Marie De Léon de Vega and the Santa Cecilia Orchestra (SCO) return to Occidental College with “Romantic Offerings,” a spectacular opening night concert of SCO’s 19th season on Sunday November 6, 2011, at Thorne Hall.  Romantic Offerings will include the beautiful Bruch Double Concerto featuring the Orchestra’s own principal players: Michael Arnold, clarinet, and Lauren Chipman, viola.

Inspirational Maestra De León de Vega will conduct the most beloved of all the Brahms symphonies, the Second.  The evening’s program also includes Mendelssohn’s St. Paul Overture and Bruch’s Concerto for Clarinet, Viola and Orchestra in E minor, Op. 88.

The concert begins at 4:00 PM and is performed without intermission. Tickets, which are on sale now for 26/$20 (adults) and $7 (children), are available by calling (323) 259-3011 or visiting www.scorchestra.org/201011orderform.html#romanticofferings.  A complete season schedule is available at http://scorchestra.org/concerts.html.

Sonia Marie De Léon de Vega, Conductor

Maestra De Léon de Vega is world renowned for her skills on the podium as the music director and conductor of the Los Angeles-based Santa Cecilia Orchestra, the only orchestra in the nation with a specific mission to share the beauty and inspiration of classical music with Latino communities. Maestra De Léon de Vega is celebrated in education circles for creating Discovering Music in 1998, a two-year music education program that is currently offered in 18 elementary schools throughout Los Angeles.  The program has touched the lives of more than 40,000 students in 35 schools through the power of music education.

About Santa Cecilia Orchestra

Founded in 1992, Santa Cecilia Orchestra has made a commitment to share the beauty and inspiration of classical music with Southern California audiences, giving special focus to Latino communities.  SCO offers full orchestra and chamber concerts, and its nationally acclaimed Discovering Music, a two-year music education program.  The upcoming season features four concerts:  Three full symphony concerts and a chamber orchestra performance.  Media and speaking engagement inquiries, please contact Richie Matthews of DIÁLOGO at richie@dialogo.us or for news, photos and biographies of the conductor and soloists, visit http://www.scorchestra.org/PressRoom.htm.

​”Art in the Streets,” the groundbreaking graffiti exhibition at MOCA, drew crowds, police concern and spray-can artists from around the world. Some seemed to think that the arrest of at least one of the exhibitors,Revok, was the authorities’ official reaction to the controversial show.

One thing’s for sure: It broke records.

According to a MOCA statement released late Wednesday the show …

… attracted 201,352 visitors from April 17-August 8, 2011, marking the highest exhibition attendance in the museum’s history. Previous attendance records were set with the museum’s presentations of Andy Warhol Retrospective (2002) and MURAKAMI (2007), which welcomed 195,000 and 149,323 visitors, respectively. With this exhibition, MOCA expects to double its annual attendance this year to 400,000 visitors.

It’s true. “Art in the Streets,” which wrapped up this week at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo, seemed to find that sweet spot comprised of art aficionados, hipsters and hip-hop fans.

You had Facebook friends who wouldn’t know art from an aardvark coming out of the woodwork to gush about “Art in the Streets.”

New MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch wasted no time taking credit:

It is my mission to increase MOCA’s attendance and to engage new audiences. Art in the Streets reflected a wide array of creative disciplines and local communities, and these record-breaking attendance figures go a long way to doubling the museum’s attendance this year.

So, in your face, graffiti and/or Deitch haters.

Written by:

Dennis Romero

Photo by:

Gregory Bojorquez/MOCA

Before there were trendy lofts, coffeehouses and bacon maple doughnuts on the streets near Los Angeles’ skid row — back when graffiti wasn’t considered “art” in downtown Los Angeles — Ben Donenberg had the idea that theater could improve the neighborhood.

“In New York, no one would normally walk in Central Parkafter dark because it’s dangerous,” the then-30-year old impresario told this newspaper in 1987. “You put up a Shakespeare festival and thousands of people flock to the park. I thought that creating a festival here would help to bring people downtown.”

Twenty five years ago this month will mark Donenberg and Shakespeare Festival/LA’s first production of “Twelfth Night” that took place in Pershing Square. But while the artsy and curious flock to downtown L.A., there will be no Shakespeare festival this summer for the first time in a generation.

With Donenberg’s troupe, now called the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, dark this summer, it seems like a good time to ask: Why hasn’t a signature summer Shakespeare tradition blossomed during L.A.’s warmer evenings? Are our outdoor venues simply dealing with the same challenges facing indoor theaters year-round — or are there unique factors hampering alfresco Shakespeare?

There are certainly many more actors (and arguably better weather) in Los Angeles than in San Diego or the Bay Area, yet those two smaller metropolitan areas have major outdoor Shakespeare festivals — the Old Globe and Cal Shakes — that are centrally located and part of the local fabric, much like the venerable Public Theater’s summer productions in Central Park.

Founded in 1954, Joseph Papp‘s New York troupe started small, and its early years, vividly recounted in Times critic Kenneth Turan’s oral history, “Free for All,” were not so different from the history of Donenberg’s Shakespeare Center or the Santa Clarita Shakespeare Festival or San Pedro’s Shakespeare by the Sea, to name some of the many smaller Southern California festivals to emerge in the last generation.

