Tag archives: dance

Arianna Hartanov, who moved to Santa Barbara to join State Street Ballet (SSB) in 2016, has danced lead roles in the company’s productions of Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, among others. But ballet isn’t her only bailiwick.  As a choreographer for SSB’s Evenings and Modern Masters events, she indulged her contemporary side back in 2019 […]

Grand opera is returning to the Granada Theatre. After Opera Santa Barbara’s (OSB) two-plus years filled with ways to creatively cope with the COVID pandemic that ranged from virtual performances, to two Concerts in Your Car outdoor staged adaptations (that included, appropriately, a version of Carmen) and a season of smaller, shorter one-acts, reworkings, and […]

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 […]

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 […]

An energized and frenetic program provided a thoroughly entertaining evening when New York-based Ballet Hispánico performed Noche de Oro: A Celebration of 50 Years at the Granada, as part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures program. The tony troupe, under artistic director Eduardo Vilaro, performed three very differing works with Arabesque from 1984, an […]

Nebula Dance Lab didn’t have to cancel its annual HHII Dance Festival during the COVID crisis, although last year’s event did migrate to the virtual world. But what also happened in the more than two years since the festival’s last live weekend, was that the world caught up to Nebula and HHII’s concept of inclusivity, […]

The pandemic pushed Westmont’s Fringe Festival into the virtual world in 2021 after forcing the festival to furlough completely the year before. So the 2022 version of the entirely student-created fest, which takes place all over the Christian college’s Montecito campus this weekend, April 21-24, is a brand new experience for all except seniors. Maybe […]

Two Westmont students won David K. Winter Servant Leadership Awards for showing vision, courage, humility, integrity, and competence as leaders. Angela D’Amour, dean of student engagement, introduced the 22nd annual awardees, Ebun Kalejaiye (’23) of Rancho Palos Verdes and Eden Lawson (’24) of Redlands, on April 1 in chapel.  Kalejaiye serves as co-leader of the […]

Multi Grammy winner Sir John Eliot Gardiner, founder and music director of the English Baroque Soloists, was in fine form when the 44-year-old orchestra performed at the Granada as part of CAMA’s 103rd international concert series. Playing two works from Mozart – “Sinfonia concertante in E-flat Major” and “Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major” – […]

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, […]

Robert Battle intentionally benched his own creative endeavors when he took over as artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2011, as only the third person to occupy the position after founder Ailey’s 31-year tenure, and former dancer Judith Jamison’s 21-year reign. Instead, Battle focused on administrative duties and even more so on […]

Just 48 hours later, at the same venue, it was an extraordinary performance of a very different sort when Memphis Jookin’: The Show featuring Lil Buck kicked off UCSB Arts & Lectures’ first dance performance in two years, given the pandemic. Jookin’, which derived in Memphis, Tennessee, as a sort of rivalry between freestyle-based dancers, […]

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 […]

Transform Through Arts Theater’s annual Colors of Love dance show at Center Stage Theater returns to its usual Valentine’s Day weekend performance slot for 2022 after moving to August due to the pandemic last year, and the local collective’s approach to the concept of love has expanded in the interim.  “It’s evolved into more diversity […]

All of the five virtuoso string musicians who comprise the Grammy-winning folk-grass band Punch Brothers were fervent fans of Tony Rice. The Brothers – who are led by the MacArthur “Genius Grant’ Award fellow Chris Thile on mandolin and includes bassist Paul Kowert, guitarist Chris Eldridge, banjoist Noam Pikelny, and violinist Gabe Witcher – have […]

Back in early 2020, Nebula Dance Lab had planned to produce a ballet version of Island of the Blue Dolphins to celebrate the local story’s 60th anniversary since the publication of the novel. But a decision to delve deeper in diversity issues revolving around Dolphin produced a pandemic pivot to adapt another tale of a […]

Who could have predicted dance as the art form that would dominate reopening at the Center Stage Theater? Sure, the “black box” theater upstairs in Paseo Nuevo has been a happy home for several of the local dance companies that produce their own periodic performances and has also hosted a few festivals featuring revues. But […]

It’s no surprise that UCSB Arts & Lectures has turned to the XIV Dalai Lama for the keynote event in its year-long 2021-2022 Creating Hope programming initiative. After all, not only has His Holiness, who is believed to be a manifestation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, spent much of his life encouraging people to be […]

The opening sequence of UCSB Dance Department’s COVID-coping triptych of dance films shows a series of eerily empty spaces all over the seaside campus. But it’s not meant to be a metaphor or pandering to the pandemic, said artistic director Delila Moseley, a longtime professor of dance at UCSB. Moseley has been able to actually […]