Smuin Ballets/SF opened its seventh season with two hits and a near miss. Revivals of two of Michael Smuin’s finest ballets, the stunning “Medea” and “Carmina Burana,” framed a somewhat disappointing centerpiece, the world premiere of “Sapphire Rain.” Set on four couples, to the music of New Age ... Cancel those airline tickets! Smuin Ballets San Francisco circles the globe in its third program of the spring season at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Audiences can visit Russia, Japan and Mexico – with a brief musical side trip to South Africa – without ever having to leave ... Michael Smuin, who was director of the San Francisco Ballet from 1973 until 1985, later established his own company, now celebrating its fifth anniversary season. Smuin Ballets/SF is a company expressing the singular artistic vision of its choreographer in a parallel manner to the Mark Morris Dance Group ... Fairy tales can come true; it can happen to you …especially if you’re in the audience at San Francisco Ballet’s lavish production of The Sleeping Beauty. First presented in St. Petersburg in 1890, this collaboration between Pytor Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, the composer, and Marius Petipa, the great choreographer, was ... If all ballet programs were as varied, exciting and superbly performed as the fourth in San Francisco Ballet’s current season, ballet might be as popular as football. Not that this troupe can complain about being based in a city that supports a full season of dance that runs ... Sometimes a ballet program is like a sandwich, with the filling stuck between two slices of white fluffy stuff. So it is with San Francisco Ballet’s Program 2. It’s not that Antony Tudor’s Gala Performance and Stanton Welch’s Taiko are bad ballets. They are fun, in their different ways, ... "Nutcracker" Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World (2003), Jennifer Fisher Tis the season -- the season for Santa and Scrooge and those ubiquitous dancing nutcrackers. And, of all the “Nutcrackers” in the Bay Area, stretching from Oakland to ... Cosmic Form of Dancing Shiva Water Color on Tussar Silk from Exotic India Before there was Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty there was Giselle. The durable old dame has been showing up in theaters across the world, danced ... The San Francisco Ballet's third program of the season brought the company premiere of Nacho Duato's Without Words set to an arrangement of Schubert songs (minus the voice) for cello and piano. First created in 1998 for American Ballet Theater, the ballet is sculptural, stark, strikingly moving and beautiful ... The San Francisco Ballet concludes its repertory season with a program that aptly describes the company today. There were three works: a Balanchine classic, a dance by a master choreographer of today, and the work of a new choreographer. All of the pieces were revivals, performed with the polish ...
