Tag Archives: Zellerbach Hall
Feed your soul, feast your eyes: Alvin Ailey is in town
The almighty power of contemporary dance is alive and kicking in Berkeley through April 28, after which the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will pack up their four, richly textured programs and hoof it to the next tour stop.
Until then, it’s “get thee to the church of alpha men and women” in Zellerbach Hall. Feed your soul, feast your eyes and raise your inner flag (no matter how tattered) of patriotism. Artistic Director Robert Battle’s company sprang to life on American soil in 1958 and 55 hinge-bending, lateral-leaning, gravity-defying years later, the jubilee shows no signs of abating. … Continue reading »
Dancemaker Trisha Brown retires her choreographic cap
Can a single-artist dance company become an ever-evolving, interactive, mobile museum?
That is the question, and the premise, of the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s revolutionary plan as the iconic, 76-year-old dancemaker retires her choreographic cap and becomes the company’s Founding Artistic Director and Choreographer.
As of February 2011 and after a series of minor strokes, Brown concluded 50-plus-years as a master creator of elegant physical vocabulary unfurled in magnificent metaphors of time, tasks and space.
Naming Diane Madden and Carolyn Lucas (long-time TBDC members since joining as dancers in the 1980’s) as Associate Artistic Directors, the company embarked in January on a three-year international “Proscenium Works, 1979-2011” tour. … Continue reading »
Hubbard Street and LINES Ballet: A recipe for perfection
Compelling dances result from simple, rare ingredients: fantastic dancers with bone-deep training baring their souls, and choreographers with dangerous love in every pattern, pairing, and pirouette. Add earthshakingly beautiful lighting, audacious or adorable sound scores, and costumes springing organically from the choreographer’s greatest aspirations — and, well, you might have a masterpiece.
Two of the works on HSDC’s docket rose close to attaining such majesty: Alejandro Cerrudo’s stunning Little Mortal Jump and King’s ambitious Azimuth. … Continue reading »
‘Einstein on the Beach’: Much more than sum of its parts
Like the birth of a child, Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach: An Opera in Four Acts, co-written with Philip Glass, featuring choreography by Lucinda Childs and brought to Berkeley at October’s end by Cal Performances, presented a conundrum of experience.
The nearly five-hour opera can drive a person mad, or into ecstasy, or both. The only certainty is that after witnessing it, sight, sound, movement, and especially time, can never be the same.
The 1976 original, hailed by critics as revolutionary and largely credited with establishing Wilson, Glass and Childs as leaders in (respectively) contemporary theater, music and dance, today bears some resemblance to an old home movie made by an eccentric uncle. But, while madness in the hands of a family relative may result in silly entertainment, in the hands of three masters, it makes for brilliant, universe-shifting theater. … Continue reading »
The It List: Five things to do in Berkeley this weekend
PREPARE TO BE BEWITCHED Thaisa Frank’s short fiction has been captivating readers for decades, even before the publication of her highly regarded and widely translated novel Heidegger’s Glasses. Now Frank has collected 61 old and new stories in Enchantment: New and Selected Stories, published this week by Berkeley’s Counterpoint Press. As Booklist puts it:”The title of this collection hints at its contents — delectable stories with touches of the surreal as well as many plot twists and surprises. From short-short story to novella, each narrative demonstrates mastery of the genre.” Frank will be reading from Enchantment at Mrs. Dalloway’s on College Avenue at 7:30 pm on Friday, July 13.
A SALUTE WOODY GUTHRIE In 1988, Peter Glazer, the chair of UC Berkeley’s Theater, Dance, and 
Performance Studies, wrote a musical based on the life and songs of Woody Guthrie. Almost 25 years later, Woody Guthrie’s American Song has been performed hundreds of times, on stages from Seattle to New York. Glazer himself has directed the award-winning play 25 times and his latest interpretation is playing at the Freight & Salvage Coffee House until July 22. On Saturday, July 14, the 100th anniversary of Guthrie’s birth, Glazer and the cast from the musical will hold an open house from 1 to 5 pm and perform some classics like “This Land is Your Land.” There will also be a discussion of Guthrie with Glazer. The Freight is also displaying the first public exhibit of The Kids Write to Woody . . . Woody Writes Back, letters Woody Guthrie wrote in the summer of 1955 when he was bed-ridden with Huntington’s Disease at Brooklyn State Hospital. A few dozen children attending a summer camp outside St. Louis had sent post cards to Guthrie, and he answered each one individually. … Continue reading »
Bill T. Jones and “Story/Time”: Anything might happen
On Friday and Saturday, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company will present “Story/Time” at Zellerbach Hall courtesy of Cal Performances. Lou Fancher previews the show with the company’s Associate Artistic Director Janet Wong, and, below, sits down with Jones himself to talk about the new project and the impact it is having on his life’s work
When the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company catapults onto the stage at Zellerbach Hall on February 24 and 25, even the dancers won’t know exactly what will happen.
