New School
San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House is a grand, gracious theater, so it was a big deal to see the San Francisco Ballet School hold its end-of-year performances in that hall for the first time since at least 1985.
Continua a leggereWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
Beneath blue California skies, manicured trees, and the occasional hum of an overhead airplane, Tamara Rojo took the Frost Amphitheater stage at Stanford University to introduce herself as the new artistic director of San Francisco Ballet. The meeting had future box office returns on the line. This was San Francisco Ballet’s third annual August presentation by Stanford Live, an engagement that is not just a back-to-school warm-up for the company, but also a way of convincing new South Bay and Silicon Valley fans to travel an hour north to San Francisco for the 2024 season come next January. Rojo is going to need these newcomers for programming that looks quite different from her predecessor Helgi Tomasson’s. She succeeded in offering plenty of whiz-bang spectacle to convert fresh balletomanes, despite a closer that seemed to leave many scratching their heads.
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San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House is a grand, gracious theater, so it was a big deal to see the San Francisco Ballet School hold its end-of-year performances in that hall for the first time since at least 1985.
Continua a leggereAt its heart, “Sylvia” is a ballet about the resistance to love—a theme that continues to resonate deeply, as the human spirit often recoils from love, driven by fear, pride, a need for control, or the weight of duties and moral constraints.
Continua a leggereSince the 1970s, the Paris Opera Ballet has cultivated a distinctive tradition of nurturing its own dancers as emerging choreographers.
Continua a leggereIn John Cranko’s world, “if ballet only consisted of dance steps, it wouldn’t be worth dedicating your whole life to it,” and this sense of devotion is at the heart of Joachim A. Lang’s German-language film, John Cranko (2024).
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