Ready to shoot for the moon

Like death and taxes, June gloom is a certainty of life -- at least in Southern California. And although the marine layer has been doing its usual thing, Los Angeles-based dancer-choreographer Loretta Livingston hopes Friday night will be clear. That’s because her new site-specific piece, “June Moon (Dressed in White),” will be performed outside the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in downtown L.A. -- theoretically under a nearly full moon -- in a celebration of not only the summer solstice but also a few anniversaries.

Her company, Loretta Livingston and Dancers, is turning 20. Two other arts organizations -- the Japanese American center and EZTV, the avant-garde video production company and digital arts hub in Santa Monica -- are marking a quarter-century. Livingston thought the occasion demanded something special.

“Humans have always created spectacle and ritual and special performances to mark an event like an anniversary,” she says. “And things happen under the spell of a full moon, like falling in and out of love, eating, drinking, celebrating. We never tire of that joy of things celestial.”

“June Moon” came about after Livingston, a former Bella Lewitzky dancer who took top honors at the local Lester Horton dance awards last year, was invited to be part of the cultural center’s 25th season. (She has performed numerous times at the Japan America Theatre, the center’s presenting venue.)

She created an hourlong work that unfolds on a portable stage as well as fanning out across a plaza between the cultural center’s two buildings. The audience, seated in a crescent shape, will watch as Livingston’s company of six modern dancers forms slinky duos, trios and quartets that leap about and create sculptural tableaux paying homage to the moon. An additional 14 dancers will serve as a kind of chorus, vocalizing and accentuating rhythms with hand-held percussion shakers.

The abstract work is accompanied by the videography of EZTV’s Michael Masucci and Kate Johnson. Their imagery supports the content and helps create scenic and lighting elements. “We also hope to set up a telescope-video connection to the moon,” Johnson says. “But if we get June gloom haze, it’ll have to be a virtual moon.”

Working outdoors is always risky, says Masucci, who co-founded EZTV. “We’ve made contingency plans. We’re going to have four of us holding projectors and moving them around to cast light on the performers.”

Livingston says the selection of the plaza, rather than an indoor stage, was important beyond the prospect of having the moon shining down. “The canvas that is typically limited by the dimensions of a stage has been hugely extended,” she says.

The project’s scope also means that Livingston has opted to not dance. “When I have a vast space it takes an outside eye to direct and be able to create a field of dancers, a wall of dancers, a ring of dancers. They’re beautiful architectural structures.”

And a counterpart to the two large Isamu Noguchi sculptures that highlight the plaza. Gail Matsui, director of marketing and community outreach at the cultural center, has made it her mission to bring dance to the theater and plaza.

“In this 25th anniversary,” Matsui says, “to celebrate and partner with artists such as Loretta and EZTV brings a great sense of accomplishment. We were involved in the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, and in the 1990s, the L.A. Festival. There’s been a drought, though, so to be able to do these collaborative projects now, and more in the future, is what we set out to do.”

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‘June Moon’

Where: Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, 244 S. San Pedro St., L.A.

When: 8:30 p.m. Friday

Price: $20

Contact: (213) 680-3700