March 2018 – Repeat Performances

March 23, 2018

Classical and Hip-Hop Party at the Paramount

In some courageous genre bending, the Oakland Symphony teamed up with Hip-Hop artist Kev Choice at Oakland’s Paramount Theater last Friday, March 23. The results were mixed, with deep sentiments, sparkling runs, and sometimes bland arrangements, but the crowd lapped it up and demanded more. [caption id="attachment_1809" align="alignright" width="261"]...

Categories: music

March 21, 2018

Love’s Uncertainty Principle

Heisenberg’s principle provides a mathematical equation for the impossibility of predicting both the position and momentum of a particle precisely. It’s a concept that, with its discovery, immediately splashed over into everyday parlance. As a metaphor, what could more accurately describe life? Or, as Simon Stephen’s play asserts, love? Heisenberg, now at A.C.T.’s Geary Theater, is the British playwright’s complex tribute to love. Complex because neither the two characters...

Categories: theater

March 20, 2018

My heart belongs to Jerry

True confession: I love Jerome Robbins’ choreography. As much as I admire and respect Balanchine’s choreography and his establishment of one of the most prominent and innovative ballet companies in the world, I love Robbins more. So it was with anticipation that I attended San Francisco Ballet’s Program 5: Robbins: Ballet and Broadway. Robbins’ choreography is ideal for SF Ballet: it combines the purity of neoclassical ballet with warmth, inventiveness and wit. All this was most...

Categories: dance

March 15, 2018

“A Number” counts as many

British playwright Caryl Churchill’s A Number opened at the Aurora Theater’s upstairs black box, Harry’s UpStage, this past week in a fast moving production. A short thought-provoking play of five scenes with two actors, A Number calls on a wide spectrum of emotions to be put forth succinctly and powerfully. Intriguingly, Michael Gambon played Salter and Daniel Craig played the three sons in the 2002 London premier. A Number premiered a mere six years after...

Categories: theater

March 11, 2018

Vitamin Em: electronics and Vivaldi at Piedmont Center for the Arts

Turning foreign languages into close dialects… “Berkeley Symphony and Friends” had their fourth concert this year at the Piedmont Center for the Arts. Last Sunday, March 11, an accomplished foursome forged new music out of professionalism and whimsey from very different branches of the musical tree. PCA founding member Gray Cathrall welcomed a packed audience to the hall and to this series, curated by Berkeley Symphony Executive Director René Mandel. “This series is now in...

Categories: music

March 9, 2018

Company Wayne McGregor on the edge

Set to the electronic music of Jlin, who won the “Best Difficult Second Album” award at the 2017 AIM Music Awards, Company Wayne McGregor’s newest work Autobiography returned this company of formidable dancers and choreographers to San Francisco. Presented by SF Performances at the Yerba Buena Center for the Art Theater, the company’s sleek and endlessly compelling dance reveals that the demanding, for both dancers and audience, can be breathlessly wondrous. Notes to...

Categories: dance