Find articles | Jaime Robles

Visions of Classical (Re)Vision in San Francisco

By Jaime Robles, 11 February 2020

“Your love affair with ballet, your time with ballet, is short,” explains Welsh about his ballet Bespoke, “Eventually you lay down, and dance keeps moving. It’s a bittersweet thing.”

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Visions of Classical (Re)Vision in San Francisco

11 Feb 2020

Eifman Ballet in a strangely psychological Pygmalion Effect

By Jaime Robles, 31 May 2019

Eifman has said he wants move dance back into theater and to use movement to explore the psychological. Both of these the company accomplishes.

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Eifman Ballet in a strangely psychological Pygmalion Effect

31 May 2019

Alonzo King's LINES Ballet takes a walk on the wild side

By Jaime Robles, 12 April 2019

A projection of green sky above shadowy mountains hovered behind their duet, and the curved bodies of the other dancers moved, barely visible, in the darkness of downstage.

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Alonzo King's LINES Ballet goes wild

12 Apr 2019

The solace of love in San Francisco Ballet’s Program 5: Lyric Voices

By Jaime Robles, 27 March 2019

There is a kind of purity to Your Flesh Shall Be a Great Poem, and a very human sense of longing and loss.

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The solace of love in San Francisco Ballet’s Program 5: Lyric Voices

27 Mar 2019

Xenos: The generous sorrow of Akram Khan

By Jaime Robles, 02 March 2019

He turns and turns, elliptically and with the speed of a skater on ice. Sheer muscle defies gravity and the friction of feet on terra firma.

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Xenos: The generous sorrow of Akram Khan

02 Mar 2019

Jessica Lang Dance, pleasing but disappointing

By Jaime Robles, 28 February 2019

Lang’s choreography lacks the hectic drollness and biting originality of Tharp’s, and while accessible it is also sweeter and blander.

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Jessica Lang Dance, pleasing but disappointing

28 Feb 2019

An alluring Common Ground in Lines Ballet / Kronos Quartet collaboration

By Jaime Robles, 06 October 2018

Abstract ballet always asks the question of meaning, and Alonzo King Lines Ballet is one of the few companies that answers that question with existential exactness.

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An alluring Common Ground

06 Oct 2018

No lonely hearts in MMDG’s Pepperland

By Jaime Robles, 28 September 2018

What makes this piece entirely Mark Morris is, even more than the dancing, the music.

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No lonely hearts in MMDG’s Pepperland

28 Sep 2018

Preserving and making new the Smuin legacy

Walnut Creek

Preserving and making new the Smuin legacy

By Jaime Robles, 22 September 2018

McIntyre knows how to infuse ballet steps with an ironic angularity and kinetics that sit just on the other side of punchy.

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Walnut Creek

22 Sep 2018

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The final program in SF Ballet's Unbound festival

The final program in San Francisco Ballet's wonderful Unbound festival

By Jaime Robles, 26 April 2018

Most of the pieces were choreographed at a similarly demanding level, with speed, precision and immaculate timing as necessities.

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SF Ballet's Unbound Festival continues with superb dancing

By Jaime Robles, 24 April 2018

Benjamin Freemantle danced the opening solo, gorgeously, in the role of the grandfather as a dreamy young Adonis.

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Unbound Festival continues with superb dancing

24 Apr 2018

San Francisco Ballet steps into a world of new dance

By Jaime Robles, 20 April 2018

Sneakers gave even the most challenging of balletic steps a freer, looser quality, as if the dancers were about to step into flight.

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San Francisco: a world of new works

20 Apr 2018

Beauty and madness mingle in Nijinsky

By Jaime Robles, 03 April 2018

Neumeier has a real talent for stepping easily between the interior world of individual fantasy and the exterior world of reality.

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Beauty and madness mingle in Nijinsky

03 Apr 2018

West Edge Opera’s Snapshots of the future

By Jaime Robles, 25 February 2018

The program presented excerpts from five new works in a riotously diverse selection, from an adaptation of the unfinished Fitzgerald novel, The Last Tycoon, to Death of a Playboy, an imaginary reenactment of Hugh Hefner’s funeral.

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West Edge Opera’s Snapshots of the future

25 Feb 2018

With Borderline Company Wang Ramirez explores dance on the ground and in the air

By Jaime Robles, 24 February 2018

A cube hangs suspended at an angle and Ramirez, harnessed to a line above the stage, floats above it, fulfilling the promise of dance and the human desire to escape gravity – to fly in angelic weightlessness.

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Wang Ramirez take Borderline to California

24 Feb 2018

San Francisco Ballet’s dazzling “Bright Fast Cool Blue”

By Jaime Robles, 13 February 2018

From the ethereal to the galavanting, the program offered a spectrun of emotions delivered with precise technique and abandoned energy.

