Az Dehlam from Sahar Javedani on Vimeo. Choreographer Sahar Javedani (Dance MFA 03) concludes her 100-hour creative residency at Dance Theater Workshop in New York with two work-in-progress performances of The Turquoise Lounge tonight (March 11) and Friday. The piece, inspired by a true event, examines the “physical and emotional territories of allegiance” and examines then dismantles [...]

Feldstärke International is a project that lives up to its promise of breaking down borders through the common language of art. A joint effort administered by the international arts organizations CENTQUATRE (Paris), PACT Zollverein (Essen, Germany) and a third partner that changes every year, Feldstärke fosters international dialogue and interdisciplinary collaboration between advanced student artists [...]

At Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, there were a number of CalArts alumni among the nominees, and two eventual winners: Pete Docter (Film/Video BFA 90), who directed the winning Animated Feature Film Up, and Chris Innis (Film/Video MFA 91), who, with her husband Bob Murawski, won Oscars for editing The [...]

One of the great things about CalArts is the music echoing through the Main Gallery. 24700 caught a part of the Jazz at Noon series on Friday presented by The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts. Posted above is “Laura Claire,” an original composition written by guitarist Maxwell Gualtieri (Music BFA 11) and performed by the [...]

To celebrate the upcoming International Women’s Day, Christine Wertheim, chair of the MFA Writing Program at CalArts, and Nancy Buchanan, a faculty member of CalArts’ School of Film/Video, have organized the symposium Citizen Divas: Women, Art and Social Justice, which will be held tomorrow (March 6) at MOCA in Los Angeles. The day-long event seeks to [...]

The CalArts Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology (CEAIT) two-day festival begins tonight at REDCAT with an eclectic lineup of performers and sound artists that cross and blend genres. Co-curated by Mark Trayle and Ulrich Krieger, both faculty members of The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts, the festival promises to bring [...]

A muted and understated 2010 Whitney Biennial opened last week in New York. Curators Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari assembled works that exemplified a cross-section of contemporary art production, rather than art that addressed a specific theme. There are both established and midcareer artists among the 55 selected for the Biennial, including a number of CalArtians. Here’s [...]

Visiting artists and students at The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts perform classical, world music, experimental music–and everything in between–in Roy O. Disney Hall (ROD). Now audiences outside of the Valencia campus have a chance to see and listen to concerts on their computers. A muted “concert camera” live streams from the ROD stage [...]

Activist Russell Means has been working tirelessly for more than 40 years to call attention to the plight of Native Americans. He’ll be giving a lecture at CalArts on Thursday (March 4) as part of MFA photography student Sage Paisner’s gallery show, This Does Not Belong to You. Leader of A.I.M. (American Indian Movement) [...]

Saturday (Feb. 27) marks the opening of the REDCAT International Children’s Film Festival in Los Angeles. Presented in partnership with Northwest Film Forum, the festival offers animated, live-action and classic films for all ages throughout its five-day run. The opening day lineup focuses on short films from around the globe, including Nappy Heads by Sabrina Moella [...]

It was announced Feb. 23 that the stage play blu, Virginia Grise’s MFA thesis project at CalArts, was chosen by English playwright David Hare (The Vertical Hour, Amy’s View) as the 2010 winner of the Yale Drama Series competition. For her efforts, Grise will be awarded the David C. Horn Prize of $10,000, and blu [...]

The MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House in West Hollywood, Calif., has opened an ambitious urban project–How Many Billboards? Art In Stead–that features large-scale artwork by 21 commissioned artists on billboards throughout Los Angeles. There are several CalArts alumni, faculty and visiting artists involved in the project, which temporarily replaces ads [...]

The film awards season continued this weekend in London with The British Academy of Film and Television Arts handing out its BAFTA awards. A number of CalArtians were again included in the international mix of nominees and winners. Kudos to the following alumni: Chris Innis (Film/Video MFA 91) and her husband Bob Murawski won Best Editing [...]

You never know what to expect when walking through CalArts’ Main Gallery. Dance. Noontime concerts. Rehearsals. But earlier in the semester, the walls were filled with artwork from the School of Film/Video’s Character Animation Program. The pieces were all part of an annual student-curated show, this year organized by BFA candidates Jeffrey Rowe and Carrie Hobson. “There [...]

Miss Scarlet in the Parlor is a little gallery and store located in LA’s Echo Park, owned by a CalArts alumna Eliza Frye (Film/Video 09), also a current MFA student in the School of Critical Studies. The gallery is hosting an artist reception tonight (Saturday, Feb. 20) for its new show Anatomically Correct. Artists on [...]

[Click on the poem above to read Douglas Kearney's 'The Black Automaton in Tag: Refugee.'] Douglas Kearney, a faculty member of CalArts’ School of Critical Studies, is one of those multi-hyphenate artists: poet-performer-librettist-educator. He’s known for creating poetry that should be both seen and experienced. His work is both visual and visceral–especially when he’s performing it. The [...]

Ed. note: February is Black History Month, and we’ve asked a few members of the CalArts community to reflect on what it means to them. Today’s guest columnist is Erinn Horton, an MFA candidate in voice at the The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts. She has has worked for nearly a year coordinating [...]

Much of Canadian filmmaker John Greyson’s work (Lilies, Uncut, Zero Patience) incorporates political themes and gay issues in ways that are provocative, yet funny. He often includes song and history in his films, using narrative, essay and documentary to elicit action–or at least to ignite audience curiosity–on particular subjects. An artist-activist to the core, Greyson made [...]

Brent Hayes Edwards, a professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, visits CalArts tonight to discuss his latest work and research in the lecture on “loft jazz”: The Alchemy of Tin: The Cultures of Jazz in Downtown New York in the 1970s. As an academic and historian, his areas of [...]

Community Arts Partnership (CAP) celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, and the CAP team kicked things off CalArts style yesterday–with a Latin jazz, dance and cupcake party in the Main Gallery. CAP links the Institute to diverse communities of Los Angeles County through free, after-school and school-based arts programs for youth. Not only does it help [...]