Jaime Robles – Page 60 – Repeat Performances

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

May 2, 2008

’The Little Prince’ at Cal Performances

High flying with Saint-Exupéry A scrim of aerogrammes falling from the sky shades the middle of an enormous round portal like the window of an old fashioned ship, which in turn frames the front of the stage. A man enters dressed as an aviator from between the World Wars. He is followed and surrounded by children in striped pajamas and nightgowns, slippers on their feet. Addressing them, he begins his story of how when he was a child the pictures he drew were never...

Categories: opera

April 19, 2008

Bryn Terfel, Silver Tongued, at Cal Performances

“You’re a fabulous audience,” commented bass-baritone Bryn Terfel midway through the first half of his Thursday night recital at Cal Performances. Don’t they all say that? But walking forward to the edge of the stage, he added, “You can breathe, you know.” The audience laughed, and took a breath. That Terfel, a man born to perform, could so clearly feel the rapt attention of his audience and then mirror it back in a humorous and...

Categories: opera

April 13, 2008

Oakland Ballet: ‘The Secret Garden’

Gardens of delight There is something splendid about the return of the Oakland Ballet Company. In just over a year it has returned to its former excellence, with capable and talented dancers performing in productions that are often breathtaking...

Categories: dance

March 30, 2008

Amor Cubano at La Peña

In a Bottle, a Tube and a Small Packet “Fidel only talks to Raúl, Hugo and me.” So claims Barbarita Perales, the inventor (and sole distributor) of Amor Cubano, the love potion in a bottle, a tube and a small packet. Maceo Cabrera Estevez, the inventor of Barbarita, brought her fiery but pragmatically entrepreneurial Cuban alter ego to La Peña this past weekend to perform a live infomercial on the virtues of Amor Cubano. Sidling through the audience in a low-cut,...

Categories: theater

March 14, 2008

Oakland East Bay Symphony’s ’Notes from Persia’

Reaching across great divides Before the start of the second half of Friday night’s Oakland East Bay Symphony concert, Music Director and Conductor Michael Morgan stepped to the microphone to comment, “We need to come together face to face, rather than listen to what our governments tell us to think about each other.” His remarks met with enthusiastic applause and verified the political intent of the program, in case anyone had mistaken it for a purely cultural...

Categories: music