Deer Hollow Farm: Chance to pet animals on tours

With spring in the air, there's no better time to visit Deer Hollow Farm, which welcomes new lambs and kids - the goat-y kind - to their charming menagerie of pigs, chickens, rabbits, ducks and geese with spring farm tours.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Miller-McCune | Article | Fine Arts Journalism Faces Bleak Future with Entrepreneurial Verve

With newspaper vanishing, Tom Jacobs wonders where the critics will go. (I know some people will have their own tart response to that question!)

"A former staff writer with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (the industry's most recent print casualty, which became an online-only product as of March 17) and Seattle Weekly, McLennan also heads the scaled-back National Arts Journalism Program, and in that capacity he has been tracking some disturbing figures. He estimates that in 2005, there were approximately 5,000 staff positions on American newspapers that involved writing about the arts. These include critics, feature writers, reporters who cover cultural news — and the many journalists who juggle all three of those roles."

Today, he estimates that due to layoffs, cutbacks and the closure of several prominent papers (including, another recent victim, Denver's Rocky Mountain News), that number is down to 2,500. That's a 50 percent decline in only four years — a disproportionate loss even for an industry in decline. (Advertising Age recently estimated that one newspaper job in four has been lost since 1990.) Sean Means, film critic of the Salt Lake City Tribune, is independently keeping a running tally of colleagues who have been laid off over the past three years. The total is up to 49.

Most newspapers continue to cover the world of culture using freelancers and (in the case of film and television) wire-service copy to supplement the remaining staff. A few, including the Los Angeles Times, have inaugurated blogs on their Web sites to get arts news out more quickly."

Read more at Miller-McCune.

Dance Review: Los Farruco at the Palace of Fine Arts

Los Farruco's stunning one-night-only show at the Festival of Flamenco Arts and Traditions at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater on March 6 had to have been one of the Bay Area flamenco community's most highly anticipated performances. So I was surprised in the week after to find out that so few people outside of the flamenco circles even knew that the family Farruco was even performing -- how did it not register on the mainstream dance community's radar?

Even so, pesented by the Bay Area Flamenco Partnership, Los Farruco easily sold the Palace of Fine Arts theater out. The lobby was jammed, and even a last minute snafu with the online ticketing service didn't deter patrons, who waited forty-five minutes for the show to start under chaotic circumstances to say the least. But then, we are talking about one of the world's leading exponents of flamenco puro, and a family of artists descended from the legendary El Farruco, whose grandson Farruquito seared his presence onto the stage at the Flamenco Festival USA with Juana Amaya back in 2003.

Perhaps anticipation of the family's tour was fanned by the release of the 2005 film "Bodas de Gloria," which chronicles the lives of a gypsy clan, in a sort of retort to the violent panache of "Blood Wedding." Farruquito--Juan Manuel Fernandez Montoya, who did not appear on this tour, but apparently helped to produce it-- stars in the drama which was filmed back in 1996, but of equal note were the appearances by El Farruco's daughters, Rosario Montoya "La Farruca" (Farruquito's mother) and Pilar Montoya "La Faraona" and the debut of young Antonio Fernandez Montoya, Farruquito's younger brother, who would take on the name "El Farruco" after his grandfather's death in 1997. These three, La Farruca, La Faraona and El Farruco the younger were joined by La Faraona's son "El Barullo," for an electrifying evening.

If all of that seems confusing, perhaps it's enough to understand that this was a family affair, and that for a few hours, it felt as though you'd been invited into the Farruco family for a glimpse of what life looks like in the eye of the surging storm that their intensity whips up. The show is still a show--this is entertainment of the first-order, but beyond that, it feels personal. These musicains and dancers have something to say--to each other, to us, to a higher power. They have the tools to put that conversation across, and nothing is so satisfying as being a part of that, whether you're onstage or not.

A smoky air hangs over the stage when the curtain finally goes up to reveal guitarist Antonio Rey Navas alone on the stage, playing in cascading ebbs and flows to a theater so silent and rapt that under the strains of a solo you could hear him taking breaths.

But it isn't long before the guys, Barullo and Farruco burst onto stage, roiling with youthful vigor. Clad in simple black pants, a white shirt and red scarf at the throat, they face off, attacking the ground, attacking the music, and you think to yourself, ah the energy of youth. Then La Farruca arrives.