Speaking with some of the founders, including Donenberg,Ellen Geer of Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga and Independent Shakespeare Co.’s Melissa Chalsma, all of them invoked Papp as a role model. Chalsma even admitted that she and her managing director and husband, David Melville, have a shorthand when problems come up: “WWJPD?” (What Would Joe Papp Do?)

Papp’s biggest coup was willing into existence the Delacorte Theater, a permanent stage for his company in Central Park. Sitting in the Delacorte seats, before going on as Provost in “Measure for Measure” earlier this summer, L.A.-based actor Dakin Matthews tried to pinpoint why Los Angeles hasn’t built a similar venue. “Any outdoor amphitheater in L.A. requires the cooperation of neighbors, it requires traffic patterns,” he says, then gestures to the surrounding park. “You don’t have to worry about that here.”

Matthews is a veteran of numerous California Shakespeare festivals dating back to the 1960s, and he played the title character in Donenberg’s production of “Julius Caesar” on the steps of City Hall in 1998. “Ben got a lot of civic support for that. It was a fun play, modern dress, very sexy,” Matthews recalls. “That was one of the high points.”

Repeating that success has proved difficult. Donenberg says that costs are higher for site-specific productions — and they don’t always pay off. “‘Julius Caesar’ worked at City Hall because we embraced the venue and it was easy to make helicopters overhead part of the atmosphere,” Donenberg says. “Whereas when we did ‘Much Ado’ at the 7th Street Marketplace, not so much.”

Theater is ritual, both for performers and audiences, and without a home, Shakespeare Center/LA lacked a familiar setting or season that encouraged loyalty. That changed in 2005, when the Archdiocese of Los Angeles gave Donenberg permission to use the courtyard at the downtown Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. But it wasn’t a perfect match.

“I think there’s something about a sylvan setting, you want grass and nature with outdoor Shakespeare,” Matthews says. “As lovely as the cathedral square is, it’s still concrete.”

When Donenberg and his troupe begin their next season, it’s not clear where they will stage their work. Over the last 25 years, Shakespeare Center has slowly become more about education — or as Donenberg calls it, “community engagement … articulating Shakespeare in different ways.” In lieu of its summer season, last month saw the start of its “Will Power to Youth” program, in which students create an adaptation of a Shakespeare play. In this way, Donenberg’s troupe is becoming more like L.A.’s oldest continuous venue for outdoor Shakespeare: Theatricum Botanicum.

The secret to Botanicum’s longevity, according to Geer, is that it is a home for actors. The Geer family has been performing Shakespeare since the 1950s on their Topanga estate. But Botanicum’s outdoor season is just one component of the company. The company also performs indoors for students. Geer hopes that Los Angeles will become a destination for summer theater fans, like the Delacorte in Central Park or the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, but she also says that outdoor theater will continue to struggle in L.A., just like regular theater: “The film business is a mighty powerful older brother,” Geer said.

Matthews thinks that L.A. can host a world-class outdoor Shakespeare venue (“but it will be devilishly hard to start in this economy”), but says it would have to overcome one particular fact: “If an L.A. actor is a star or a good face, and they want to get cred by doing a serious Shakespeare play, they will come to New York first.”

Before Joe Papp, the only way to get serious Shakespeare cred was for an actor to go to Broadway or London. Now stars like Al Pacino and Anne Hathaway work for a fraction of their film quotes in Central Park. What L.A. needs is its own Joe Papp, Matthews says.

“It does take a single person, I think, who puts it all together,” he says. “I thought Ben was on his way to it. I’m not saying he’s been sidetracked … but a company’s focus can start to shift so much to education so they can no longer think in terms of larger productions.”

Donenberg concedes that his company is moving away from the Papp model. “When Mr. Papp was around there was money for the arts, lots more federal funding, local funding. … It was a different environment,” he says. “The financial crisis has made us become a lot more specific about our goals … we have to grow up.”

As Shakespeare Center has been redefining itself, the company that is emerging as perhaps the closest thing to Papp’s vision of Free Shakespeare for All in Los Angeles is Chalsma’s Independent Shakespeare Co. Like Donenberg, who says acting in Papp’s production of “Henry IV” in 1981 was a key motivation, ISC‘s founders met on the 1995 Broadway production of “Hamlet” with Ralph Fiennes. They moved west and mounted their first production in 2003 at Franklin Canyon Park. The next year they moved to Barnsdall Park, where the first performance was attended by 14 people and a dog, according to Chalsma. In 2009, their last season there, nearly 12,000 people attended the festival.

Last year, the ISC moved out of Barnsdall Park and set up shop in Griffith Park, which is probably the closest thing that L.A. has to Central Park. The troupe performs in a natural amphitheater in the Old Zoo and Chalsma says the move was a blessing. “I can’t imagine a better venue. There’s a lot of parking. In L.A., that’s a critical thing.”

Last month, the ISC opened its second season at Griffith Park with “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” and 1,700 people attended the first four performances. This marks ISC’s ninth season of free Shakespeare, but don’t expect any recognizable faces from TV or the movies in its productions, whereas in Papp’s ninth season, George C. Scott and James Earl Jones starred in “The Merchant of Venice,” and the Delacorte was inaugurated.