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13 Feb 2018

Bright, Fast, Cool, Blue

Some of a thousand ... steps (Wendy Whelan & Brian Brooks)

By Jaime Robles, 29 November 2017

The body as it moves, in all its human vulnerability, is never free of emotion. Wendy Whelan and Brian Brooks collaborate on Some of A Thosand Words, performed in San Francisco.

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Wendy Whelan / Brian Brooks: Some of a Thousand Words

29 Nov 2017

The bold and beautiful Joffrey Ballet

By Jaime Robles, 17 November 2017

Eclectic and contemporary, The Joffrey Ballet reimagines human and kinetic beauty.

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Finding freedom with the Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group

By Jaime Robles, 23 September 2017

What the choreography of everyday movement creates in the viewer is a sense of nostalgia and poignancy.

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Reggie Wilson ans Fist and Heel Performance Group

23 Sep 2017

A storybook world of ballet

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A storybook world of ballet

By Jaime Robles, 13 August 2017

From La Sylphide To Morris' contemporary The Hard Nut, fairytales are often at the centre of ballets' libretti

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13 Aug 2017

London

‘DESH’: Akram Khan’s luscious journey home

By Jaime Robles, 31 May 2017

Fantastical, innocent and full of wonder.

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SF Ballet’s Program 7: Made to Dance

By Jaime Robles, 08 April 2017

Changes in pace for a brilliantly dynamic company.

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Tapping the planet’s heart beat: Dorrance Dance and The Blues Project

By Jaime Robles, 16 March 2017

An unwavering pattern of sound, insistent in its energy and commitment.

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Dorrance Dance and The Blues Project

16 Mar 2017

San Francisco Ballet’s Program 4 is a must see for Balanchine fans

By Jaime Robles, 07 March 2017

It’s all there: flashy extensions whipped into ecstatic heights, bravura speed and precision, intricate entanglements of dancers, whimsical wit and the loving nod to an adulation of Woman.

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Must See Balanchine program in San Francisco

07 Mar 2017

Frankenstein at San Francisco Ballet: Is traditional ballet enough?

By Jaime Robles, 17 February 2017

Here technology breathes theatricality into vast architectural sets, where shadows haunt and light electrifies.

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The revival of Available Light

By Jaime Robles, 03 February 2017

Repetition is central to the Available Light's formal elegance.

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The sea is a subtle dance: Cullberg Ballet's collaboration with Deborah Hay

By Jaime Robles, 22 October 2016

“I sing a wordless song that arises from and combines joy and sorrow into a single melody that resonates through my bones.”

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Cullberg Ballet: Figures a Sea

22 Oct 2016

Postcard from Los Angeles

Postcard from Los Angeles: extravagant, splendid, entertaining

By Jaime Robles, 03 October 2016

Take a stroll on probably the most famous beach in the world or choose between a large variety of cultural performances. Read Jaime Robles' guide for a must do and see.

03 Oct 2016

A fiery Layla and Majnun première by the Silk Road Ensemble and Mark Morris Dance Group

By Jaime Robles, 30 September 2016

The staging required that the dancers move through and around the musicians, and this intertwining gave the piece a coherent visual identity and a flowing energy.

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Mark Morris / Silk Road ensemble: Layla and Majnun

30 Sep 2016

Merola's “Così fan tutte” is something to sing about

By Jaime Robles, 04 August 2016

While updated from the 18th century, the Merola Opera Program’s version of Così maintained a gaiety and sly wit that depended on the singers’ beautiful and virtuosic voices for its success.

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Merola's “Così fan tutte” is something to sing about

04 Aug 2016

When Garrett + Moulton speak, the angels dance

By Jaime Robles, 28 July 2016

In the most subtle way, the two choreographers create a portrait of the forces of destiny by emphasizing the kinetic by using live music as the primary supporting element for the dance.

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Speak Angels, Garrett / Moulton

28 Jul 2016

Opera tranforms: The Merola Opera Program presents Susa’s Transformations

By Jaime Robles, 21 July 2016

Witty, edgy and full of Freudian insight, Anne Sexton’s libretto updates the dark and bizarre world of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Conrad Susa’s music is equally droll and contemporary.

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Merola Opera Program presents Susa’s Transformations

21 Jul 2016

The old, the new: Avant-garde works at San Francisco Ballet

By Jaime Robles, 07 April 2016

What Wheeldon seems to have used from this musical concept for the formation of the choreography is the idea of a mechanical universe, overrun by the presence of time.

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San Francisco Ballet's Program 6: An homage to abstract ballet and the contemporary dancer’s talents

By Jaime Robles, 05 April 2016

A vast world of movement rose in celebration of the body’s athleticism and its subtle connection to emotions and personality.

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The sweetness of innocence: San Francisco Ballet's Coppélia

By Jaime Robles, 08 March 2016

This version of Coppélia is a testament to Balanchine’s ability to accept the history of dance with equanimity and grace.

