May 2008 – Repeat Performances

May 31, 2008

Lines Ballet’s ‘Long River High Sky’

When LINES Ballet describes itself as a “contemporary ballet company with a global artistic vision” it isn’t just rhetoric generating publicity copy, as last weekend’s series of performances clearly demonstrated. On stage at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the acclaimed dance company joined seven monks from the Shaolin USA temple for an extraordinary two-hour concert, Long River High Sky, in which performers at the top of their art and physical prowess...

Categories: dance

May 28, 2008

Earplay at Herbst Hall

Earplay explores limits of form in end-of-season concert Earplay, a mainstay of the Bay Area contemporary music scene, ended their 23rd season with “Intricate Inventions,” a program which samples the last 30 years of musical evolution. Just as art movements question their basic tenets, exploring perspective and ground, reality and ownership, these modern composers argue with conventional uses of texture, tension and found-form. Nor...

Categories: music

May 24, 2008

‘Inspiration’ series a jewel at San Francisco Performances

Greenberg and the Alexander String Quartet explore Haydn and Carter What could Franz Josef Haydn and Elliott Carter possibly have to say to each other across a 200-year divide? More than you might think, according to educator and composer Robert Greenberg, at a Saturday morning matinee in Herbst Theatre. Standing alongside the Alexander String Quartet, long-time collaborators in the “Inspiration” series of...

Categories: music

May 17, 2008

Crumb versus Schubert at Herbst Theatre

Alexander Quartet tunes strings to songs of death Robert Greenberg and the Alexander String Quartet teamed up for their last joint presentation of this year’s “Inspirations” series, four lectures and concerts drawing parallels between older and modern works. Their Saturday morning concert on May 17 focused on Franz Schubert’s String Quartet in D minor, D.810 (“Death and the Maiden”), and George Crumb’s modern use of that piece in his string quartet,...

Categories: music

‘The Ecstasy with the Pomegranate’ Ilkhom Theater

Revolutionary theater This past September, on his way home from a rehearsal of the Oresteia, Ilkhom Theater Director Mark Weil was attacked by two men and stabbed. He died the following day from his wounds, and, although there is a lot of speculation about his death, no conclusions were reached as to the identity of his killers. Whether the murder was intentional is a question posed by many who know Weil’s work, but, for most of us, the idea that an...

Categories: theater

May 10, 2008

Smuin Ballet at Yerba Buena

Slinky ballerinas In 2007 on April 23 the Smuin Ballet was rocked by the sudden death of its director Michael Smuin, who had not only founded the company but also set its choreographic style and developed the dancers for that choreography. This spring 2008, the company presents Dancin’ with Gershwin, a series of short pieces choreographed by Smuin to the...

Categories: dance