Chalsma is well aware of the uphill road she and her company are traveling, but she remains optimistic: “I think there’s no reason L.A. can’t be considered a Shakespeare town. In my experience, audiences are fantastic, vocal and crazy-supportive, you just have to get them to the theater.”

For Donenberg, this summer is a time to regroup and prepare for the next generation. He’s hopeful that there will be a next 25 years for his organization — and despite the difficulties, he still talks about the legacy of what Joe Papp did in New York. “The things he tapped, the idea that theater is a birthright, it’s as true now as it was then.”

Of course, free Shakespeare is never really free. Joe Papp’s trick was to make Shakespeare in the Park sexy enough so that city officials and those who could donate wanted to. Matthews says that the only way L.A. will have a world-class Shakespeare venue is when being on its board has as much prestige as being on the board of LACMA or the L.A. Philharmonic.

Chalsma says that her board thinks a new permanent outdoor theater like the Delacorte would help distinguish her company. She agrees that this would be great, but insists that money is better spent on the actors and the productions.

“Look at Ashland, it’s out of the way but people don’t just drive 60 miles from Oregon to go there, they come from all over the world.” She adds that they’re making the pilgrimage not to see the architecture of the theater, but rather the work that’s onstage. Putting on high-quality productions that rival the best companies in the world is ultimately what will make Los Angeles a Shakespeare destination. “Just because L.A. doesn’t have it yet,” Chalsma says, “doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible.”

Original Story

Preppy heritage brand Sperry Top-Sider is opening a 2,100-square-foot shop at Fashion Island in Newport Beach August 18 — the brand’s largest on the West Coast.

We’ve been fans of the original Top-Sider since birth. Whose dad didn’t shuffle around in a pair? But we only recently heard the tale of how the iconic shoe entered the atmosphere.

The company was founded by Paul Sperry, an avid sailor who invented the brand’s Authentic Original (the basic Top-Sider) to avoid slipping on wet decks over 75 years ago. The idea for the grooved soles came from the paws of Sperry’s cocker spaniel who could run effortlessly across an icy pond.

The store is designed to evoke the feeling of a true working boathouse and will be offering a full range of Sperry men’s, women’s and children’s lifestyle and performance footwear, as well as Sperry branded and curated apparel and accessories — items such as tote bags and board shorts crafted from recycled sailcloth.

A fun new stop!

Written by:

Emili Vesilind

Photo: A colored Authentic Original from Sperry Top-Sider.

For this week’s summer of swag giveaway we are thrilled to offer one stylish reader the opportunity to win this wheat dress from Dace, shown at right. Valued at $240, the dress is made of 100 percent silk crepe de chine complete with sheer sleeves and full lining.

Dace is the brainchild of Canadian native Dace Moore, who founded the company in 2002. Known for its sleek, modern lines and classic femininity, Dace is also applauded for its attention to fit and construction.

One fabulous reader can hit the town in Dace’s wheat dress by signing up for our newsletter here. Deadline for entry is Tuesday August 9th at 5 p.m. PST. Please view our terms and conditions for entry.

We are also pleased to offer our loyal readers an exclusive 40 percent off discount to Dace’s e-commerce websitefor the next week. Simply enter code “SSLA40″ at checkout between now and Wednesday August 10th. Happy shopping!

Written by:

Rakhee Bhatt

Image source

It is flip-flops at business meetings, and sweatpants at fancy restaurants. It is jeans with sneakers, but also with skyscraper stilettos. It is baggy sweaters and little straw hats. It is giant sunglasses and giant purses, big enough to carry a squadron of tiny dogs. It is crazy color: fuchsia, turquoise, neon yellow, baby blue. It is weird. It is sexy. It sucks. It is industry folks in leather jackets. It is schlumpy guys who can’t dress and drop-dead-gorgeous girls who show so much skin in their skimpy dresses they might as well be naked.

This is what people tell you when you ask them, “What is L.A. style?” The answers are all over the map. In terms of a definitive Los Angeles look, there seems at first glance to be no there there. But ask the people who live, eat, sleep and breathe fashion — local designers, photographers, stylists, style bloggers —  and familiar themes do come up.

First and foremost, Los Angeles is casual. It’s a deceptive casualness, though. A deliberate kind of nonconspicuous conspicuous consumption. Casual, in L.A., isn’t an accident. It’s an aesthetic. “Everyone looks casual, but you know that T-shirt cost $500,” says Jonny Cota, founder and lead designer of L.A. cult favorite design house Skingraft. Because he’s invested in fashion, Cota can tell if an outfit is expensive or not. The general public, however, usually can’t.

It takes substantial care to look like you don’t care. The quintessential L.A. it-girl uniform is the epitome of careful not-caring: skinny jeans, blazer, a little top, statement bag, 5-inch platform Brian Atwood heels. “Yes, it’s casual. But everything seems so chosen and thought-out. It doesn’t quite look … doesn’t quite gel,” says Melissa Coker, who designs the clothing line Wren.

Yet strangely, Los Angeles is not a town for high fashion, for $5,000 head-to-toe designer outfits. “We’re behind a little,” Cota admits. “Or we don’t pay attention. Fashion Week in L.A. is not the strongest. It’s not a priority.”

