ADVICE GODDESS

PHOTO BY MARISSA ROSEILLIER

Rina Mehta, one of the organization’s founders, said the 10-day festival was born out of the pandemic and was created to rebuild and reengage community and connection. higher state of consciousness. We like to talk about the dance as a kind of meditation in motion.” The festival will close with a 5:30 p.m. street performance at Culver City’s Town Plaza.

These performances mark the latest spot on a trajectory that Kathak dance has traveled. From the courts of India to proscenium stages around the United States to the streets, the dance has evolved at each step along the way. “It is spurring creativity and innovation in what we do artistically,” Mehta said. “We’re now having to dance on boards, in parks and in streets.” The latest street dancing is a step that Mehta feels brings people even closer to the art form, breaking down the barriers that are erected between dancer and audience in theaters. “With these street performances, we are here on the same street you walk on, next to the restaurant you eat at,” Mehta said. “For us, it is really getting people up close and intimate. Our hope is that by doing so, the art form becomes familiar to them, that they’re able to learn a little bit of some basics about rhythm and storytelling, how deep it is, how rich it is and really how relevant it can be and is to our modern-day life.” The pieces that they will perform in ReSound are classic pieces. They’ll start with classic invocation pieces that consecrate the stage and are filled with symbolism from mythology. Some dances will tell stories and others will be purely rhythm and movement with no story. They do bring in narration for some of the storytelling, but Mehta stresses that they are recognizable to all regardless of background. “All epic stories are universal stories,” Mehta said. “The character might be South Asian or Indian, but they’re about love and loss and greed and the victory of good over evil. Any stories we choose to do will have really universal themes and narration.” In both the Leela Dance Collective and specifically the 10-day ReSound performance, the artists are committed to preserving the dance form even as they innovate and make it relevant for today’s audience. Mehta said they are committed to an integrity around the form. “We may innovate many, many things, but at the root, the integrity around the form is very high,” Mehta said. “The technique, the music, the movement, the repertoire, we definitely hold a lot of integrity around those things. Then we innovate around the form and in the form as appropriate.” She said it is a fine line she walks as a choreographer. She makes many small decisions where she is constantly mindful of Kathak’s roots. She said you can put together movements one way and you’ve deviated from tradition and another way and it is in a direct line from the original tradition. Mehta also holds true to the core of what her teacher taught about the art form — that to be an artist is to give and that the art form is there to bring joy. “Our core purpose at Leela Dance is to bring joy through Kathak,” Mehta said. “That is something we preserve in everything we do. No matter what we do, if the audience isn’t walking away joyful, we haven’t done our job.”

All the ReSound public performances are free and workshops — which can be enjoyed live or virtually — cost $10 each. Workshop registration is available online. “I would definitely recommend coming to both a workshop and a performance if possible,” Mehta said. “Seeing the art form is one way to experience it, but there is nothing like getting on the dance floor and moving your body. It’s a whole other level of experience and audience members can do both. And please come out and introduce yourself, talk to the dancers and the teachers. We’d love to get to know you and make ourselves known to you.”

ReSound: Kathak in the Streets Who: Leela Dance Collective Where: Los Angeles, September 22 to September 26 Info: leela.dance.resound/ THE FASTIDIOUS AND THE FURIOUS

I’m a divorced guy in my 40s. I was at a bar with friends and went over to talk with a woman I found really attractive. Though she wasn’t the friendliest, I asked to take her to dinner. She said she’d think about it and then asked for my Instagram. Several days later, I texted her, and she agreed to go out. We’ve since had a few dates, but I’m bothered that she wouldn’t go out with me until she’d scoured my social media. What does that suggest about her?