For a moment, the boys look as though they're daring her to take them on... poor mama. Then she unleashes an unsuspected fury...poor boys. La Farruca has a wild feral quality, a tempestuousness, that takes her fearlessly off balance, and yet which she completely controls. In about two minutes her hair is out of a neat chignon and the energy coursing from the singers to the dancers and back is palpable, like an electric current -- you can't take your finger out of the socket.

With the audience still breathing hard after that last encounter, Rey returns, this time accompanying the singers (Antonio Zuniga, Simon de Malaga, Mara Rey and Pedro el Granaino), and the rasp of brings back to me the images of a singer in Granada leaning off an iron balcony above a crowd of hundreds, singing to the Virgin during Holy Week.

The terrifically commanding Mara Rey leads the entrance of a rotund woman with a capacious bosom covered in red silk for the bulerias. Faraona is a force to be reckoned with, even with a bandage on her hand and the audience goes crazy as though we're imploring her to dance, literally shrieking for her to continue.

As Barullo returns, in a rust-colored suit with a long jacket that he flourishes like a shawl, for his Seguiriya, the shouts begin anew. He turns so impossibly off balance that it nearly looks like acrobatics, but from the audience, a woman shouts in Spanish, and the only word I make out is "duende." In response, a faint smile turns up the corner of Barrullo's lips as he rips off the jacket and gets busy charging into ridiculously complex rhythms.

Mercurially, the mood changes again for Farruco's solea and he enters upstage like a shadowy ghost behind the cantaor. Tall and slender, he takes his time, hands capturing the air, moving slowly with sturm und drang washing all around him. Then suddenly, he is like a man unleashed on life, with lustiness and perhap even petulance coming out in lightning blasts of zapateado.

La Farruca returns for the romanza, cutting a stunning silhouette in a long dark dress. With just the hands curled into fists, and her long hair continually escaping its bounds, she looks possessed. She gets all up into the singers' grille, inspires extra energy from them and in a display of dictatorial pique, stomps the ground with a force that conveys a temperament that is at once inexorable and inextinguishable.

As the jaleos draw to a close, the family Farruco takes their bows but fromthe mood of the crowd on its feet and stomping themselves, it can't be over. For an encore, the musicians, singers and dancers all come out onto the apron of the stage and Farruco rips a chair free from its microphone wires and sets it downstage for guitarists Rey and El Tuto to lean on. Now is the time for everyone to dance, even their lighting designer comes out in sneakers and takes a turn with them. Nobody leaves without dancing.

Dance review: ODC's 'Grassland,' 'Forest'

Questing and discovery loosely tied together two very different premieres at the ODC/Dance Downtown 2009 season, which opened with a gala performance Thursday evening, and which continues at the Novellus Theater in Yerba Buena Center through March 29.

At the heart of KT Nelson's "Grassland" - a new work set to a commissioned score by Marcelo Zarvos, and accompanied by Zarvos on piano along with a live string quartet under the direction of René Mandel - is a herd of wild things, pulsing with life.

Read more at the SF Chronicle site.

Dance review: David Rousseve's 'Saudade'

There are many words whose finer nuances escape exact translation into English, and yet there remains the sense that you can grasp the essence through the lens of experience, stories or analogies. Saudade is translated from the Portuguese variously as nostalgia or bittersweet longing, and David Rouss�ve's thoughtfully constructed dance-theater work 'Saudade' - a co-commission from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that opened at the Novellus Theater on Thursday night - attempts to get to the heart of the word with tales that reflect intermingling sadness and joy.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

'Invasion of the Land Animals': March program

Known for its mesmerizing walk-through tunnel-tanks that show off elegant swirls of sardines, lazing rockfish, giant sea bass and a dizzying variety of rays and sharks, the Aquarium of the Bay has long appealed to young oceanographers-in-training. Dedicated to educating the public about conservation issues, the Aquarium is now expanding its sights to include land-dwellers such as the Pacific tree frog and the western toad, which kids can see up close during a special preview on Sunday.

Frogs and toads, long considered barometers of the planet's ecological health, are among the creatures most sensitive to changes in climate patterns. The aquarium's Invasion of the Land Animals programs, which take place each weekend in March, lead up to the opening on April 4 of the PG&E Bay Lab, an interactive exhibition on climate change as well as exhibits on the giant Pacific octopus and moon jellies. Aquarium organizers hope that the new lab will help introduce kids to conservation issues and put a face on the victims of global warming.

Read more at The SF Chronicle Website.

Ailey's humanistic vision touches the world

Although Alvin Ailey died in 1989, people who work at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater tend to speak about the company's founder in the present tense: 'The most important thing to Mr. Ailey is that we be grounded human beings'; 'Alvin has always been a man of big dreams.'