Peter Gurnz, photographer and founder of the artists collective Boxeight, is the guy who has been trying to turn L.A. Fashion Week around for years, with mixed success. For a while, Gurnz and Boxeight hosted standard runway shows. Those eventually morphed into live photo shoots that are more performance art than anything. Guests watched as the entire theater of a fashion shoot went on display, from makeup to hair to lights to models posing for shots.

“L.A. is not a very fashionable city as far as the percentage of people who spend time every day considering their clothes,” Gurnz says by phone from Martha’s Vineyard. “Can you order me a lobster roll?” he calls out to someone nearby. “Sorry. People go to business meetings in shorts and flip-flops,” he says of Los Angeles. “But that said, there’s a unique style [there] that’s copied in Asia and that we’re starting to see in Paris. There are little camps of people who are thinking L.A. is cool.”

He ticks off the distinct styles associated with Los Angeles: the “scarecrow” look — skinny, rich woman in oversized clothes. The avant-garde modely look, epitomized by designerMichel Berandi. “You know, really couture stuff, like sewn-in hair and stuff.” Berandi, who’ll sew long skeins of goat hair onto, say, a bolero or a shirt collar, is an L.A. local. “We did a fashion show with him and people were crying on the runway.”

The Mexican kids doing the Morrissey rockabilly thing with pompadours and slim-cut, dark-wash jeans. The surf bums: “The one thing that does well here is sports fashion and surf apparel companies.”

The rocker vampire look. “I’m wearing Endovanera right now. I probably look a little weird,” he admits. “Then there’s crappy shit like Christian Audigier.” Audigier is the king of so-called luxury streetwear: regular T-shirts, hoodies, jeans and such, printed with loud graphics, bedazzled with rhinestones. “Those are all definable L.A. looks. Though not everyone’s running around looking like scarecrows or rocker vampires.”

L.A. does not influence the global fashion industry, Gurnz says. But then again, L.A.’s sense of style is still young. “We’re kids. We don’t have an infrastructure to support a real fashion industry. We have great designers, but then they leave. It’s simply more profitable to go to other places.”

By infrastructure, he means the fashion events, clients, design houses, magazines, photographers and market weeks that fuel the engine of style. “Vegas almost has a better market week than we do because of all their convention centers.” He pauses. “A boutique in the East Village is going to do better than a boutique on Melrose. That’s just the temperature of the water.”

Does L.A. get a bum rap in the fashion world? “No. We deserve it.”

But that’s going to change soon, Gurnz believes, because of the rise of video-based “fashion films.” Instead of sending lookbooks — the industry-standard print catalogs that show off a clothing line — to department store buyers, designers now are shooting short, Internet-based videos to showcase collections. New York–based fashion photographer Steven Kleinshot a video starring Brad Pitt beating up Angelina Jolie.  “Every camera now has HD video capability, so all the fashion photographers have become fashion videographers,” Gurnz says.

Because of the presence of the film industry and the city’s intense celebrity culture, fashion films will drive the big players to L.A., Gurnz suspects. “It’s gonna put steroids into our whole structure,” he says in his deep, languid voice before slipping back into Martha’s Vineyard.

Some trends do start here and spread out across the rest of the fashion world. Wren’s Melissa Coker keeps a steady roster of clients stocked with her ready-to-wear line of “preppy but not too prissy” dresses, tops, skirts and slacks. “Feminine with a tomboy’s touch,” as she describes it.

“L.A. street style tends to be really influential throughout the whole country,” she says, curling into a squashy chair in her Atwater Village studio. “People don’t realize that.” The current ankle-length skirts, voluminous maxi dresses, the cropped tops and button-down shirts knotted at the waist — those looks started here. And, if you believe Coker, so didUGG boots. She takes personal responsibility for the UGG’s rise to infamy. She wore them a decade ago to fashion shows, where the stiletto-clad girls would make fun of her (“What are you wearing, Nanook?”). But Coker soon started seeing those girls wearing them, too.

Ilaria Urbinati, co-owner of the store Confederacy in Hollywood, introduced L.A. to Rebecca Minkoff, whose boxy, tasseled leather purses now can be found dangling on the arms of many a reality TV star. But an even more pervasive trend for which Urbinati can take credit is the current wave of young men who are newly discovering suits and ties. It’s been said that Urbinati, who styles actors James McAvoy, Bradley Cooperand Giovanni Ribisi, has a talent for making guys look like GQ versions of themselves.

“Men in L.A. are only recently learning how to dress,” she says. Guys come to her store for suiting. “They’re now more likely to wear a suit to dinner. These are the same guys who before would’ve worn a hoodie.” And they don’t just want a suit; they want a tie bar and a pocket square.

The polished, dapper Mad Men man is still a rarity in this city, however. What Urbinati sells most is denim. Los Angeles is a denim culture. Denim is part of the relaxed aesthetic, but there is nothing relaxing about the serious consideration people here give to their jeans. Just the other day, a guy came in to Urbinati’s store wondering about raw jeans, made from denim fabric that hasn’t been rinsed after the dyeing process. She explained how raw denim is never washed, and how you put the raw jeans in the freezer if they start to smell bad.

Guys in L.A., she adds, are collectors of exclusive this and limited-edition that. Confederacy’s best-selling item is the $300 Wolverine Thousand Mile boot from a company that has been making them since the 1800s. Urbinati can’t keep the boots in stock; her waiting list is five pages long. “Guys get into collecting in a way that girls don’t,” she says. “Girls just want a pretty dress.”