— Offended You don’t expect much from a woman who’s “known” you all of 20 minutes: just blind trust that you’ll do the gentleman thing of opening the passenger-side door for her – as opposed to the psychopathic gentleman thing of stuffing her in your trunk. Of course, the latter could happen if two gay men were dating, but there’s good reason women – more than men – would opt for a “buyer beware” versus a “buyer be guessin’” approach. “Most men fear getting laughed at or humiliated by a romantic prospect while most women fear rape and death,” observes personal security expert Gavin de Becker in “The Gift of Fear.” Even the stringbeaniest man can probably whup the average woman. Men have 15 to 20 times more testosterone than women, explain endocrinology researcher David J. Handelsman, M.D., and his colleagues. Higher “T” is associated with increased “muscle mass and strength” and “bone size and strength.” This means that even the power broads of the female athletic world are ill-prepared for any battle of the sexes. Take women’s tennis rock stars Venus and Serena Williams. In 1998, when they were ranked fifth and 20th respectively, each got trounced by 203rd-ranked male tennis player Karsten Braasch – whose “prep” for these matches was playing a round of golf and throwing back a couple of beers. Beyond physical safety concerns, there’s one half of the species that pees on little plastic sticks after sex to see whether they’re about to make another human being – one which, on average, will cost $233,610 to raise until age 17. (College, grad school, and multiple stints in rehab priced separately.) This difference in male and female reproductive physiology led to the evolution of differences in male and female sexual psychology – namely in their general level of sexual selectivity. It’s in men’s evolutionary interest to have sex with a slew of women – and the hotter the better, because the features we find beautiful (youth, clear skin, and an hourglass figure) reflect health and fertility. (In a pinch, a woman with a pulse will do.) An ancestral man could cut and run after sex – leaving it to the Miss Neanderbrow he hooked up with to feed and care for any resulting fruit of the womb – and still have a pretty good chance of passing on his genes. In contrast, ancestral women who didn’t just stumble off to do it in the bushes with every Clooneyesque club toter likely left more surviving children to pass on their genes (carrying their psychology of choosiness). Women’s emotions push them to act in their evolutionary best interest. Women fear getting involved with men who will be unwilling and/ or unable to pick up the tab if sex leads to, um, the creation of small mammals who will run up big bills at the orthodontist. In other words, it benefits a woman to scope a new man out and decide whether the ideal time to go to dinner with him might be the first Tuesday in never. We’re psychologically unprepared for the “evolutionarily novel” experience of vetting a stranger we meet in a bar, because our psychological operating system is adapted for an ancestral hunter-gatherer world: small, consistent communities of perhaps 25 to 100 people in which “intel” on a person was readily available through the grapevine. What’s a modern, stranger-encountering woman to do? Well, this one apparently hoped to get some clues about you from your social media: probably from the sort of stuff you post, your follows and followers, and how you engage in the comments. What does this woman’s precautionary approach say about her? Well, probably that she isn’t so desperate for a man or a free dinner that she’ll take risks with her safety and go out with any Joe Bar Tab who offers to treat her to a meal. This isn’t to say she’s found a foolproof vetting method. Though social media is a new thing, it’s rife with a well-worn evolved tool: deception – used to defeat the precautionary strategies of the opposite sex. This typically leads not to rape or death but the sinking feeling of being had – when, say, visits from the guy who posted pics of himself “flying private” always coincide with rolls of toilet paper going missing.

Venice artist Linda King’s current show “Indicators and Origins” features paintings that depict abstract suggestions of time and place.

By Nicole Borgenicht

Linda King’s artwork has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows at galleries across the United States. With an MFA from the University of Iowa, and an MA from California State University, King has taught painting and drawing at Long Beach City College for 26 years. Both her masters and MFA were in printmaking, which she uses in her painterly works. Rather than with a lot of brush strokes, King pours, sands and places vinyl cut pieces beside some brushed areas, all in symmetrical fashions. The paintings in her latest show “Indicators and Origins” are abstract suggestions of time and place. “As with printmaking, I put on and take off like an etching,” King said. “There are separate layers as with history and metaphor for painting transformation,” In King’s painting entitled “Journey,” many stories jump out. The metallic paint sits flat on a plane but features texture, and contains an iridescence that flickers outside of the painting. Shapes correspond to familiar things such as a box or a cloud, but at same time don’t always appear in logical ways. Having taught perspective for years, King likes to break the rules and does so effectively with a surreal dreamy quality. The show features various paintings in different sizes, ranging from 4”x 4” to 5’x5’. The smaller pieces are like sketches but beautiful renditions of pieces of the paintings. Some are complete stories in themselves, very much as if they prompted another idea for the larger painting. King described her paintings as “infinite space, but under a microscope.” “I consider myself an abstract artist, so all meaning is general,” she said. Creating a unique reality, King enjoys having a sense of humor about everything. She likes to include recognizable shapes or symbols floating in space, having fun with the viewer in what she called “perception versus perspective.” In the perfect neighborhood for creative expression, King has lived in Venice since 1993. She feels that although unfortunately many artists have been priced out of the area, it continues to be a great place. “Artists who are here have a terrific energy and commitment to the arts,” King said. “Venice is a great location in that it is close to many art venues.” King’s practice of working has remained steady during the pandemic. She retired from teaching a few years ago and enjoys traveling, gardening and spending more time painting. “The quiet time really focused my energies in the studio,” King said. “I produced a number of artist books and quite a few paintings. The isolation gave me time to work, and more importantly, time to reflect. Much of my work is about perception, time and memory, order and chaos, the infinite and the microscopic, transition and transformation. The lines are often boundaries or areas of transition, defining or enclosing.” King’s paintings point out to the broader universe in combination with symbolic or familiar shapes. This pulls viewers far away from the common existence and back toward King’s complexity of layers and icons that shift awareness into subconscious activity. Perhaps in this show, indicators prep focus with relativity, while origins take one beneath the surface to those connections.

Through Sept. 26, Saturdays and Sundays Noon-5 p.m. or by appointment. Contact: lindaking@gmail.com lindakingartist.com