To those unacquainted with Iggy Pop’s vocals let it be known that they are not merely idiosyncratic, they are bewitching – a feast of aural mesmerism that groans, quavers, and wavers with bass-driven emotion.

This article is filed under Blog-Music, Music.

There are a few privileges that come with the role of dance critic. One that is not so obvious, but very gratifying, is watching companies start, develop, and come into their own. If you remain in one locale long enough, you see large companies grow more magisterial, and small ones pop up on the horizon, fall away, or survive and aggregate dancers, repertoire, audiences, endowment, and heft.

This article is filed under Blog-Dance, Dance.

There is the distinctly unnerving sensation of both familiarity and newness; the sound of another era that growls, glows, and swings all at once while creating something fresh that was never there before.

This article is filed under Blog-Music, Music.

Underneath the skin of the music there is the pulse of the long car trip, songs that tell stories casually and with the easy rhythm of dotted white lines whipping by along the asphalt.

This article is filed under Blog-Music, Music.

…and we have achieved triple threat; misogyny, racism and homophobia. Quite an achievement for a guy with a vocabulary of about 300 words.

This article is filed under Blog-Music, Music.

Broderick gives a generous performance, turning on his patented man-child charm when called upon, but also stepping back and allowing his leading lady and sidemen plenty of space to maneuver. O’Hara makes an apt foil for him, as her persona, even in upbeat scenes, always carries an undertone of fragility.

This article is filed under Performing Arts, Theatre.

We have created a lean, but very powerful group of artists with an incredible work ethic and drive and a hunger for giving their all on stage. We also have a sophisticated and eclectic repertoire that our audiences eat up.

This article is filed under Blog-Dance, Dance.

Let the ballet snobs pound sand in the corrida if they find neither rhyme, reason, nor much musical innovation in Don Quixote: It is still that sampler of delicacies which, done right, can end the dance season on a crescendo, and on April 27, San Francisco Ballet surpassed all expectations! The fun begins when your companion of the evening points out querulously that there is a horse trailer parked at the stage door. You explain, “For the donkey.”

This article is filed under Dance, Performing Arts.

At times it’s hard to escape an identity that a band has established over the years, and when a group evolves it can be as awkward as the growing pains of adolescence.

This article is filed under Blog-Music, Music.

But dancing a character both fulfills and exhausts you. After Artifact, I felt dead, but it was a good dead!

This article is filed under Blog-Dance, Dance.

It’s always good to try and schedule time when the company is performing, as you get a better sense of individual dancers and how they perform onstage. You can’t always know if and how a dancer transforms onstage as opposed to how they work in the rehearsal studio.

This article is filed under Blog-Dance, Dance.

Act I of Alonzo King LINES Ballet’s Triangle of Squinches plays out in front of a backdrop of several hundred silvered bungee cords, stretched perpendicular to the Novellus Theater stage floor so that they form a brilliantine thicket through which dancers will emerge, and retreat. The dancers will pluck the cords like harp strings, lean in to, ascend and descend them.

This article is filed under Blog-Dance, Dance.

Bold, elegant and tender, with enough will towards experimentation to reward repeat listenings enormously this is a tremendous album and an early contender for best of 2012.

This article is filed under Blog-Music, Music.

He makes pop, but to be clear this is a pop so smart and with such strong roots in 60s and 70s pop, psychedelia, and travelogues, that it’s impossible to brush off as mere background noise.

This article is filed under Blog-Music, Music.

Top honors for the program go to the company’s interpretation of The Four Temperaments, to music by Paul Hindemith. Daniel Deivison-Oliveira and Kristina Lind open the work, each offering an unfolding hand to the other. As she recreates the off-balance pas de deux, Lind carries the very texture of the Balanchine line—long-limbed, with generous extensions—inviting comparisons to Patricia Neary.

This article is filed under Dance, Performing Arts.