When San Jose’s New Ballet presents its “Fast Forward” show at the Hammer Theatre Center on April 2, one of the pieces on the program — featuring all original, new works — will be very dear to the heart of founder and director Dalia Rawson.
She created “Rainbow Park,” named after the park across the street from Lynbrook High School in West San Jose, where she remembers “cute boys used to hang out when I was a teenager.”
“I tried to make something evocative of those years, that captured the feeling of driving over the hill to Santa Cruz with friends with loud music and windows down,” Rawson said. “It’s intended to be nostalgic and fun.”
The piece will be accompanied by music by singer-songwriters Layla Aghaee, Zoey Campbell and her brother, Cliff Rawson, as well as covers of tunes by Tracey Chapman and U2.
The rest of the program should have a NorCal vibe to it as well. There’s a ballet by Duncan Cooper — formerly of Dance Theatre of Harlem, S.F. Ballet and American Ballet Theatre — who started his training at Santa Clara Ballet School with Rawson, and a work by Amy Seiwert, resident choreographer of Smuin Ballet and former director of Sacramento Ballet. Two other pieces are by contemporary ballet choreographer Marika Brussel and Argentina-born dancer Mariana Sobral.
Tickets to the 7:30 p.m. show are $10 to $25 (or a $250 ticket that includes access to a VIP lounge before the show and a post-show cast party). More information and a link to tickets are available at www.newballet.com.
BEETHOVEN BONANZA: Beethoven fans are in for a real treat, as renowned Dutch concert pianist Ronald Brautigam will perform a 2 p.m. recital at San Jose State University’s Concert Hall on April 3. The all-Beethoven program — which includes three sonatas and the “Eroica” Variations, Op. 35 — will be performed on an 1823 Broadwood fortepiano owned by the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies.
Brautigam also will be in town the previous day when he provides a masterclass for the six finalists of the 36th annual Celia Mendez Young Pianists Competition, a group of high school students from San Jose, Palo Alto, Folsom and Aptos. You can get more information about the competition or purchase tickets to the recital at www.americanbeethovensociety.org. Tickets are $5 for students and $35 for general admission, or $75 including a post-recital reception with Brautigam.
And the following weekend will see the first ever Beethoven Ball in San Jose on April 9 at the San Jose Woman’s Club. The SJSU Symphony Orchestra, directed by Fred Cohen, will provide music by Beethoven and his contemporaries as the Academy of Danse Libre and Dance Through Time perform.
You can just listen and watch or you can take the opportunity to dance those waltzes and other Viennese ballroom dances yourself — and you don’t need any experience on that score. Joan Walton will teach the dances at a separate event at the Woman’s Club that starts at 3 p.m., well before the Ball’s 7 p.m. start. That should leave plenty of time for those who decide to wear period Regency attire (admired, as the invitation says, but not required). Tickets to the ball are $10 for students, $25 in advance at www.americanbeethovensociety.org and $30 at the door.
OSCAR WATCHING: While a lot of us will be watching the Academy Awards on Sunday waiting to see if “CODA” beats “The Power of the Dog” for Best Picture, Belinda Karazija is going to rooting for another movie entirely. That’s “Flee,” a Danish animated documentary by director Jonas Poher Rasmussen that’s nominated in a historic three categories: Best Documentary Feature, Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature.
But that’s not why Karazija is pulling for the movie about a gay Afghan refugee fleeing for Denmark. It’s because the director used two songs in the film by the Icelandic electronica music project Low Roar, led by her son, Ryan Karazija. He grew up in San Jose and graduated from Lincoln High School before gaining musical notice in the Bay Area with Oakland-based Audrye Sessions. He moved to Iceland about a decade ago.
GRADUATION PARTY: There was a lot to celebrate at Cristo Rey San Jose Jesuit High School’s Rey of Hope scholarship event held Thursday night on the East San Jose campus. First, by having the event back in-person again for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, the audience was able to enjoy rousing performances by the school’s Cielito Lindo Folklorico group and its Filipino Student Association.
But the biggest applause was reserved for the announcement by President Silvia Scandar Mahan that the school, which was founded in 2014 to help first-generation students reach their college goals, had its first three college grads, with more on the way including keynote speaker Kaela Quinto, a Cristo Rey alum who will graduate from Santa Clara University this year.
The event surpassed its fundraising goals by bringing in more than $1.1 million, which included a $50,000 matching gift from Catherine and Nicholas Noviello.
HUNTING FOR TREASURES: Mark your calendar for Preservation Action Council’s spring rummage and salvage sale, taking place April 1 and 2 at 260 S. 13th St. in San Jose. It’s pretty much the most interesting garage sale you can visit, and there’s even a special section of San Jose memorabilia.
The sale runs 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on April 1 and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on April 2. The second day will include a special guest, too: Anne Ewbank, an editor and food writer for Atlas Obscura, that fascinating compendium of everything weird in the world. A transplant from New York City during the pandemic — take that, California Exodus — Ewbank will no doubt have her ears open for some of San Jose’s best hidden gems among the city’s dining spots. There’s more information at www.preservation.org.
Source: www.mercurynews.com