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.
DanceSan Francisco,
The CITGO sign that once stood as an iconic place-name in Boston’s Kenmore Square has a soulmate: the imposing ODC sign that lights the intersection at Shotwell and 17th Streets in the otherwise humble neighborhood in San Francisco’s rapidly-gentrifying Mission ...
DanceLos Angeles,
In its December 2, two-performance appearance at The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Music Center in Los Angeles, the Cuban dance company Malpaso featured “Indomitable Waltz,” a 2016 work set on the company in Cuba by noted choreographer Aszure Barton. It was ...
Film
“Whose Streets?” by Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis, is a documentary film about the aftermath of the August 2014 gunning down of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old Black youth, by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson Missouri. The co-directors decided ...
DanceSan Francisco,
Is classical ballet dead? A good way to test this patient’s viability is to stage Helgi Tomasson’s “Haffner Symphony” in an outdoor setting, where living things abound in the lush splendor of orange poppy-fringed trees and meadows. See how it ...
Film
“It’s like a play within a play,” Nate (Finn Wittrock) observes halfway through “Landline.” He’s the clever, charming, and handsome interloper from Dana’s (Jennie Slate) past. He insinuates himself into the traditions of what she describes when she proclaims ...
EtcBerkeley,
On June 23, 2017, Toba Singer had a chance to sit down with actor Lance Gardner at Berkeley Rep. They talked about the three roles he plays in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “An Octoroon,” a modern-day adaptation of Dion Boucicault’s 1859 play ...
DanceSan Francisco,
In the works of Christopher Bruce, there is never the slightest whiff of the counterfeit. Pieces he creates tend to circumnavigate a family of themes whose touchpoints include abuse of power, loss, or simple-seeming but significant transformations—comic or tragic--within a ...
Film
“Moka” is a revenge thriller tendering a compact story that traverses Lac Leman (Lake Geneva). Some of its action plays out on the lake’s French bank in the city of Évian-les-Bains, and the rest in the Swiss city of Lausanne. ...
DanceSan Francisco,
Opera Paralèlle’s “Les Enfants Terribles” is a Jean Cocteau novel-inspired multimedia cocktail of nearly equal parts opera, filmed images, ballet, spoken word, and live piano accompaniment. Plot lines derivative of the 1972 Franco Zeffirelli film, “Sister Sun, Brother Moon,” and ...
DanceSan Francisco,
Christopher Wheeldon’s co-production with Dutch National Ballet of “Cinderella” is dance theater, conceived of in that genre’s finest tradition, but by no means limited by it. A marvelous scenic design team headed by costume and set designer Julian Crouch, ...