Partly that has to do with L.A.’s nightlife. This city isn’t about bars so much as clubs, which call for a tight little dress and heels. And the velvet rope goes hand-in-hand with the red carpet, the most visible runway in the world. Compared to New York, girls in L.A. dress safer, more “on the nose.” They love cocktail dresses.

“Here, even the women who aren’t actresses are surrounded by the industry,” Urbinati says. “They want pretty, easy to understand, accessible, as opposed to fashion-forward. The ones who are actresses have to worry about wearing something flattering because they might be photographed. They worry about having their makeup on and extensions in because a director might run into them.”

Urbinati’s theory is that all the tall pretty girls move to New York to become models and all the short pretty girls move to L.A. to become actresses. Girls in L.A. are tiny. Confederacy’s best-selling size is a 0 to 2.

“In New York, you get kudos for wearing a cool outfit,” she continues. “Maybe the Sartorialist will photograph you and post your picture on his blog. Here, style is not such a form of expression. In L.A., everyone wants to look good — healthy, sexy, pretty. Everyone hikes and has a dog and eats well.” In L.A., having a perfect body and wearing clothes that show it off to best advantage are much more of a priority than wearing outfits that stand out.

Being concerned with style, with proper dressing, she thinks, is more innate on the East Coast. “People in New York look like they walked out of a Ralph Lauren catalog. It’s the whole Hamptons thing. It could be a money thing, too. There’s more old money there. In L.A., everyone’s sort of self-made. It’s more nouveau riche.”

Even the color palette is different in L.A. It’s wilder, more vibrant, more unstudied. “Everyone has baby-blue nail polish here,” Urbinati says. “Not that I’m knocking it. I have baby-blue nail polish on right now.”

In some gut way, Los Angeles style is influenced by the beach and the ocean. When gallery owner Heather Taylor worked in New York’s art scene, the gallery girls all wore black, so all she wanted to wear was black. Moving to L.A. several years ago, walking its numerous shorelines, living and working close to its warm waters, opened her up to colors and patterns.

Sipping minuscule cappuccinos at Soho House atop a building on Sunset in West Hollywood, Taylor and her friend, artist Jeana Sohn, take in the panoramic views of the city and discuss its fashion rep.

Los Angeles may not be a town for high fashion, but it is a place for contradiction and variety. For every rule, there is an exception. Not every girl in L.A. aspires to skinny jeans, Brian Atwood heels and a statement bag. Not all women go out at night dressed like slutty Sunset strippers. The idea of girls who dress overtly sexy and pretty to please men: “In our world that’s intensely not true,” Taylor says.

In addition to being a painter, Sohn runs the blog ClosetVisit.com. As the name implies, she takes pictures of women’s closets. The blog has been an instant hit, and people often email her asking, “Isn’t it hard to do it in L.A.? How do you find all these stylish people? Who are they?”

Sohn shrugs. They are artists, designers, bloggers, chefs, decorators, students, shop girls, store owners, stylists, friends of friends. They’ll wear big sleeves, or genielike harem pants, or tops that wrap like a whirlwind around the body, or huge gold earrings. “Both our male counterparts look at us and go, ‘Now that is some necklace,’ ” Taylor says of herself and Sohn with a hearty laugh. “There are looks of confusion.”

“You look like a ninja,” the husbands say. Or, “You look like a wizard.”

“This is not for you,” Taylor will reply.

She drains the rest of her cappuccino now. “Good luck trying to pin down a single L.A. anything,” she says. “We are cities within cities within cities.”

Written by:

Gendy Alimurung

Images by:

Star Foreman

Fragrant steam rises from an enormous vat of tea, and steeping in the brew at thisKoreatown spa are three plump Korean grandmas. Their nudity, and the undulating rolls of fat ringing their waists, seem to trouble them not at all. The ritual of a communal bath is clearly comfortable. The moonfaced grandmothers exhibit not a trace of self-consciousness.

A few feet away, a 20-something bottle blonde with carefully striped strands of gold, ash and strawberry woven through fastidiously tied hair soaks only her feet as she poses at the edge of a roiling spa. For whom she is posing is a mystery. There’s no one here but the grandmas and a few other women. But the blonde leans back on her elbows as if she expects at any moment to be photographed. Even in the sodden air, her makeup remains eerily flawless.

Rather than marveling at this specimen’s perfection, a few other women in the spa huddle together and discreetly tsk-tsk words of pity.

“It’s sad. If you can’t relax in a spa, where can you?”

The sympathy is clear: There but for the grace of God go I. Rather than the blonde’s meticulously curated beauty, it is her paralyzing fear that stands out — the fear of being thought of as unattractive, even in a Jacuzzi full of old ladies. That fear, for many, requires a mighty effort to cast off.

Toni Raiten-D’Antonio has fought that good fight. A lifelong beauty outsider, D’Antonio was unequivocally informed by her family that she was ugly, and she has adopted that familial candor in a book about her struggle with beauty and the lack of it: Ugly as Sin. In its best moments, D’Antonio’s book cuts to the bone, stripping bare the searing pain that comes with the terror of aesthetic insufficiency, which most often originates in childhood’s unhealed wounds.

D’Antonio began her research with a post on aFacebook group for women, asking the simple question: “When do you feel ugly?”

