Toba Singer, author of “Fernando Alonso, the Father of Cuban Ballet” (University Press of Florida 2013), and “First Position: a Century of Ballet Artists” (Praeger 2007), writes for international dance journals and websites, and has served as an advisor to the San Francisco Museum of Performance and Design. She was the University Press of Florida author representative at the 2013 Miami International Book Fair. “Fernando Alonso, the Father of Cuban Ballet” was nominated for the Latin American Student Association Bryce Award, the de la Torre Research and Dance Scholars Award, and the Commonwealth Club California Book Award.
Meta
Writes in: Art & Architecture, Books & CDs, Dance, Etc, Features, Film, Music, Television, and Theater.
Books & CDs
If you have a nose for power, drawing a deep inspirational breath from the approachable majesty of nature, the long view of history, and intriguing vagaries of human expression, can be a tricky business. Nonetheless, ...
Art & Architecture
The Tijuana [Mexico] Cultural Center merits a far more titillating acronym than CECUT! It stands out as one of my two favorite Tijuana institutions (the other being the Dance Conservatory of Mexico/Conservatorio de Danza de Mexico-CDM). Built in 1982, ...
DanceSan Francisco,
Even if your beat is strictly limited to ballet, you can’t write about dance in the San Francisco Bay Area without running into the classical dances of India. In the case of Drive East, Indian Classical Dance--to exploit the ...
DanceSan Francisco,
The pieces chosen for the opener and closer of this year’s Stern Grove San Francisco Ballet program proved the best fit for the venerable if quirky raked stage with brown panel backdrop, like you’ve seen on TV in the ...
DanceSan Francisco,
The idea was to review SFDanceworks Season 4, but as I left the Cowell Theater that sits on the dock of the San Francisco Bay, a wave of equivocation eclipsed that plan. It was ...
Dance
Rudyard Kipling’s name is eponymous. His “White Man’s Burden” lament has served as a sanctimonious apologia for centuries of imperial rape and pillage on foreign soil. Kipling is also the author of “The Jungle Book,” a children’s cautionary tale ...
Film
Again with the Shakespeare, Kenneth Branagh! This time it’s not a movie version of a work by the bard, but rather, a close encounter with him along fault lines predicting a fractious interlude. You may wince at ...
DanceSan Francisco,
“Shostakovich Trilogy” is an evening-long tour de force by Russian-born choreographer Alexei Ratmansky. It’s outstanding for its theme: the tumultuous reconciliation of a world-altering revolution and subsequent counter-revolution with the career of Dmitri Shostakovich, a composer influenced by Igor ...
DanceSan Francisco,
Diablo Ballet reaches beyond its San Francisco bedroom community setting to recruit dancers from a host of backgrounds, both personal and professional. It brings in choreographers from across oceans or just a tunnel and bridge away. It draws on ...
Film
Even given transparent formulas for box office success, it’s curious how each filmmaker’s starting point holds out an argument of its own. Ralph Fiennes, who directs and appears in “White Crow,” a film that collects around the idiosyncrasies of ...
