A great dance film, a great house of dance, a great dancer—the Los Angeles Conservancy hosts a triple-threat screening of West Side Story on Saturday, June 14 at 8 p.m. at The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Co-star George Chakiris, who won both a Golden Globe® and an Academy Award® for his role in the film, will appear onstage before the screening in conversation with dance critic Debra Levine.

“George is one of dance’s smoothest operators,” says Levine, a Los Angeles Times dance writer who blogs on dance and film on artsmeme.com. “He’s a suave and velvety mover whose smoldering good looks propelled him to stardom.”

The evening is part of the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Last Remaining Seats series, an annual series of classic film and live entertainment in historic theatres. Last Remaining Seats presents classic films as they were meant to be seen: on the big screen, in a beautiful historic venue, surrounded by up to two thousand fellow fans.

A Broadway musical immortalized in film, 1961’s West Side Story is a modern-day take on Shakespeare’s timeless tale, “Romeo and Juliet.” The story is set in New York City’s Upper West Side in the 1950s. In the place of Shakespeare’s warring families are rival street gangs—the Jets, second generation Polish-American teens, and the Sharks, Puerto Rican immigrants.

Co-directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, the film features songs by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim for the original stage production. The exceptional cast includes Chakiris as Bernardo, leader of the Sharks. Delivering other iconic performances were Russ Tamblyn as the leader of the Jets, Rita Moreno as Bernardo’s girlfriend, and Natalie Wood as Maria.

West Side Story won ten Academy Awards and five Golden Globes. It was thematically and stylistically groundbreaking for the movie musical genre. At the movie’s center is the original choreography of Robbins: beautiful, stylized, and balletic.

Chakiris was a veteran film gypsy before Jerome Robbins cast him in “West Side Story.”  “In the ’50s, he worked with the crème de la crème of Hollywood dance makers, notably Hermes Pan, Robert Alton and Jack Cole,” says Levine. “He’s the only actor to win an Oscar® for a dancing role beside James Cagney, for 1942’s Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

“George is a dancer-eternal who looks decades younger than his age. He’s in tremendous condition. His personal fountain of youth? ‘Go to the gym,’ he advises.”

Making the screening even more special is its locale: The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year. The Pavilion is widely renowned for hosting stellar dance performances, presenting the best dance companies in the world since 1969.

Tickets for the screening are available online until noon on Wednesday, June 11, then in person at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion box office on June 13 and 14. For details, visit laconservancy.org.

One of the great things about a Los Angeles summer is Grand Performances, the free series of music, dance and spoken word performances and film screenings held June through September in California Plaza in Downtown L.A. This year they are planning a screening of Sherlock Jr. with a live improvised soundtrack by The Magnetix; an Angelique Kidjo concert; a tribute to Minnie Riperton; a puppet show of “Jack and the Beanstalk;” a “People Get Ready: A Soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement” concert; and much more. Full list here. Gravy? The complementary bike valet.

We at Laemmle Theatres are energetic supporters of Friends of the L.A. River and today brings great, big news, one billion dollars worth. “We are thrilled that the Army Corps has decided to endorse the more complete proposal for the restoration of the River,” said Laemmle Theatres President Greg Laemmle this morning. “Just the first step in a marathon, but it is decidedly a step in the right direction.”

In case you missed the front page of today’s L.A. Times:

“Federal officials gave a major boost Wednesday to the city’s plans to turn the Los Angeles River into an urban oasis for recreation and an inviting locale for new commercial and residential development.

“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it has decided to recommend approval of an ambitious, $1-billion proposal to restore habitat, widen the river, create wetlands and provide access points and bike trails along an 11-mile stretch north of downtown through Elysian Park.

“The city sees those 11 miles as the starting point for a project that will eventually revitalize all 51 miles of the river, from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach.”

While we at Laemmle Theatres occasionally get the chance to show great movies appropriate for kids — 2009’s The Secret of Kells comes to mind — we mostly show independent and international films meant for adults. And we almost always screen feature-length films, not shorts. So it is with pleasure that we draw your attention to Downtown Los Angeles, specifically the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, where this weekend and the subsequent two weekends you and the children in your life can take in animated and live action shorts films from around the world to nurture future Laemmle moviegoers.

“The 9th annual REDCAT International Children’s Film Festival returns with three weekends of adventurous short-film programs to appeal to moviegoers of all ages. Magical, exhilarating works made by acclaimed filmmakers and up-and-coming auteurs showcase work from around the globe—including Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, Russia, Taiwan, Mozambique, Korea, The Netherlands, and Ukraine—to inspire the whole family. Festival highlights include the latest in both live action and animated shorts.”