Throughout the month of August, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts will present Summer @ The Wallis featuring a mixture of music and dance programs in its Pop-Up Outdoor Theater. These concerts are in celebration of the return to in-person audiences following more than a year of the pandemic. The Wallis will continue its commitment to the health and safety of its staff, artists and patrons by observing city, state and federal guidelines.
Following a five-week run of Tom Dugan’s one-man show Tevye in New York! which closes on July 25, Summer @ The Wallis continues with music ensemble Salastina (August 7); the world premiere of Heidi Duckler Dance’s site-specific work The Chandelier, based on Brazilian author Clarice Lispector’s novel of the same title (August 12-15); Versa-Style Dance Company making its debut at The Wallis with its incredible hip-hop dance-theater work Box of Hope (August 19-21). Quattrosound will provide an exciting blend of jazz, rock and classical music (August 25); the world’s first LGBTQ+ mariachi band Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Angeles will thrill audiences with sounds and rhythms from south of the border (August 26 and 27); and acclaimed recording artist and celebrated singer Ty Taylor, “a modern-day James Brown” (Rolling Stone), concludes Summer @ The Wallis with an evening of classic and nouveau standards (August 28). The Wallis will also announce its cinema programming soon.
Summer @ The Wallis tickets are on sale now for all events. The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is located at 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills. To purchase tickets and for more information, please call 310-746-4000 (Tue.-Fri. 9:30 am – 2:30 pm) or email Tickets@Wallis.org.
For LA Dance Chronicle readers, here is The Wallis description of the two dance performances:
Heidi Duckler Dance: The Chandelier – August 12-15, 2021, 8 pm – Tickets: $50
Live dance returns to the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts with the world premiere of Heidi Duckler Dance’s The Chandelier, a site-specific work choreographed and directed by company Founder/Artistic Director Heidi Duckler that runs for four nights, Thursday August 12 to Sunday, August 15, 2021, at 8 pm, on The Wallis’ pop-up outdoor stage. Taking the audience on an epic journey, The Chandelier, created for The Wallis, is based on a novel of the same title by Brazilian author Clarice Lispector, which was hailed by The New York Times for its “undeniable quantity of genius (and) heart-stopping payoff.” Duckler animates the book’s interior monologues and devises characters from odd fragments of dialogue to create a moving portrait of a family living amid the ruins of a colonial society. Through layers of imagery, acts of repetition and audience engagement, Duckler explores the contrasting ideas of impermanence and the irrevocable. Los Angeles-based Heidi Ducker Dance is noted for creating ephemeral place-based performances that transform non-traditional spaces. LA Weekly proclaims, “Many choreographers intermittently offer site-specific work in L.A., but when it comes to Heidi Duckler Dance, nobody does it better.”
Heidi Duckler Dance’s “The Chandelier” – Photo courtesy of HDD
Versa-Style Dance Company: Box of Hope – August 19-21, 2021, 8 pm – Tickets: $35
Versa-Style Dance Company makes its Wallis debut with a three-night live engagement of its latest hip-hop dance-theater production, Box of Hope, Thursday, August 19 to Saturday, August 21, 2021, 8 pm, on The Wallis’ outdoor pop-up stage. An evening-length work, Box of Hope fuses the vintage sounds of R&B and Motown using exuberant hip-hop dance to explore the root of the inequalities and hardships in today’s volatile social climate, specifically within underserved African American and Latino communities. It uncovers how those inequalities affect the family structure and dynamics. The committed artists of Versa-Style bring hip-hop to the concert stage, pushing the boundaries of traditional hip-hop dance in order to share the realities of their lives, experiences and struggles within the varied and infinitely complex political and personal landscapes of Los Angeles. The dance company’s work gives voice to and a platform for an urban demographic that has experienced years of economic and racial oppression. Above all, it brings a sense of understanding and hope for all people. KCET states, Versa-Style Dance Company “directly engages with civics…(and) as hip-hop artists, they’re uniquely equipped to perform in outdoor settings.”
Versa-Style Dance Company in “Box of Hope” – Photo by George Simian
WHAT: The Wallis Presents Summer @ The Wallis
DATES:
Saturday, August 7, 2021, 8 PM – Salastina
Thursday – Sunday, August 12–15, 2021, 8 PM – Heidi Duckler Dance – The Chandelier (World Premiere)
Thursday – Saturday, August 19-21, 2021, 8 PM – Versa-Style Dance Company – Box of Hope
Wednesday, August 25, 2021, 8 PM – Quattrosound
Thursday and Friday, August 26 and 27, 2021, 8 PM – Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Angeles
Saturday, August 28, 2021, 8 PM – Ty Taylor – A Summer Evening of Classic and Nouveau Standards
RUN TIMES: Each show runs approximately 75-90 minutes; no intermission
WHERE: Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Pop-Up Theater Without Walls on the Promenade Terrace 9390 N. Santa Monica Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90210
TICKET PRICES: $35 – $50
For more information on tickets, click HERE or call 310.746.4000 (Tue.-Fri. 9:30 am – 2:30 pm) or email Tickets@Wallis.org
To read the updated health and safety protocols, click HERE.
Written and compiled by Jeff Slayton from The Wallis press release.
Featured image: Versa-Style Dance Company – Box of Hope – Photo by George Simian