That he remains a living presence to the people of the Alvin Ailey company is not only striking, but it also seems to be the singular reason for the extraordinary growth and longevity of the organization that he founded, which celebrates its 50th anniversary with three Cal Performances programs this week at UC Berkeley.

Keep reading at the SF Chronicle website.

Ballet review: San Jose troupe a revelation

The title of Ballet San Jose's 'Hidden Talents' program, which opened Thursday night at the San Jose Performing Arts Center, would appear to refer to the five young choreographers, all members or former members of the company, but it could just as well describe the dancers - many of them from the corps - who got the chance to step into the spotlight in an entertaining evening.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Cheap 'n' easy ways to save money and energy

'Turn off that light!' your parents used to shout.

'Put on a sweater,' they'd say when you complained about the house being cold.

"Wear shorts!" they'd bark if you said you were too hot.

Turns out, Mom and Dad were right, and if you're looking to slim down your energy bills, there are lots of inexpensive or even free things you can do to save money in the long run.

Here are 10 inexpensive things you can do to help save energy and money...

Read more at the SF Gate website.

Gerald Myers, 85, Writer on Dance and Philosophy, Dies

Gerald E. Myers, a scholarly expert on the philosopher William James who expressed his missionary zeal for modern dance through the highly unusual position of philosopher in residence of the American Dance Festival, died Feb. 11 at his home in New London, Conn. He was 85.

More on the NYTimes.com.

Santa Cruz Boardwalk: summer fun year-round

Although you might associate the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk with the shouts and screams of summer, now, in fact, is one of the best times to visit. Without the sticky crowds there are no lines for the roller coasters or the corn dogs, and from now until the end of May, all of the rides are open on weekends, weather permitting. And when the rumble of the rides and the buzz and jitter of the video games in the arcade become too much, you can always take a walk along the beach and skip stones into Monterey Bay.

There's more at the SF Chronicle Website.

Home & Garden: Recycle, reuse, renew

So I started writing for the Home & Garden section of the Chronicle this week. I had a few ideas for helping folks recycle, reuse, renew. Check it out:

"Get a green cart: Potato peels, lobster shells, chicken bones, coffee grounds, even paper napkins and greasy pizza boxes. Once upon a time, those things went into the garbage, but now through urban compost programs, residents in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and other cities in Alameda, San Mateo and Contra Costa counties can chuck their food scraps into a green cart to be turned into black gold and returned to the soil of Bay Area farms. Apartment renters, ask your landlord to get a green cart for the whole building, and they'll even give you individual kitchen pails for each apartment and instructions on what to compost. Contact your city's public works department for more information."

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

Dance Teacher Magazine: Constructing Criticism

In David Kinsella’s A Beautiful Tragedy, a documentary about a 15- year-old studying at Russia’s famed Perm State Ballet School, teacher Lidiya Grigorievna Ulanova bellows at the young students, calling them insolent, stuffed dummies. “You idiots,” she shouts, as tears stream from the girls’ eyes. “You haven’t done it right once! Not once!”

Negative criticism can have a lasting impact on students, and most often, it isn’t even effective in terms of improving performance. “Beating up or demeaning dancers is not going to make them work harder,” says Bojan Spassoff, who, with his wife Stephanie Wolff Spassoff, directs The Rock School in Philadelphia. “It just turns out kids who can barely move because the ballet training is like a military regime.”

Ballet instructor Kristine Elliott, who teaches at Zohar Dance Studio in Palo Alto, California, believes that belittling and destructive comments can also lead to low self-esteem or body image issues. “It’s too easy for it to become a personal affront,” she explains. “Our body is the instrument, so it’s hard for any student to differentiate ‘My body isn’t doing exactly what I want it to do at the moment’ from ‘I’m really ugly and defective.’”

While every teacher wants to push his or her students to grow and move past boundaries, the trick is being able to challenge students while maintaining an encouraging atmosphere. Here, we talk with several educators who share how they provide constructive criticism in the classroom.

Read more at Dance Teacher Magazine.

Tracing roots: 'Decoding Identity,' StoryCorps

"Take a quick look around, and you can see that America is not just a melting pot anymore. It's become a fluid cultural mosaic of complex ethnic and multiracial backgrounds that can be seen in the faces of our own families. President Obama's inauguration sparked not only a pride of recognition among African Americans but also a sense of solidarity among the almost 7 million people who checked off the 'multiple race' box in the U.S. census.