Just a few hours before the 8:00 pm curtain, they will have lined the backstage hallway, learning the sequence spewed out by Random.org and refined under the watchful eye of Bill T. Jones and his Associate Artistic Director Janet Wong.
“We use Random to spin the material to determine which story goes where and what dancer does which part,” Wong explains, in a 45-minute phone interview a week before opening night. “Everyone has a chart: sometimes it’s brilliant and sometimes it’s horrible.”
Her evaluations are hardly begin to reflect Wong’s high standards and intense commitment to Jones, with whom she has worked for decades.
“The reason Bill wanted to do this piece is that John Cage is a mentor,” she says, citing the inspiration for the new work. … Continue reading »
In Berkeley: Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette
Listen to Keith Jarrett playing Paris Concert while you read our review
Every performance by pianist Keith Jarrett comes freighted with outsized expectations. One of jazz’s most popular and influential pianists and composers since the early 1970s, Jarrett performs at Zellerbach Hall on Saturday with his “Standards Trio” featuring sublime bassist Gary Peacock and ingenious drummer Jack DeJohnette, a prolific ensemble that’s recorded a series of often ravishing live albums for ECM.
As the group’s nickname implies, the trio is a vehicle for exploring American Songbook standards and modern jazz staples, rather than for Jarrett’s original compositions or the extended extemporaneous improvisation captured on his 1975 monster hit album “The Köln Concert.”
At his best, Jarrett can reach astonishing heights of lyricism propelled by DeJohnette’s feathery caress of his cymbals, though recent Bay Area performances have been hit or miss affairs. At some concerts, half a set passed before the trio hit its stride and found its way into a startlingly beautiful place. But much of the drama surrounding a Jarrett performance is temperamental rather than musical. Famously irascible on stage, the pianist has been known to stop playing mid-tune if distracted by an offending cough during a pianissimo passage. He’s also not shy about critiquing his instrument if he finds it unsatisfactory (take note Cal Performances). … Continue reading »
Premiere Ethnic Dance Festival makes its Berkeley debut
A world-renowned dance festival is crossing to Bay Bridge to make its debut in Berkeley this weekend, on June 11th and 12th, when the SF Ethnic Dance Festival performs at Zellerbach Hall.
The New York Times’ Chief Dance Critic, Alastair Macaulay, described the second of last year’s San Francisco Festival’s four weekend programs as “a glorious achievement”.
Julie Mushet, Executive Director of World Arts West, which organizes the festival, said: “We always sell out in San Francisco, and our stats … Continue reading »
Dance in Berkeley: a première and the end of an era
As one prestigious theater company holds a star-studded première in Berkeley, another will be holding its last performance ever in our fair city.
The US première of Eonnagata, produced by Robert Lepage and his Quebec based Ex Machina theatre company, legendary French dancer Sylvie Guillem and British choreographer Russell Maliphant, will be at on stage at Zellerbach Hall tonight and tomorrow night, and there are still some tickets left at time of writing.
Eonnagata explores the life of Charles de Beaumont, an 18th-century French diplomat, soldier and spy, whose career exploits and fluid gender identity — he lived half of his life as a man and half as a woman — made him an audacious yet enigmatic figure.
Meanwhile, the renowned Merce Cunningham Dance Company celebrates its founder on March 3-5, also being presented by Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall, as part of the company’s Legacy Tour — and will be the last time the troupe will dance in Berkeley. … Continue reading »
No ticket to hear Bill Gates? Hear him anyway
Bill Gates is coming to UC Berkeley today, and if you were not one of the lucky few to get tickets, do not despair.
Gates’ comments will be broadcast live on a number of websites, including one he set up for his swing through colleges in the United States. He’s calling that “The Gates Notes”, (hmmm, no apostrophe), and it has sections on what he is thinking about, what he is learning about, and his travels, among … Continue reading »
