Jaime Robles – Repeat Performances

November 2, 2022

The light and shadows of “Lightfast”

Theater, with its melding of text, performance, music and dance, has long depended on collaboration, but among artists working in forms that are most often practiced separately and individually collaboration takes on a very personal dimension. And its relationship to the audience is also less formal and more approachable. Lightfast, a multimedia performance and installation at the wonderful Museum of Design and Art in San Francisco, explores the realm of collaboration between artists....

Categories: music

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

February 9, 2020

Susan Graham and the beauty of the art song

The fabulous Susan Graham sang in recital this past Sunday afternoon at Hertz Hall as part of Cal Performances 2020 season. She was accompanied by the equally fabulous Malcolm Martineau, pianist to the diva stars. The house was packed and the venue provided its wonderful concert hall acoustics. The well-loved, and rightly so, America mezzo opened the program with five songs by Reynaldo Hahn. Her interpretation like her voice was warm, and her French graced with clarity, which enhanced the...

Categories: music, opera

February 2, 2020

Emailing compassion in “Tiny Beautiful Things”

Tops among those things the internet has changed is how we communicate with each other. Social media, blogs, even venerable papers with long histories of print have made their way to the digital realm. Users form a public with more democratic potential, and the public is no longer local. Even more, we can tell our stories and share our ideas and feelings without editorial constraints of time, space and propriety. We tell our stories as long as we want and about whatever we want and to whoever...

Categories: theater