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.
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Writes in: Art & Architecture, Books & CDs, Dance, Etc, Features, Film, Music, Television, and Theater.
Film
It’s a dominoes game of unrequited love that begins with a deathbed alarm sounded by the household staff at the sumptuous manor in the Russian countryside belonging to sister and brother Irina (Annette Bening) and Sorin (Brian Dennehy). Though it’s ...
DanceSan Francisco,
At the San Francisco Ballet Gala earlier this year, Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson predicted that the Unbound Festival would locate the company at the “epicenter of world ballet.” The ballet world is bigger than North America and Western Europe, and ...
Film
When my son was six and a student at Mountaineer Montessori School, he learned the Shaker hymn, “’Simple Gifts.” “I hate that song,” he said to me one afternoon, as we drove away from his school. His vehemence took me ...
DanceSan Francisco,
To mark its 85th anniversary, San Francisco Ballet added “Unbound,” to this year’s season, a series of four programs, A, B, C, and D, consisting of commissioned works by recognized choreographers, some of who have never before set work on ...
DanceLondon,
For its yearly mixed rep program, English National Ballet brought an all-American barnburner of a lineup. William Forsythe, after a 20-year hiatus, returned with two short works, “Approximate Sonata 2016,” and “Playlist (Track 1 and 2),” the latter created ...
DanceSan Francisco,
“There’s only one thing worse than being in a Robbins work, and that’s not being in one,” a veteran New York City Ballet dancer remarked recently. Circling ’round the New York ballet world in eighty minutes, this all-Robbins program offers ...
TheaterSan Francisco,
"Until, Until, Until . . . is a play accompanied by a multi-media video installation. It's an interrogation of the facts and misinformation surrounding the controversy about the famous 1981 televised performance by Broadway actor and dancer Ben Vereen, that ...
DanceSan Francisco,
All three works on this evening's program are locally sourced archived ballets. Those who have seen them in other seasons can reflect on how they stand the test of time and a new call-up of dancers takes on the tasks ...
DanceSan Francisco,
It is hard to name a work that creates otherworldliness all of one piece as does George Balanchine's sky blue "Serenade." To do justice to the Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky score, dancers must arrive floaty, swift, and punctual, contradictory though those ...
Film
It's not an unfamiliar story about 1950s film studio era diva Gloria Grahame that screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh offers, and it's a sympathetic rendering, but not so cloying as to go dime-store hagiographic. Tinsel town affords a wide girth to a ...
