Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
So, I got to attend a second performance of San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker this past week, which confirms my hunch that, literally, I can’t get enough of this company and this production. Opening night or weekday matinee, it doesn’t matter. It was all brilliant. And watching a second performance is great fun because you … Read more
San Francisco Ballet dancers in Caniparoli’s “Lambarena” I never thought I’d get the chance to mention San Francisco Ballet and my two-year African experience in the same breath, much less blog about it, but here we are. Tuesday night I attended San Francisco Ballet’s 2015 season opener, a program that featuring Serenade, RAkU and Lambarena. … Read more
Willem Christensen and Gisella Caccialanza, 1944 It hadn’t been intended as a “timeless holiday classic,” that first year, on Christmas Eve day, 1944, when Willem Christensen, artistic director of the fledgling San Francisco Ballet, presented to audiences his complete, two-act Nutcracker production. He’d known he was doing something relatively new. The only other complete Nutcracker ballet outside Russia had been in … Read more
My first glimpse of the magic that is “The Kingdom of the Shades” came when I was sixteen, via the opening sequences of the film The Turning Point. The music, the image of twenty-four women attired in white, descending a tiered ramp through silvery lighting, striking arabesques in perfect synchronicity, haunted me. Particularly once I got some … Read more