Arts & Culture » Dance
Nutcracker leaps to life!
In 30 years of reviewing "The Nutcracker," with which San Francisco Ballet returned to the Opera House last Wednesday night, I've never seen such glorious dancing as they brought to the last act.
Tchaikovsky-savvy consumers will grock what's going on right from the cover of the new Paris Opera and Ballet pairing of Tchaikovsky's one-act opera "Iolanta" and two-act ballet "The Nutcracker" (BelAir).
Chita Rivera will be at it again at Feinstein's at the Nikko next week, singing songs and telling tales from throughout her career in a four-show run of her latest cabaret show (including afternoon matinees on Sat., & Sun., Nov. 10 & 11).
On the eve of this historic and Very Important Election, we can't say it better than Hans the Franz does with his spectacular outfit. He's out there in the Castro District streets, resplendent in his declamatory onesie, and it's all to get out the vote.
"Körper" played last weekend in Berkeley, where Cal Performances presented Sasha Waltz's masterpiece in Zellerbach Hall for the first time.
Choreographer and performer Monique Jenkinson, in the guise of her drag queen persona Fauxnique, and her longtime partner, electronic composer Marc Kate, will premier their first full collaboration, "Girl," at the Joe Goode Annex.
An excited crowd filled UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall last Friday night for the West Coast premiere of the Mark Morris Dance Group's "Pepperland."
In "Hot To Trot," filmmaker Gail Freedman takes viewers inside the little-known, fascinating world of same-sex competitive ballroom dance.
In his autobiography, Paul Taylor wrote that the vital statistic of his life was "an insatiable itch to communicate to the world at large," a goal he fulfilled as one of the greatest modern dance choreographers of the 20th century.
More arts events are coming to the Bay Area this fall! Let's list some.
"When the Beat Drops" not only reveals the underground dance movement "bucking," but also uncovers courageous creative resistance in the often-stigmatized world of black gay men.
For the picnickers who went to Stern Grove for the San Francisco Ballet's annual outing on the amphitheater stage of that sublime local park, we sat under towering redwoods and a milky afternoon sky.
Joe Goode's new world premiere "Still Standing" led us through San Francisco's historic Haas-Lilienthal House during the course of the performance. It runs through Aug. 5 there.
The orange life-jacket I was struggling to strap myself into last Friday night at Keith Hennessy's "Sink" really had washed up on the shore of Lesbos (I asked), though it seemed at the time too new.
The 17th annual transgender and queer performance festival "Fresh Meat" features a transgender superhero rock opera, world champion gay ballroom dancers, queer disabled dance pioneers, gender-bending dance theater, and transcomedy.
The San Francisco International Arts Festival (SFIAF) will present more than 40 different dance, cirque, musical, comedy, theatre, and performance art pieces in its upcoming festival at Fort Mason Center, May 24-June 3.
The second half of San Francisco Ballet's "Unbound" dance festival opened last week, again with full houses and standing ovations after nearly every piece.
San Francisco Ballet ends their season with a splashy festival of new works. They've been building towards this all season.
How could I have been so wrong? Last week the National Ballet of Canada danced Nijinsky: a Ballet by John Neumeier so musically and with such conviction, they completely reversed my first impression.
There has not been a more entertaining evening in the Opera House for years than last week's Jerome Robbins show danced by the San Francisco Ballet.
The atmosphere was electric in the Opera House last Thursday for San Francisco Ballet's revival of "Frankenstein."
San Francisco Ballet slid into a slump just after the season opened, with two programs of mixed bills, one of them above average and the other - well, the best said about Program 3 is that the dancers saved it.
San Francisco Ballet opened their winter season with the greatest of all classical ballets, The Sleeping Beauty, in a thrilling show that continues through this weekend.
Thousands of people came out despite intermittent rain for the Gala Opening Night of San Francisco Ballet's 85th season.
San Francisco Ballet's Nutcracker, the longest-running complete production of this ballet in the country, opened its umpteenth annual run last week at the Opera House.
In a New York Times piece given the headline "10 Ways to Tell If Your 'Nutcracker' Is True to Tradition," dance critic Alistair Macaulay laid down the law about what does and does not constitute an authentic "Nutcracker."
The Joffrey Ballet put on a fun evening's entertainment two weekends ago in Berkeley.
Michelle Dorrance's tap dancers performed last Friday night at Zellerbach Hall.