I reviewed for the San Francisco Classical Voice: “Coppélia arrived at the War Memorial Opera House Saturday looking like it has always belonged there. And it’s true that this 1870 ballet — with its long-lost original choreography by Arthur...
I reviewed for the Chronicle: “Ah, the conditions ballet dancers will work with to popularize their art. Watching Diablo Ballet at Walnut Creek’s Shadelands Arts Center Auditorium, I thought of the greats who used to appear on the...
I reviewed Jess Curtis/Gravity’s premiere of “Dances for Non/Fictional Bodies” for Dance Magazine: For the better part of a decade, Jess Curtis has been on a self-styled trajectory, presenting himself as an artist equally...
I reviewed two casts of San Francisco Ballet’s Giselle for the San Francisco Classical Voice: “Giselle might have seemed merely an ordinary start to the San Francisco Ballet’s 78th season — a nice, now-familiar staging of this...
The Chronicle asked me to do a short Q and A. “Rennie Harris changed attitudes in the dance world when his “Rome and Jewels,” a 2000 adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” proved that hip-hop could be...
I’ve been silently watching the ‘Black Swan’ acclaim in befuddlement, and so was happy to receive this email from SF Chronicle reader James Pendergast, who shares an insightful review by his stepson Kurt Ackridge. (I requested...
I reviewed Jennifer Homans’ new history of ballet for the San Francisco Chronicle: “Jennifer Homans begins and ends her weighty new cultural history of ballet with a provocative old claim: Ballet is dead. Let’s set aside the...
I wrote about the Mark Morris Dance Group for San Francisco Classical Voice yesterday: “Last week marked the first return of the Mark Morris Dance Group to UC Berkeley since Robert Cole’s retirement and Matías Tarnopolsky’s start as...
My review of San Francisco Ballet’s “Romeo and Juliet” for the San Francisco Classical Voice: “For general balletgoers, the run of Romeo and Juliet that opened Saturday and continues through this week is the crowning jewel...
Allan Ulrich was traveling, so I subbed to review San Francisco Ballet’s program seven for the Chronicle: “A resident choreographer earns his keep when he feeds the audience what it wants and needs, brings out qualities in the dancers...
Greetings! You’ve landed on the website of writer Rachel Howard. I’m an author, journalist, dance critic, and writing teacher. However, I’m not a web designer (hence the circa 2005 site design—the pink is getting a little old). I’m also not much...
My Q and A for Thursday’s Chronicle: “Benjamin Levy’s latest dance was inspired by an increasingly common experience: He changed his “relationship” status on Facebook only to realize that he’d just broadcast...
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