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08 Mar 2016

Balanchine's Coppélia

The final miraculous dance of Chitresh Das

By Jaime Robles, 27 February 2016

Shiva draws in the audience, presenting the anguish and struggle of both the human and the divine as they are captured in existence, reeling in the universe in the midst of great pain and great joy.

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Chitresh Das' Shiva : A Tribute

27 Feb 2016

San Francisco Ballet's Program 2: Witty, Fun and Not So Witty or Fun

By Jaime Robles, 27 January 2016

San Francisco Ballet opens Program 2 of the 2016 season with pieces by two cornerstone American choreographers, George Balanchine and Mark Morris, and a world première by British choreographer Liam Scarlett.

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Singing The Heart of Darkness: Tarik O’Regan’s opera premieres in America

By Jaime Robles, 02 May 2015

The effect was like raindrops falling on the surface of the world, transforming it from the dull white of fog and industry into saturated colors of fecund leaf and flower.

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Singing The Heart of Darkness: Tarik O’Regan’s opera premieres in America

02 May 2015

Paul Taylor Dance Company at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

By Jaime Robles, 16 April 2015

The Paul Taylor dance company presents 10 pieces at the Yerba Buena Center, incuding the 1978 Diggity which is refreshingly simple in its movement, with a dollop of dearness and a dash of the absurd.

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Paul Taylor Dance Company in San Francisco

16 Apr 2015

San Francisco Ballet’s Program 7 : Caprice,The Four Temperaments and Swimmer

By Jaime Robles, 10 April 2015

San Francisco Ballet's Program 7 features Tomasson's Caprice, Balanchine's The Four Temperaments and a new creation, Swimmer, by Yuri Possokhov.

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San Francisco Ballet dances Swimmer

10 Apr 2015

Transforming George Eliot's Middlemarch into opera

By Jaime Robles, 19 March 2015

Shearer’s music is lush, elegant and witty. There is a playful irony that asserts itself.

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Transforming George Eliot's Middlemarch into opera

19 Mar 2015

On composing choral music: An interview with Ann Callaway

On composing choral music: An interview with Ann Callaway

By Jaime Robles, 17 March 2015

An interview with composer Ann Callaway about the art of writing choral music.

17 Mar 2015

Los Angeles

Figaro Unbound in a charming, witty Barber of Seville in Los Angeles

By Jaime Robles, 28 February 2015

Director Trevore Ross emphasized the silly and the madcap in Beaumarchais’ hectic plot to The Barber of Seville. The audience loved it.

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Los Angeles

28 Feb 2015

Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!

San Francisco Ballet contrasts two ensemble dances with piano

By Jaime Robles, 26 February 2015

Jerome Robbins’ note to himself during the making of Dances at a Gathering reads, "Never make up a step. Always make a sequence of movement.”

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A five star Robbins - Scarlett programme in San Francisco

26 Feb 2015

Dead Man Walking returns to the Bay Area

By Jaime Robles, 20 February 2015

Opera Parallèle’s superb production of Heggie's Dead Man Walking reveals a prism of anger and forgiveness.

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Dead Man Walking returns to the Bay Area

20 Feb 2015

Opera Medium Rare (but well-done!) presents Rossini’s Zelmira in concert

By Jaime Robles, 17 February 2015

West Edge Opera has come up with a means to engage and develop opera audiences in that home of West Coast radicalism, the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Opera Medium Rare presents Rossini’s Zelmira

17 Feb 2015

The emotional dynamics of Les Doigts de la Main's “Sequence 8”

By Jaime Robles, 04 February 2015

The eighth and newest creation of Les 7 Doigts de la Main "contemplates the role of the ‘other’” in a breath-taking performance of mental and physical acrobatics.

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Les sept doigts de la main , Sequence 8

04 Feb 2015

Lamplighters glitter in Bernstein’s Candide

By Jaime Robles, 31 January 2015

The Bernstein operetta is a sassy summation of Voltaire’s classic in this alluring production by The Lamplighters.

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Lamplighters glitter in Bernstein’s Candide

31 Jan 2015

The power of music: Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake reimagined for the screen in Aronofsky's Black Swan

The power of music: Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake reimagined for the screen in Aronofsky's Black Swan

By Jaime Robles, 09 January 2015

Jaime Robles looks at the use of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake score in Darren Aronofsky's 2010 film Black Swan, and builds bridge between the multifaceted script and the music's unarguable power in the ballet.

09 Jan 2015

Joe Goode: Cinematic intimacy

The cinematic intimacy of Joe Goode’s site specific choreography

By Jaime Robles, 18 December 2014

San Francisco based choreographer Joe Goode talks to Jaime Robles of his upcoming site specific performance Poetics of Space at the Joe Goode Annex, of his attraction to text, voice and music, and of engaging audiences differently.

18 Dec 2014