On Wednesday, March 3rd, our LILA Lions High School Boys' Basketball team will participate in what is fast becoming a LILA tradition: they will play in a match at the Staples Center, preceding a Clippers game.  Their opponents are the US Talence, a team from France.

http://www.sudouest.com/gironde/actualite/rive-gauche/article/839194/mil/5607448.html

Below is an article from Levonti, one of our own LILA team players.

My name is Levonti, and I am the starter for the Varsity Championship Basketball Team at LILA. I’ve been playing basketball at LILA since 4^th grade and never has there been a bigger school sporting event than the LILA Lions playing at the Staples Center, home of the Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers. Last year, LILA played its long time rival, Lycée Français de Los Angeles,  and won. On Wednesday, March 3^rd, 2010, we will be playing US Talence, the French club created by Boris Diaw, NBA player for the Bobcats. Talence will be flying in from France to play LILA at the Staples Center.  They will be staying with host families for a week in Los Angeles, and will practice with us. The March 3^rd event will feature the highly anticipated LILA-Talence matchup, as well as the Clippers game later on that evening as they take on Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns. Tickets will be available for LILA school but time is of the essence to cinch them. An international sporting event at the Staples Center is rare, and my teammates and I are excited to seize the moment and bring a LILA victory at Staples two years in a row.

‘Huis Clos’, ‘Les Chaises’, à chacun son enfer…le supplice ultime n’est-il pas celui qui se répète éternellement, quelque soit la langue ou la saison?

Five siblings arrange and rearrange chairs and greet invisible guests. Three dead women meet in a living room. If these premises seem absurd, that is the point. Adaptations of Eugène Ionesco’s Les Chaises (The Chairs) and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos (No Exit) will be presented by Les Illustres Comédiens of Cours de Jeu Théâtral and their leader, Jackie Planeix, in conjunction with the Cultural Services of the Ambassade de France and Bluepalm (ACE) at Silverlake’s Lyric Hyperion Theater on Saturday, January 23^rd (public) and Monday, January 25^th (schools).

Les Illustres Comédiens are made up of eight bilingual high school students. They have been studying French Theatre with Ms. Planeix, since they were in elementary school. The performances in January will feature scenes in English and then in French by the same actors. The public will be able to appreciate the work in both languages and observe how the work is woven together into a single dramatic concept which sheds new light on the plays from which it is inspired. A post-performance discussion will explore the theme of ‘Text/representation, adaptation/translation’. A first public all-French version of the project took place in February 2009.

Ms Planeix’s Jeu Théâtral (Play-acting) is an approach to theater that includes physical, vocal, and spatial training. Of the Sartre and Ionesco works, Ms Planeix says, “Despite very different approaches, both plays explore a common theme, that of man faced with his life, his actions, his destiny. To challenge young actors with this theme in two different languages is to seek the universal thread, transcending cultures, eras, and generations, in man’s relationship to the world and to the Other, then, using this reflection, to show why it is more important than ever for young people throughout the world to be familiar with the work of these two great French playwrights.” Ms Planeix is a graduate of the Mudra Performing Arts Institute and is certified by the French Ministère de la Culture.  She toured the world with the Béjart Ballet and her own company, Blue Palm. She has taught play-acting all over Europe and the U.S. and is the artistic director of Bluepalm ACE, a company she founded with her husband, Tom Crocker.  Bluepalm ACE designs arts education programs, conducts professional development for teachers K-12, and is regularly invited by universities to conduct presentations, courses, and lectures.

Les Illustres Comédiens are LILA's own secondary students and alumni Anika, Turner, Maeva, Chloé, Madeleine, Simone, Hayley, and Camille.  The public performance on Saturday, January 23rd will begin at 8 p.m. at the Lyric-Hyperion Theater, 2106 Hyperion Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027. Tickets are $20. Seating will be on a first come first served basis.

In the spring of 2006, we got together with Lyesse and teachers and came up with our very own LILA tradition.  Something to help bond students 6 through 12 together, and create campus unity.  We wanted to give students one day out of the year that is completely unexpected. 

The concept is pretty simple.  Everyone starts class, business as usual until five minutes into the day the routine is interrupted and secondary teachers and students are called out of their rooms and onto the basketball court and names are called out.  A spattering from each grade to field the 20 odd teams that will from then on meet each other in extreme competitions all day long putting their skill, brains, imagination, talent, athletic ability, and heart into it to win points and, with any luck, take home a victory t-shirt. 

After year one it was clear that this was already a tradition.  Now every year students impatiently await the surprise day where everything gets turned upside down and they play with their teachers on a level playing field. 

Today, January 7, 2010 was that day at LILA... And as usual, it was magic. 

I think it is the simple things in life I enjoy the most, watching preschoolers create imaginary worlds with PVC pipes or seeing our secondary world drop everything for a day to just take the time to enjoy the school that they call home and the people they share it with.

In 4 minutes flat, a snapshot of their day...