Tag archives: ballet
Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet mesmerized at the Granada when they performed for two consecutive nights as part of UCSB’s Arts & Lectures program. The magnificent company under Scottish artistic director Ashley Wheater kicked off the first night with Liam Scarlett’s “Vespertine,” originally created for the Norwegian National Ballet in 2015 and premiering with the Joffrey three […]
Back in 2019, veteran UCSB dance professor Valerie Huston and Arizona State University’s dance faculty member Carley Conder teamed up to create Avian for UCSB’s dance students. This casual piece was inspired by Huston overhearing two students talking about a class they were taking called The Mathematics of Origami and featured nine-foot origami birds above […]
It was all tu-tu much when social gridlock reigned at the venerable Lobero when the State Street Ballet closed its season with a gala performance featuring highlights from the company’s repertoire from the past 27 years. The glittering event also paid tribute to philanthropic patrons Sara Miller McCune, Carrie Towbes, Margo Cohen-Feinberg, and Tim Mikel, […]
Choreographer Gerald Arpino, the co-founder of the Joffrey Ballet who succeeded Robert Joffrey as its artistic director from 1988 to 2007 and composed nearly 50 ballets for the company, would have turned 100 next January. So, it’s fitting that Arpino’s 1986 work Birthday Variations forms the centerpiece of the Joffrey’s two-day, eight-work pair of performances […]
Le Sacre du Printemps has had immense influence in the classical arts ever since the collaboration between composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky was premiered by Ballets Russes to great controversy in Paris in 1913. The decades-ahead-of-its-time music has gone on to great success in the concert hall while the ballet has been adapted, […]
It was almost two years to the day when State Street Ballet had planned to debut its hugely entertaining version of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, but COVID intervened and the event at the Granada Theatre was cancelled. But it was clearly worth the wait when the talented dancers, under the direction of artistic directors Rodney Gustafson […]
A.I.M. Artistic Director Kyle Abraham is easily not only one of today’s most in-demand choreographers but also one able to traverse an array of disciplines as he has had works commissioned by companies spanning Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and New York City Ballet. A.I.M. (aka Abraham.In.Motion.), exists for Abraham to […]
Some folks spend all year looking forward to the holidays just so they can watch The Nutcracker once again. Others don’t care if they never hear Tchaikovsky’s classic again. There’s no doubt on which side State Street Ballet founder Rodney Gustafson resides. “I’ve seen our production so many times,” said Gustafson, who just returned to […]
Ed Lister, who is known in both Los Angeles and Santa Barbara as a skilled scenic artist with credits in the theater credits and mural making, has created a series of vibrant abstract silk screen prints, or serigraphs. They were made starting in the early 1970s while he was teaching printmaking at the Chelsea School […]
Following the imposition of stricter protocols to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, the area’s only planned live performance of The Nutcracker, a Concerts in Your Car production from Ventura Ballet, was canceled. Musician and theater impresario Hershey Felder, though, performs a pandemic pivot to point his next streaming production, Hershey Felder, TCHAIKOVSKY, toward the composer’s score […]
State Street Ballet was the first arts organization in town to perform the pandemic pivot as the statewide orders that shut down audience events came just two days before their planned premiere of Sleeping Beauty back in March, forcing the company to come up with a new approach quickly, resulting in a studio rehearsal version […]
Rodney Gustafson‘s State Street Ballet, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, is featured in Entertainment Weekly‘s list of “must be watched” videos for dance lovers. The performance, Cinderella, choreographed by Rodney and ballet master Marina Fliagina, airs on WNET’s All Arts program, and shares the accolade with Kansas City Ballet’s The Wizard of Oz, Alexander […]
Two years after the #MeToo movement called attention to sexual harassment and power dynamics – and just a month after the landmark conviction of former Hollywood powerbroker Harvey Weinstein – it would seem almost counterintuitive to produce a traditional ballet version of the classic Sleeping Beauty story. In other words, a perfect stranger kissing an […]
It wasn’t quite the Olympics, but KEYT-TV reporters Kelsey Gerckens and Tracy Lehr were definitely going for gold at the 70th annual Golden Mike awards in Los Angeles. The ABC affiliate broadcaster on TV Hill won the coveted trophies at a glittering Radio and Television News Association of Southern California gala at the Universal Hilton, […]
Two of the Granada Theatre’s resident companies, the State Street Ballet, celebrating its 25th anniversary, and the 72-year-old Santa Barbara Choral Society, combined their abundant talents in American Masters. The enticing program featured masterworks from Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Morten Lauridsen, and choreography ranging from neoclassical to the avant garde combined in an endeavor […]
At the Granada it was time for the tony triumvirate of violinist Joshua Bell, cellist Steven Isserlis, and pianist Jeremy Denk to shine, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures program. The talented threesome were in glorious harmony playing works by Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff and Ravel. A blockbuster show… Like Father, Like Daughter CAMA […]
Multi-talented Scottish actor and performer Alan Cumming brought his highly entertaining show Legal Immigrant to the sold-out Granada, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures program. The almost two-hour intermission-free performance, with a four-member backup band, was a meditation on his ten years as an American citizen and the experiences and change has witnessed […]
Something about the original score by Czech composer and conductor Milan Svoboda for a theatrical production of The Jungle Book drew State Street Ballet Artistic Director Rodney Gustafson’s attention when it arrived unsolicited more than a decade ago with a proposal to use it to create an original full-length work based on the beloved Rudyard […]
Local dance lovers are in for a treat this week when the Joffrey Ballet, the veteran company considered among America’s elite, returns to the Granada for the first time in more than half a decade for two different programs spanning seven works. That’s a tall order even for one of the country’s most revered troupe […]
It was a delightful night of high camp when Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo performed a hilarious program at the packed Granada, part of the of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures series. Music by Chopin, Verdi, Glazunov accompanied the balletic high jinx. Having seen the 45-year-old company a number of times in New […]
