It’s time to get out the calendar and mark down some dates. There is a lot looming on the horizon in the world of arts and entertainment — and a lot that comes with high anticipation. So we asked our Bay Area News Group arts and entertainment writers to pick the events they are most looking forward to in the coming 12 months. From Coldplay and the Bay Area debut of the opera “Nixon” to the stage version of “War Horse” and the film version of “The Hunger Games,” here are our 12 top picks for 2012.
Jon Santos, the director of Nature’s Classroom, defended the three-hour simulation Friday as an empathy-building activity that helps teach students about slavery, and also has lessons about modern issues such as bullying, He said the activity, ballerina double ballet shoes ballet charm miniblings together red which is not supposed to involve racial epithets, has been part of the program for about 18 years, he said, “This is a re-enactment of a historical event that has relevance to their day-to-day interaction with their peers and classroom teacher,” he said, “How do you feel when this is put upon you? How do you think you should feel when it is put upon someone else?”..
Coming of age in London in the 1960s and ‘70s, Graham Lustig was only vaguely acquainted with the unsettling, defiantly personal art of Frida Kahlo. Part of his education upon moving to the United States was getting to know the iconic imagery created by the Mexican painter, whose paintings were still little known when she died in 1954 at the age of 47. Now smitten with her work, he’s drawing inspiration from her canvases for a new dance that premieres as part of Oakland Ballet’s annual Day of the Dead production, “Luna Mexicana,” which plays twice at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre Nov. 2-3, and reprises Sunday, Nov. 4 at Fresno’s William Saroyan Theater.
Playing his bandoneon — when its bellows are fully extended, the instrument spans a good five feet — he seemed to be handling a large lizard, often folding it across his knee, This was visually fascinating, yes, but then there were the sounds he coaxed from this highly expressive instrument: arias in its soprano range and grave utterances in the bass; melismatic chants and train-like roars; plus, plaintive sighs, calling to mind Miles Davis’s trumpet, Jofre has loaded the piece with virtuoso cadenzas, solo statements, Even more striking is the way he expands his scoring outward from the instrument, extending and embellishing the bandoneon’s themes through the orchestra with painterly strokes, and then allowing the themes to retract and return to their point of origin, the bandoneon, It’s as if the score ballerina double ballet shoes ballet charm miniblings together red reflects the in-and-out bellows motion of the solo instrument..
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