Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
As a lifelong Catholic, I’ve always taken Holy Week seriously in a personal way, and the reading of The Passion on Palm Sunday always deeply affects me. You’d think I’d never heard the story before, of Jesus’s triumphant arrival into Jerusalem, his Last Supper, praying in the garden of Gethsemane, his betrayal by one of … Read more
The closing scene of the ballet, Swan Lake, carries a real-life poignancy that can be hard to capture in 19th-century story ballets. In the ghostly light of a full moon against a lake, lovers Siegfried and Odette clash with evil sorcerer Von Rothbart in a fight to the death, as Tchaikovsky’s dramatic music builds to … Read more
There is something about going to the symphony in the summer that makes it feel like such a different experience from its wintertime counterpart. How strange to enter Davies Symphony Hall while it’s still light outside. Inside, you stand at any of the building’s floor-to-ceiling windows—in truth, one entire side of the building is almost … Read more
Looking for The Classical Girl’s review of Program B? Here you go! www.bachtrack.com Prepare yourself, dance world. San Francisco Ballet’s Unbound, a festival featuring twelve new works, is about to land in San Francisco. And it’s going to be big. An unprecedented, mind-expanding, creatively explosive extravaganza that includes the following: Twelve internationally acclaimed choreographers Four programs running … Read more
Story has it, San Francisco Ballet principal dancer Yuan Yuan Tan’s career once hinged on one precipitous toss of a coin (ironically and coincidentally a Chinese yuan). She was ten, born and raised in Shanghai by traditional-minded Chinese parents. Her father was against the idea of her training to become a ballet dancer (too Western, … Read more