Answers came cascading in, each a testament to still-raw anguish. Hundreds of women responded, cataloguing excruciating moments of insult, humiliation and trauma, leaving the reader to cringe in sympathy and recognition. Responses to D’Antonio’s question ranged from specific and piercing anecdotes — one girl recalled being demeaned as she rode up the elevator to her senior prom — to generally tortured answers like, “Every day. When do I not feel ugly?”

Given the sheer number of respondents, it’s difficult to imagine that they’re all the hideous monsters they imagine themselves to be.

In Los Angeles, shallow vanity capital of the world, the trite saw “It’s what’s on the inside that counts” can ring doubly hollow. But in every corner of the world, even those who agree with that axiom would, if given a choice, take pretty over ugly. Unfortunately, that choice is rarely on the menu most of us are handed.

D’Antonio’s solution, short of reorganizing not only the entire culture but human nature, is to say to yourself, “I’m ugly.” Make this admission not in a downcast moment of defeat but on any regular day, simply because ugliness is a natural part of the human condition. Then accompany this admission with its converse: If you, like every human, are subject to crookedness, mess, foul odors and decay, then admit that the beauty that is an inherent part of humanity is also a part of you.

Rather than powdering over our physical flaws with pretty-on-the-inside niceties, exercising the public politeness of pretending not to notice flaws — and we are by far our own harshest critics — D’Antonio recommends coming out of the closet. Admit to yourself that you are ugly. Then get on with your life.

The only hope for long-term change is in refusing to pass on this wretched dysmorphic legacy to our daughters, and author Lauren Kessler seems to have found the way. Kessler’s book My Teenage Werewolf is an irresistible confessional about her struggle to raise a confident, self-assured daughter and to remain a relevant and positive influence in the 13-year-old’s life, rather than becoming some horribly uncool appendage.

Kessler’s own tussles with body image and her daughter’s total lack of same make up only a small portion of the narrative, but Kessler’s observations of her growing daughter’s physical sense of self are a crucial part of the lead-up to a happy ending, in which Kessler learns that the secret of earning her teenager’s respect lies in finding opportunities to let her daughter take the lead.

The power struggles between mother and daughter, Kessler learns, are just one of the battles a growing girl has to fight. Another push and pull comes from the oft-blamed sexualized images of young women in the media, which, rather than being the root of all evil, actually can convey a message of freedom. Of course, should a sexy girl exercise too much of that freedom, Kessler points out, slasher movies and fearsome tales of sexual predators are there to terrify her back into submission. Kessler often finds herself torn as she struggles to direct her daughter’s impulses without quashing the feisty spirit from which they spring.

It is mothers like Kessler who offer the only window of opportunity for replacing women’s anxious and bigoted relationships with their bodies with healthy ones, because ultimately it’s not society, not the villainous patriarchy and not men, but other women who most powerfully perpetuate female traditions of self-loathing and insecurity. Think about it, honey: A guy might pass you over for someone with a bigger cup size, but he’s never, ever going to invite you to his home Botox party.

Kessler fills her journey with self-effacing humor over her struggles with the proper degree of parental control. “Obviously, my mother was off-base and I was in the right. And now, obviously, I am in the right once again — Isn’t it wonderful to be right so often? — and my daughter is off-base. Believe me, I see the problem here, but I can’t help myself.”

The unathletic Kessler, who admits to hiding her body in a towel at her daughter’s birthday pool party, winds up with a jock daughter: a discus thrower, track athlete and the sole female member of her school’s wrestling team who, despite several extra pounds on an ample frame, unconcernedly submits to very public premeet weigh-ins as her mother stands by in awe.

Rather than being driven by vanity, Kessler says, “My daughter exercises because she wants to be strong. She pays attention to her musculature, she pays attention to being flexible and not injuring herself. What gets her to the gym is, ‘I want to be strong and healthy, and I want to win.’ ”

Kessler’s advice: “Replace the tape in your head that says, ‘I want to pay attention to food and exercise because if I don’t, I’ll be fat and ugly and no one will love me’ with the tape that says, ‘I want to pay attention to food and exercise because I want to be healthy and vibrant for myself, and my daughter.’ If you can do that, that’s huge.”

Written by:

L.J. Williamson

Source

In Los Angeles at the moment, it is safe to say that a meat movement is marinating. Whole-animal butchery is in, as are butchers who covet proximity to meat sources and are scrupulous about waste. Liberated, self-conscious carnivores are raising their own animals and signing up for butchery demonstrations and hands-on classes where they can learn the craft of meat carving.

Food-centric “happenings” are as common now as pickup basketball games, whether in the form of pop-up restaurant or pickling class. Bacon has appeared on doughnuts and in chocolate bars, in soda and, yes, in toothpaste. Foie gras emerged on L.A.-based French chef Ludo Lefebvre‘s pop-up menu in the form of a white powder that easily could have been absorbed through the nostrils. In some neighborhoods, votes for best burger trump turnouts for local elections, and beefWellington, locavore and sous vide have found their place in The Associated Press Stylebook.

As meat has been revitalized as a topic of interest for eaters, so has the controversial staging of flesh as art. The Hammer Museum’s show “Paul Thek: Diver, a Retrospective” includes works from one example, his seriesTechnological Reliquaries, mysterious, painstaking wax replicas of bloody chunks of meat and severed limbs.

