Whether the Weather Is Hot

You are here

Invertigo Dance Theatre, Whether the Weather is Hot, Los Angeles contemporary dance, dance theater, LA dance, holiday dance show, Music Center dance
Choreographed by: 
Laura Karlin with the dancers
Danced by: 
Hannah Louise Beavers, Hannah Blume, Louie Cornejo, SaraAnne Fahey, Sofia Klass, Jodie Mashburn, Chris Smith, Cody Wilbourn
Music by: 
Toby Karlin
Costume Design: 
Kate Bishop

Choreographer's Notes:

Most winter holidays celebrate light in some way - it's a darker time of year when days are shorter and more gloomy. Our piece, "Whether the Weather is Hot" celebrates the sunny weather that characterizes the Los Angeles winter – the ultimate source of light. We blend playfulness, athletic movement and tender moments.

My parents are English, and they live in Los Angeles now.  Every year, they host a holiday dinner for the adopted extended family they have created here - kind of a traditional English Christmas blended with Chanukah candles and sparklers and holiday twinkle lights. The warmth of family and light are always very special to me.

My English mother loves the Los Angeles weather as only one who grew up with incessant British rain can.  She revels gleefully in the sunny, light quality of holiday weather here, and this piece is inspired by that gratitude and the almost mischievous pleasure that she takes in describing it to relatives back home.  She particularly loves that she can roast the Christmas turkey *on the barbecue* every year.

The costumes in particular are inspired by watching her one year stubbornly barbecue the turkey in the LA Christmas rain, wearing a swimsuit, a winter-bobble hat and galoshes.

Look + Feel: playful, high-octane, lots of leaps and lifts, sweet.

Appropriate for proscenium stages, adaptable to black box stages
Run Time: 5 minutes
Cast: 8 dancers
Pre-recorded music