Tag archives: ballet
It was all too beastly for words when State Street Ballet staged The Jungle Book at the Lobero under the artistic direction of founder Rodney Gustafson and co-artistic director William Soleau. The company, which leaves this month for a two-city tour of Japan – Tokyo and Osaka – after just finishing a southwestern U.S. tour, […]
Santa Barbara’s State Street Ballet is off to Japan for a two-week tour, including Tokyo and Osaka, in May. Founder and co-artistic director Rodney Gustafson tells me the tony troupe of 19 dancers, accompanied by five staffers, will be performing Jungle Book, which is being danced again on April 29 at the Lobero, and two […]
State Street Ballet’s performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Granada was an enchanting show full of mishaps and mayhem. The William Shakespeare work, with rollicking music written in 1843 by Felix Mendelssohn – he composed the overture when just 17 – and inventive choreography by company founder Rodney Gustafson, transcended the two worlds […]
State Street Ballet’s (SSB) spring show, which has a single performance on Saturday, March 4, at The Granada, is drawn entirely from its existing repertory. But nobody should think the dance concert will be anything less than thrilling. That’s because co-artistic directors Rodney Gustafson and William Soleau have put together a program that covers the […]
The classical 1877 Tchaikovsky ballet Swan Lake took on a whole new complexion when France’s 27-year-old Ballet Preljocaj, based in the charming university city of Aix-en-Provence, performed at the Granada, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures program. With extremely creative video and lighting design by Boris Labbé and Eric Soyer, the 110-minute work […]
In the early days of the pandemic, Angelin Preljocaj, the French choreographer famed for creating contemporary classics, dove into developing his distinctive version of Swan Lake, perhaps the most iconic ballet in the canon. Transforming the timeless tale of love, seduction, betrayal, and remorse into a modern cautionary story of ecological tragedy and societal failure, […]
Everybody was clearly going nuts about State Street Ballet’s colorful production of The Nutcracker at the Granada with hardly a seat to be had to watch Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece. Accompanied by the Opera San Luis Obispo Grand Orchestra under substitute conductor Lee Mills, as well as State Street Ballet Academy students and professional track trainees, the […]
A Christmas ‘Unicorn’: And Now for Something Completely Different… It would be hard to imagine something more polar opposite from a Christmas show than Bulletproof Unicorn, a one-woman show from Los Angeles-based comedian and singer-songwriter Stacie Burrows rife with dark humor about trying to fix her dysfunctional family that culminates in her estranged, alcoholic brother […]
It’s no accident that Rodney Gustafson landed in Santa Barbara to launch his State Street Ballet dance company almost three decades ago. The company’s executive and artistic director had targeted returning to town ever since he’d performed as a dancer with the famed American Ballet Theatre (ABT) at the Arlington Theatre many years before. “I […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
