Tag archives: State Street Ballet

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

One of the reasons Bob Bernhardt has secured several long-term gigs as Principal Pops Conductor at several symphonies simultaneously — including the Louisville Orchestra (where his tenure spans four decades), the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera (19 seasons), and the Grand Rapids Symphony (seven years) — is his versatility and adaptability in leading an ensemble and […]

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 […]

Theater came roaring back to life in town since last we published these pages known as the Sentinel, with every local company save for Ventura’s Rubicon offering something to savor. I caught three of the productions, including the biggest of them all in the revival of Kismet,executive produced and presented by philanthropist/publisher Sara Miller McCune. […]

November 21-December 30 Santa Barbara Sounds at SOhO   The popular restaurant nightclub took a little longer than almost all other establishments to reopen after the forced COVID closures expired at the end of spring, but the entertainment-every-night emporium is now fully back in action. Peruse the calendar carefully for the hangout owned for more […]

Just a couple of weeks after launching its new season with mariachi opera Cruzar la Cara de la Luna at the Granada, the singers, accompanied by talented dancers from the State Street Ballet and the Opera Santa Barbara Orchestra under artistic director Kostis Protopapas, were at the top of their game with a delightful double […]

Montecito über philanthropist Sara Miller McCune certainly knows how to celebrate! For her 80th birthday Sara, a longtime fan of New York’s Great White Way, underwrote the costs of Kismet, which opened on Broadway in 1953 and the following year won a Tony Award for best musical. “Over the years, the music and the words […]

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 […]

The dictionary says “kismet” is an Arabic word that has come to mean fate or destiny in English. In theater, Kismet was a hit on Broadway back in the 1950s, as the love-and-duty musical about a glib-tongued street poet in old Baghdad whose family encounters princesses and a young caliph was smartly adapted from a […]

As I write this early in October, I can really feel my heart beating just a little bit faster. Kismet, that wonderful musical show, is coming to life once again — right here in Santa Barbara. For one thing, the first week of rehearsals late September in New York City are now over. For that […]

One of the more interesting things I have learned now that we are getting closer to our Kismet performance dates in late October is the fact that all businesses are full of details — and then still more details. This should not have come as a surprise to me since I started my own publishing […]

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 […]

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 […]

Given the lockdown, I spent Christmas Day virtually streaming a host of entertaining Santa Barbara events that I was unable to attend, as I have done annually for the past 13 years. Susan Keller’s Santa Barbara Revels Venetian Celebration, taped at the Marjorie Luke Theater, “was as close to a live performance as was possible […]

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 […]