Lewis WhittingtonDancePhiladelphia,
Pennsylvania Ballet opened their 55th season with a strong production of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo & Juliet. Scored to Serge Prokofiev’s brilliant ballet score, MacMillan created this version of R & J at the Royal Ballet in 1965 and it stands as a contemporary story ballet masterpiece. PABallet artistic ...
Toba SingerFilmSan Francisco,
“Birds of Passage” is a true story and a compelling one. Set in Colombia, it tells of the clash that results when outside drug traffickers impose capitalist property relations on an ancient and centuries-old indigenous culture.
In the early 1980s, when I as living in Washington, D.C., ...
David E. MorenoDanceSan Francisco,
“what is your name/listening through walls/the voice of stone”
“ECHO/riding the rapids” is an explosive improvisational dance layered with abstraction and poignancy. It exploits the unsinkable sexuality, musicality, and embodiment of its guest dancer, Jesse Zaritt and the multi-layered talent of composer, performer and award-winning media artist, Pamela ...
Lynne FriedmannTheaterSan Diego,
In the new musical, “The Heart of Rock & Roll,” a boatload of well-known hits and lesser-known songs by Huey Lewis and The News provide the underpinning and pulse of a pleasing and foot-taping story line that delivers on “The Power of Love.”
We ...
Karen WeinsteinMusicLos Angeles,
The LA Opera has kicked off its 2018-19 season with gusto. Verdi’s “Don Carlo” is grand opera with a capital ‘G.’ The music is lavish and all enveloping – orchestra and cast meet the challenge head on. The full LA Opera Chorus is a force unto itself.
King Phillip ...
Marisa HayesDanceParis,
It’s been nearly thirty years since the Martha Graham Dance Company performed in Paris at the invitation of Rudolf Nureyev, then artistic director of the Paris Opera Ballet and a veteran Graham guest artist. Since then, Graham’s company has survived numerous setbacks, including the loss of its founder and lengthy ...
Emily S. MendelTheaterSan Francisco,
Written in 2015 by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Lynn Nottage, “Sweat” is a powerful and dramatic look at workers in the Rust Belt facing the demise of their union jobs. With an abundant amount of research and even more skill and talent, Nottage, with able director Loretta Greco, brings to ...
David E. MorenoDanceSan Francisco,
“and with sweet oil
costly
you anointed yourself
and on a soft bed
delicate
you would loose your longing…”
In a paleo restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission District a friend recounts his intense experience during an Ayahuasca ceremony over the weekend. (So… California!) During his plant-induced journey, ...
Lynne FriedmannTheaterSan Diego,
An author invites a self-proclaimed clairvoyant into his home with plans to observe her during a séance and mockingly incorporate her mannerisms into a character in his next murder mystery. But the cosmic joke is on him when the medium surprises everyone (including herself) by conjuring up ...
Toba SingerFilmCA,
Based on a spectacular 1965 museum robbery by two students in Mexico City, “Museo,” begins with the voice of Juan, a character played nuance by nuance by Gael García Bernal. Juan has come to the bitter, if faulty conclusion that “we don’t know how things begin, only how they ...
