dance – Repeat Performances

March 7, 2020

Dance on! The Joffrey Ballet at Zellerbach

Since there has only been one case of COV19 in Berkeley, the city has assumed a less draconian stance toward public events. Cal Performances is currently running all its programs to plan, and this weekend marked the continuance of its collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet. Four contemporary ballets with choreography by Christopher Wheeldon, Stephanie Martinez, Justin Peck and the company’s own Nicolas Blanc comprised the Joffrey’s program, which ran Friday through Sunday. Blanc’s...

Categories: dance

March 6, 2020

The enduring beauty of ballet in an ephemeral world

San Francisco Ballet opened its production of George Balanchine’s Midsummer Night’s Dream this past Friday, the only time its been performed by company since 1985. And on Saturday, following the request of Mayor London Breed, the company has closed the War Memorial Opera House for the next two weeks in response to the corona virus threat. Although classes and smaller events presented by SFB will continue, the remainder of the ballet’s run was cancelled. How and when tickets will...

Categories: dance

February 13, 2020

San Francisco Ballet: the hunger for dance

On February 13, San Francisco Ballet premiered its latest collaboration with Trey McIntyre, The Big Hunger. In the program notes, McIntyre explains the concepts behind the ballet, which he set on the company this past summer. It’s based on the beliefs of the Kalahari Bushmen as described in the Korean film, Burning. The Bushmen claim there are two hungers in life: the small hungers that drive our everyday existence and the big hunger that is our longing for existential...

Categories: dance

January 21, 2020

A miraculous Cinderella

Figures in deep blues and green whirl across the stage to a hectic waltz by Prokofiev. Above them a clutter of candelabras shines down like stars in the night sky, and two figures, a prince in a deep red jacket with military decorations and a young woman in a dress covered in pheasant feathers and wearing a gold mask and gold slippers, appear and disappear among the whirling figures. They lose each other, they find each other. The scene, from San Francisco Ballet’s production of...

Categories: dance, uncategorized

October 30, 2019

The old world elegance of the Mariinsky Ballet

Watching the Mariinsky Ballet’s La Bayadère reminds the viewer that ballet has a deep history, which is not merely relived by the company but revitalized and reinscribed. What lies behind that vivid portrait of a cultural world that is over 150 years old is the company’s dedication to and perfection of classical ballet technique. All of that was on view at Cal Performances last week when the company brought its opulent production of the Petipa ballet to Zellerbach Hall,...

Categories: dance

October 12, 2019

The otherworldly beauty of Sankai Juku

The extraordinary butoh dance company Sankai Juku performed this weekend at Zellerbach Hall as part of Cal Performance’s World Stage series. The company was formed in 1975 by Ushio Amagatsu, who is choreographer, designer and director. Like much of Japanese dance and theater, the 90-minute performance moved at a slower pace than American and European dance. But it is precisely this slow and sustained movement deeply attached to the ground and gravity that creates the performance’s...

Categories: dance, theater