Over the past 50 years, as artists have challenged their audience’s comfort with the topic and company of meat, wars, gender dynamics and appetites evolve, and so does the metaphor. The scene was fresh when Thek created his meat sculptures in the ’60s, about the time Carolee Schneemann first presentedMeat Joy at the First Festival of Free Expression at the American Center in Paris in 1964. Meat Joy featured a sloppy dance of partially nude humans rolling around on the floor, rubbing themselves with raw fish, chickens and sausages, sinking their teeth into the slimy raw flesh, sandwiching the corpses between them as they caressed and kissed each other. The scene was revolting yet somehow tender — human bodies commingling with dead animals, the common denominator being flesh.

More recently, some contemporary artists have taken the new “farm to table” ethos as a provocative invitation, finding an aesthetic expression of the collapsing distance between consumers and their dinner. For the performance art fair Performa in 2009, Jennifer Rubell presented Creation, an installation inspired by the first chapters of Genesis that included one ton of barbecued ribs lubricated by a dripping honey trap mounted on the ceiling above. In order for spectators to fully experience her artwork, Rubell required them to physically engage, to dig into mountains of wet slabs of ribs with sticky tongs and eat with their bare hands.

“Of all the food I’ve used in my work, meat is by far the most pornographic, and often elicits the most intense response,” Rubell says in an email. “Like pornography, it has that push-me/pull-me quality — seductive, arousing, exciting, enticing on the one hand, and then immoral, wasteful, cruel, decadent on the other. My work as a whole asks viewers to transgress that Don’t Touch viewer/artwork boundary that’s been drilled into all of us since childhood. The food is a prompt to that transgression, and the more intense, loaded and irresistible that prompt can be, the better.”

Song Dong’s edible installations at Chelsea’s former PaceWildenstein Gallery (now the Pace Gallery) in 2009 satirized traditional art through wall-mounted landscapes of food from which the audience was invited to eat, including stacks of prosciutto layered with slices of bread and decorated with broccoli florets leaning against a white wall and a mountain of roast pork. His perishable works are essentially art objects for a brief moment before they are devoured. His image captions approximate small recipes. By consuming Dong’s ephemeral installations, gallerygoers become collectors of his work.

Feminist artists have long used meat as a metaphor in their work, showcasing it as a garment on the female body. Linder Sterling’s dress of chicken entrails from 1982, Jana Sterbak‘s 1987 work Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic (made from 60 pounds of raw flank steak) and Lady Gaga‘s raw-meat dress from MTV‘s 2010 Video Music Awards all looked like something the Rodarte girls might assemble out of their natural-world inspirations. They posed questions of conventional appetites, rituals and gender as well as human-animal relations.

“I went with the cold-concept, warm-execution method,” Gaga’s dress designer, Franc Fernandez, says via email. “There’s something so obviously crude about making a dress out of meat that I wanted the finished product to be almost beautiful, fit her right, look good on camera, make people think twice whether it was real meat or not. The medium is taboo more and more every day.”

In contrast to the gluttonous themes at the heart of Dong’s, Rubell’s and Schneemann’s works, and the shock value of meat garments, Thek’s “meat pieces” at the Hammer come off as incredibly controlled, almost demure, cautionary and sterile. Inspired by his 1962 trip to the Capuchin Catacombs in Sicily with then-lover Peter Hujar, Thek’s sculptures are sealed in Formica and Plexiglas boxes as though they were precious specimens, or morbid preserves, a precursor to Damien Hirst‘s animals pickled in formaldehyde 30 years later. Unlike Hirst’s whole-animal works, Thek’s pieces feature unidentifiable portions of meat and severed limbs cast from his own body. The sculptures could easily be mistaken for vestiges of Gunther Von Hagens‘ early experiments in Plastination in the 1970s, bodies preserved down to bone, tendon, vein.

Untitled (Meat Pyramid), for instance, involves a four-sided Plexiglas pyramid box that contains a bloody, sinewy chunk of wax-meat textured with clear lumps of what could be fat, the top coated in a cloudy layer, insinuating congealed lard. The image caption reveals a list of organic and nonorganic materials: wax, hair, metal, wood, plaster, cord, paint.

Thek’s “meat pieces” will not be physically digested by his audience and, unlike the ephemeral works mentioned earlier, which were born out of the relational aesthetics movement, they have physically outlived the artist — who died of AIDS at age 54 — and will outlive audiences. The works are simply art objects — the experience is neither aural, olfactory, gustatory nor tactile. Appetites will not be entertained.

Like the satirical and sarcastic scenes posed by other artists who employ meat as a medium, Thek’s works are both ridiculous and religious at once. Although they do not require his audience to physically handle, chew, and digest, the experience of peering into his boxes is no less self-conscious.

But the experience of his works is a relatively private act, and can offer pause to modern viewers preoccupied with meat sources, cooking methods and cuts. Like a diner at a trendy pop-up restaurant, a participant in one of Rubell’s meat installations might leave with greasy fingers, a full stomach and a few new friends, while Thek’s audience is kept at arm’s length, left to consider, without the distraction of sensory details, the matter and meaning of meat.

