Mission to Mars at Chabot Center

The Red Planet takes center stage at the Chabot Space & Science Center's Mars Phoenix Landing Celebration this weekend, a great opportunity to indulge any budding space explorer.

Chabot will be throwing a landing party sure to spark the imaginations of anyone who's ever wondered about life on Mars. Over three days, visitors can follow the progress of the 1,500-pound Phoenix spacecraft as this first entrant in NASA's Mars Scout program completes its 422 million-mile journey, and - in just seven tense minutes - decelerates from its 12,500-mph plunge toward Mars to, it is hoped, gently land on its own three feet Sunday afternoon.

Read more on the the SF Chronicle website.

Global perspective at S.F. Arts Festival

Multiculturalism is the watchword at the San Francisco International Arts Festival, which runs Wednesday through June 8 at a dozen venues around the city and will feature artists from China, South Korea, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Israel, Spain, Germany and Croatia, side by side with such mainstays of the local arts scene as Joe Goode, Axis Dance Company, John Santos and Earplay. But while the out-of-town visitors are an appealing part of the 5-year-old festival, the brainchild of director Andrew Wood, it also, perhaps even more important, serves as a proving ground for international collaborations and a way of encouraging Bay Area artists to seek out inspirations abroad and bring back fresh ideas to their home base.

Whether through an existing project, like Kim Epifano's collaboration with Shanghai artists on "Speaking Chinese," or an outgrowth of an existing relationship, such as Mark Jackson and Beth Wilmurt's work with Berlin choreographer Sommer Ulrickson on "Yes, Yes to Moscow," or even a reason to fulfill a commission, like Erling Wold's one-man opera for John Duykers, the festival gives performers a venue and springboard for exploring outside their comfort zones.

Read more on the SFChronicle site.

SFB School: Room, board and barre for Ballet students

There's a well-kept multistory building in Pacific Heights that could easily be mistaken for one of the many comfortable family homes that loom along the blocks overlooking the bay. But Jackson Manor, as the house has been fondly dubbed, isn't your average Pac Heights mansion. Once owned as part of an off-campus, urban program for Westmont College, it's now in its fifth year as an official residence for dancers in the San Francisco Ballet School's trainee program, as well as advanced students.

As any artist knows, the road to professional success isn't easy. For many of the youngsters who win the opportunity to train at San Francisco Ballet's School, the pursuit of a career in the notoriously competitive world of ballet means sacrificing, not only time and energy, but family life as well. Students come from across the country and around the world to study at the school, but for a young dancer of perhaps 16 or 17, the task of finding a place to live in San Francisco is no trivial matter.

Read more on the SF Chronicle site.

Earthquake in China

Chengdu-- home of the giant pandas, and now victim of a 7.9 earthquake. It's another sobering reminder that the big one could be coming any day now here in the Bay Area.

It shows up starkly as a giant block the size of, oh say, New Mexico, in the USGS' World Earthquake Map.

I was amazed to find out that NPR reporters Robert Siegel and Melissa Block happened to be in Chengdu on Monday recording shows for All Things Considered. Talk about wacky timing. Listen to Melissa Block, who was rolling tape at the time of the earthquake.

Dance review: Nahat adds twists to 'Firebird'

Vivid storytelling is one of Ballet San Jose's specialties, and what a fabulous tale it spins in "The Firebird," Dennis Nahat's retelling of the Ballet Russe classic, originally choreographed by Michel Fokine in 1910.

Nahat's 2005 version, which opened at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday night, makes minor changes to the original tale, inexplicably changing the name of the Russian folk hero Ivan Tsarevitch to Prince Vladimir, for example. But for the most part, Igor Stravinsky's luxurious score - here a recording of his original 1910 version of "The Firebird" - dictates much of the story line, a conflation of Russian folk legends about the young son of a czar who rescues a princess from the clutches of the demon Kastchei with the help of a magical Firebird.

Read more on the SF Chronicle site.