December 2015 – Repeat Performances

December 19, 2015

The elegant ‘Forever Tango’

There is a famous tango scene in the film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) in which Rudolph Valentino slinks around the floor with Beatrice Dominguez. He does a sultry job of it, despite the gaucho boots and long spurs,...

Categories: dance

December 14, 2015

Agatha Christie kills at Shotgun Players

Shotgun Players celebrate the season with murder In 1969 on a European trip I saw a play in London that had been running continuously there for seventeen...

Categories: theater

December 8, 2015

San Francisco Opera’s multiple visions of “The House of Usher”

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Categories: opera

December 6, 2015

Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choirs celebrate the holiday season

The joyful ring of young voices There is nothing quite so angelic sounding as children’s chorus. The light high purity of tone is sweet to the human ear,...

Categories: music

December 5, 2015

Word for Word in literal Holiday High Jinx

Bums, Broads and Broadway Word for Word performs a beautifully choreographed program with three short stories at Z Below this holiday season. And when I say choreographed I mean that in every sense of the word. ...

Categories: theater

December 3, 2015

Berkeley Symphony in US Premiere of bayan concerto

Near miss in “Mystical” The Berkeley Symphony’s winter concert, held last Thursday, December 3, explored the twin threads of mysticism and musical construction. Each of the three pieces on their program came from a religious framework and a fascination with structure, an unusual pairing that is the sort of intelligent programming we have come to expect from conductor Joana Carneiro, now beginning her seventh year at the helm of the Berkeley Symphony. The center of...

Categories: music