Written by:

Erica Zora

Photo:

SHELDAN C. COLLINS. COPYRIGHT THE ESTATE OF GEORGE PAUL THEK; COURTESY ALEXANDER AND BONIN, NEW YORK

The most delightful thing about “Sleeping Beauty Wakes,” the musical about a princess who rises in a state-of-the-art sleep clinic after a 900-year-long slumber, is the way it whisks a classic fairy tale to a modern day locale that freely mixes medical science with pixie dust. The potential of this winning conceit isn’t quite realized, but the inherent charm of the piece captivates our imagination even as the flaws peek through.

The show, which is playing at the La Jolla Playhouse in a co-production with New Jersey’s McCarter Theatre Center, is a retooled version of a musical that had its world premiere in 2007 at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. That earlier staging, a collaboration between Center Theatre Group and Deaf West Theatre, was a more intimate yet far more cumbersomely multilayered affair.

This new production, directed by Rebecca Taichman, simplifies the storytelling. The book by Rachel Sheinkin (a Tony winner for “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”) has been streamlined and the pop score by composer Brendan Milburn and lyricist Valerie Vigoda (of the indie band GrooveLily) has undergone a major overhaul. The newfound clarity is welcome, but the musical is still searching for its identity.

“Sleeping Beauty Wakes” is a small show that would probably be more at home in a black box venue than on the large proscenium stage of La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre. The top-notch design team (with standout work by scenic designer Riccardo Hernandez and lighting designer Christopher Akerlind) keeps things spare, agile and 21st century, but the presentational quality of the production sets up expectations that the work isn’t prepared to fulfill. Better to stumble upon this one in a pocket space where the amplification isn’t so alienating and the actors don’t have to resort to gusty theatrics to make their characters known. A cozier approach all around would draw out the musical’s offbeat originality.

Four sleep disorder patients (played by Steve Judkins, Jimmy Ray Bennett, Adinah Alexander and Carrie Manolakos) have checked into a clinic run by a doctor (Kecia Lewis-Evans) whose bedside manner is that of a gruff researcher. A hospital orderly (Bryce Ryness) offers more congenial assistance, but he suffers from an unusual type of narcolepsy — whenever he experiences great joy, he passes out.

Just as the insomniacs have been wired for their nighttime monitoring, a father (Bob Stillman) rushes in with his somnolent daughter, Rose (Aspen Vincent), who hasn’t opened her eyes in an eon. He wants the doctor to read her dreams, and though he hasn’t any insurance, his kingly presence and wad of cash help get the girl admitted.

A funny thing happens that first night at the clinic — Rose’s dream-life begins to influence the REM cycle of those snoozing beside her. Her back story gets acted out, with the doctor playing the role of the bad fairy whose spell (yes, there’s still a nefarious spindle) sinks Rose into her interminable coma.

All this incongruous commotion inspired by “Sleeping Beauty” author Charles Perrault is baffling to those who have put their faith in electrodes and MRIs. But the handsome orderly has nonetheless fallen head over heels for the beauteous Rose, and though he lacks the traditional pedigree, his princely peck on the cheek liberates her from her catatonic prison.

Of course, happiness always comes with a hitch: Rose’s awakening has an adverse effect on her father, whose terrifying seniority catches up with him as his daughter matures into an adult woman. (Psychoanalysts naturally have had a field day with this sexual dimension of the traditional story.)

As the romantic leads, Vincent, who blends purity with pertness, and Ryness, who stumbles around winsomely (and gets assigned the most kinetic moves of Doug Varone’s choreography), are easy to root for. And the eccentricity of the cast, including Lewis-Evans’ patient-avoiding doctor and Stillman’s gentle father trying to conceal his anachronistic existence under a kindly cardigan, adds a nice touch. But something’s missing in the ensemble’s chemistry — the grand reaction mysteriously fizzles.

Sheinkin’s book does its best to humorously glide over implausibilities that are more pronounced in a contemporary setting. The fey tone, however, precludes the special gravity that makes fairy tales such a profound experience for readers. Sheinkin can be counted on for cleverness, but rarely does her smiling ingenuity tantalize the unconscious. Everything is a bit too self-aware.

Milburn and Vigoda’s songs, played by an unseen pit orchestra conducted by music director, orchestrator and keyboardist James Sampliner, are by turns sprightly and sentimental. The group numbers are more inventive than the rather saccharine solo turns, but it was difficult to judge the score through such a distancing microphone system. The clobbering sound quality seemed utterly discordant with the delicate story.

Lewis-Evans compounds the problem by going into power-ballad mode as the bad fairy, making it seem as though GrooveLily was aspiring to write the next “Wicked.” It’s not the actress’ fault — she’s simply following the production’s lead. But it’s an indication that no one quite knows what type of musical “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” is meant to be.

Right now the show’s ambition seems to be pulling the work away from its strength as a musical comedy chamber piece. The enchantment is visible, but too much of it remains trapped in a glass case, like a waxwork Sleeping Beauty at a theme park.

“Sleeping Beauty Wakes,” La Jolla Playhouse, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, La Jolla, 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Aug. 28. $53-$85. (858) 550-1010 or www.lajollaplayhouse.org Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes

Written by:

Charles McNulty

Photos:

Top: Bryce Ryness and Aspen Vincent. Bottom: Kecia Lewis-Evans (center) and Vincent with the cast of La Jolla Playhouse’s production of “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” Credit: T. Charles Erickson