I felt both dazzled and skeptical about Sankai Juku’s recent visit, which I reviewed for the Chronicle yesterday, and I can’t say I’ve yet resolved my ambivalence: “It’s not hard to see why Sankai Juku is the leading...

I reviewed Lines Ballet’s latest home season for today’s Chronicle: “Alonzo King is not the kind of choreographer who can operate on autopilot with passable results. His concern is nothing less than the transcendent...

Joan Acocella’s latest New Yorker column on British choreographer-of-the-moment Akram Khan is one of her best pieces of work, in my opinion. After grappling with the musical complexity and historical intricacies of kathak myself for the...

Good news for ballet in Oakland . . . My story in the Chronicle today: “Ballet in Oakland is a long saga that revolves around a single man: Ronn Guidi. He founded the Oakland Ballet in 1965, led it to international notice with revivals of...

My review of “Kathak at the Crossroads” is in today’s Chronicle: ” “The ‘one’ is Krishna,” Birju Maharaj told an entranced audience Friday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater. “All...

Apollinaire Scherr, one-time Bay Area dance-watcher and now a feistily individualistic (and sometimes controversial) dance writer for Newsday, has just started a blog at the invaluable Arts Journal. Among the topics her first post poses for...

My review of “Classical Savion” appeared in yesterday’s Chronicle: ” “Can you get rid of that?” Savion Glover called to a harried stagehand at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on Friday night. And then...

Kathak at the Crossroads

Dozens of Kathak gurus and disciples straight from India are about to take over the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for a major international conference. I wrote about the man behind the gathering, San Francisco’s own Chitresh Das, for...

I was at the Savion Glover show at Cal Performances last night and found it–no surprise–mostly brilliant; the review will be in Monday’s Chronicle. In the meantime, just a reminder that David Dorfman Dance is also at the Yerba...

Fall Dance Preview

Here’s the online version of my fall dance preview for the Chronicle. The dance season looks a bit slower than usual this year, sadly; No blockbuster ballet companies at Cal Performances, and the Oakland Ballet, which folded in January, is...

Is the Lewis Segal “I hate ballet” fuss still brewing? In the end, I was in too overwhelmed a moment in life to organize my own arguments or follow the blow-by-blows. But Allan Ulrich has summarized the issues most astutely at Voice...

Flatulent, Trivial Ballet

I’ve been so busy working on stories for the Chronicle and elsewhere, pushing forward on a novel, moving, and preparing to lead a writing workshop at the Parents of Murdered Children conference that I entirely missed Lewis Segal’s...