Tuesday, January 19

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The Joffrey Ballet presents a world premiere online.

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It’ll be the first Joffrey performance since the pandemic, its first foray into online streaming dance, and comes exactly a year after the opening of “The Times Are Racing” in February 2020 at the Auditorium Theatre. Choreographed by Joffrey artist Yoshihisa Arai, “Boléro” is a 16-minute work named after, and inspired by, the popular 1928 orchestral piece by French composer Maurice Ravel.

 

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A look at how San Francisco Ballet has coped with pandemic conditions and its plans for the future by Janos Gereben for San Francisco Classical Voice.

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In 2021, the SF Ballet headquarters on Franklin Street is nothing like the beehive of activity that it had been since 1984 when it opened as the country’s first building designed and constructed exclusively for the use of a major ballet company.

 

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A review of SFB's online gala by Paul Parish for The Bay Area Reporter.

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Helgi Tomasson's new ballet, "Harmony," is set to a baroque dance suite by Rameau, from Louis XIV's era, but it looked as fresh as a costume drama on Netflix —with fanciful 18th-century waistcoats and matching hot pants— as the dancers tore it up.

Then came Lucas Erni, with a variation that included a startling tour jeté, landed in the wrong place, but it's right. And just in case you could not believe your eyes, he does it again. We saw an excerpt of that. I'm eager to see the whole thing. Even in flat-on video-capture, it's exhilarating, one of those ballets where you just go along for the ride.

 

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 Egyptian ballet dancer and teacher Esmat Yehia has died at age 72.

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He studied ballet at the Higher Institute of Ballet, under Russian teachers. He later taught at the Institute and served as its dean between 1999 and 2004.

Yehia taught dance at the Higher Institute for Folkloric Art, where he was appointed dean in 2005, a post that he held until 2009.