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Being selected to perform in the Young Choreographers Showcase is an honor in itself. Hearing the names of winners is a big cause for excitement. Just check out the joyful snapshot of Jessica Rabanzo-Flores who won the first place prize of $3,000 for her supercharged dance “Beyond Our control.” Rabanzo-Flores was one of 11 contestants (nine individual choreographers and two two-person teams) in the showcase for 2013. A panel of six judges and an exuberant crowd inside the Saville Theatre at City College Sunday night was wowed by the gripping energy in her hip-hop inspired work set to “Illusion of Choice”…
San Diego Ballet is best known for family traditions and romantic tragedies, such as “The Nutcracker” and “Romeo Juliet.” To embrace a broader Valentine’s Day crowd, choreographer Javier Velasco created a new ballet with an irresistible title, especially if you’re a man with a pulse. In San Diego Ballet’s debut of “Don Juan” last weekend at the Lyceum, audiences followed the escapades of the legendary lover and scoundrel immortalized in Spanish folklore, plays, and Mozart’s opera, “Don Giovanni.” Maxim Tchernychev, a former Bolshoi dancer, portrayed a relaxed and confident Don, often outshining Velasco’s ballet phrases yet exuding mature charisma. Set…
San Diego Opera’s lavish production of Camille Saint-Saens’ Samson and Delilah captures the spectacle and excitement of French grand opera at its best. At Saturday’s (Feb. 16) opening performance the audience relished the rousing choruses, vivid orchestral playing, opulent sets, and voluptuous dancing in the celebrated bacchanal. We were moved by Bulgarian mezzo-soprano Nadia Krasteva as Delilah: her powerful, creamy, gorgeous voice and sensuous delivery of Saint-Saens’ lithe melodies for the Biblical seductress. I don’t recall a mezzo making such a striking San Diego Opera debut since Dolora Zajick first sang here in Il Trovatore in 1988. But it was…
Punk Rock is a potent cocktail of teen angst, bravado, and terror, fiercely shaken and currently served with cynical sangfroid at ion theatre in Hillcrest. Written by the assured young Brit Simon Stephens, a former teacher at the U.S. equivalent of high school in a suburb of Manchester, the play immerses the audience in the claustrophobic world of seven teens about to complete their secondary education. Unlike Alan Bennett’s 2004 The History Boys, the academic milieu of Punk Rock is co-ed and free of any professorial presence. Stephens uses the school’s upstairs library reserved for sixth form (i.e., senior) students…
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