Smuin opens 25th season with a winner

That Smuin Contemporary Ballet is celebrating its 25th Anniversary season is a testament to so many things. To its founder, Michael Smuin, who died suddenly in 2007 while teaching a company class, weeks before a spring performance. To the company members who decided, in the spirit of their founder, that “we’ve still got a show to put … Read more

Smuin Ballet goes untamed

Untamed. Uncorked. Unlaced. The Smuin Ballet wins the prize for coming up with the cleverest titles for its season’s dance series. Last year, the company’s 20th anniversary season, they presented their audiences with XXtremes,  XXmas and XXcentric. (Get it? XX=20?) I particularly like this season’s holiday performance series name, “Uncorked.” Does that sound like a party or what?  Last weekend … Read more

Smuin: the other San Francisco ballet

  Confession time: I didn’t know about the Smuin Ballet until just a few years ago. I knew Michael Smuin’s name from San Francisco Ballet lore, where he’d been a principal dancer, a choreographer, a co-director from 1973 until Helgi Tomasson’s arrival in July 1985.  Smuin founded his own company nine years later, by which … Read more