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Donna Perlmutter, the former dance and music critic for the Herald Examiner and CityBeat — and freelancer for the L.A. Times and New York Times, among other places — is the newest contributor to Native Intelligence. Dance is her thing, and she reviews a recent performance at UCLA Live by choreographer Barak Marshall and his Israeli troupe. "While the work may not boast the nuanced stratification seen in Bob Altman's 'Gosford Park' or the grim sado-masochism of Jean Genet's 'The Maids,'" she writes, "there's a huge inventory here of vulnerability, helplessness, and finally revolt." [* Update: I'm told that Perlmutter also posted this piece to the LA Opus website.]
We also have up our first video Visiting Blogger post. It's from FORM, the architectural magazine, about the future of the 6th Street Bridge and the Los Angeles River that it crosses. If you have a Visiting Blogger post percolating in your head, drop me a line.
Also around the site:
- Columnist Bill Boyarsky takes transit to Dodger Stadium and views the McCourt mess through the lens of "a student of the political fix."
- Jenny Burman's POV on the recent Dodgers news is that of a stadium neighbor. "Bud Selig says he's acting on behalf of baseball. Is it too much to hope that a solution that is good for baseball could be good for Echo Park residents as well?"
- LA Biz Observed recommends Gene Maddaus' story in the LA Weekly on the role a City Hall lobbyist played in last year's collapse of the food concessions deal at LAX.
- Adrienne Crew notes the passing of Beverly Hills' Bijan Pakzad, and advises us on how to get smarter and have some fun in her latest Angeleno Datebook.
- Brian Kennedy, the only Ph.D I know of working in an L.A. sports press box, offers a take on the L.A. Kings that references Freud, Samson and Icarus.
- Veronique de Turenne spots an Easter bunny, a wizard and a ghost highway.
- Nancy Rommelmann realizes ponders the realization that she began writing nonfiction books and articles about murdered children after she began addressing them as fiction.
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