Categorizing or even describing multiracial identities can be a perplexing puzzle - Tiger Woods once described himself as "Cablinasian" (Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian) - but the time has never seemed riper for families to help their kids piece together the stories that make up their own rich ethnic backgrounds. "

Read more on the SF Chronicle Website.

Darci Kistler to retire from New York City Ballet

Sic transit the company of Balanchine...

Darci Kistler, the last remaining ballerina at New York City Ballet to have been molded and hired by its co-founder George Balanchine, plans to retire in the 2010 season, she said on Wednesday.

That would complete three decades with the company, where Balanchine singled her out at the tender age of 17 in 1982 to become a principal, after only two years there.

“As it’s happened with every dancer, there’s a certain point where you realize, ‘I want to go off the stage gracefully,’ ” Ms. Kistler, 44, said in a telephone interview. “I just felt it was time.”

Ms. Kistler said she wanted to devote more of her day to teaching at the School of American Ballet, affiliated with the company, where she has been leading a hefty schedule of classes for 15 years. And the aches and pains that come with age have taken their toll, she said.

Read more at the NYTimes.

Art anywhere: Kibera, Kenya

Today, after more than a year of planning, 2000 square meters of rooftops have been covered with photos of the eyes and faces of the women of Kibera. The material used is water resistant so that the photo itself will protect the fragile houses in the heavy rain season. The train that passes on this line through Kibera at least twice a day has also been covered with eyes from the women that live below it. With the eyes on the train, the bottom half of the their faces have be pasted on corrugated sheets on the slope that leads down from the tracks to the rooftops. The idea being that for the split second the train passes, their eyes will match their smiles and their faces will be complete.

This new work, by far JR's most ambitious to date, can be seen from space and will be seen in Google Earth.

See more at the Wooster Collective.

'Burn the Floor': Ballroom for new generation

A decade ago, the word 'foxtrot' might have brought to mind only a newspaper cartoon, and 'tango' conjured up an image of stalking about like Groucho Marx with a rose in his teeth. But when Australian choreographer Jason Gilkison first worked on 'Burn the Floor,' he hoped to evolve the foxtrot and the tango for the 21st century, while getting back to the heart of what moves dance audiences.

Now, bolstered by a burgeoning interest in dance - not to mention an explosion of immensely popular TV shows featuring ballroom dance - "Burn the Floor" comes to the Bay Area for a six-week run, and it's a far cry from the sequins and marabou-trimmed dresses, as well as the rigidly fixed, toothy smiles of competition ballroom dancing.

Read more on the SF Chronicle website.

Dance review: 'Uncovered: The Diary Project'

These days, identity and the question of how we forge that identity are a hot topic - and a complicated one at that. The fluidity of self-categorization is eloquently investigated in Sean Dorsey's 'Uncovered: The Diary Project,' an evening made up of two dance-theater pieces - 'Lost/Found' and the world-premiere 'Lou' - which opened at the Dance Mission Theater on Thursday and runs through Sunday.

Read more on the SF Chronicle website.

International Rubik's Cube Competition

If you're of a certain age, you might remember the original Rubik's Cube craze back in the 1980s, when Erno Rubik's fascinating, frustrating little mathematical toy swept the nation. Well, dust off your unsolved Rubik's Cube and give it to your kids, because 30 years later, at the 2009 International Rubik's Cube Competition at the Exploratorium, competitors are solving it with their eyes closed and with one hand tied behind their backs.

Read more on the SF Chronicle website.

Chinese New Year Spectacular in S.F., Cupertino

"If ancient Chinese goddesses were modernized to the 21st century, one imagines that they would look a lot like Vina Lee, the tall, fine-featured, elegant choreographer and dancer whose artistry graces the Chinese Classical Divine Performing Arts Company in the troupe's forthcoming performances of the Chinese New Year Spectacular at the War Memorial Opera House and the Flint Center in Cupertino.

Delicately sipping tea one afternoon in the cafe at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, the soft-spoken yet forthright Lee speaks animatedly about growing up in China and the love for her country's cultural history that colors her view of Chinese dance."

Read more on the SF Chronicle website.

Leroy the river otter: Wet and wild

Leroy the river otter: Wet and wild:

The Coyote Point Recreation Area is a fabulous spot for hikes, beach strolls or just watching low-flying 747s sweep into nearby San Francisco airport. It's also the home to the Coyote Point Museum, a small gem of a wildlife center.

On Sunday, the museum starts a program of free admission on the first Sunday of each month. While there are many wildlife residents of the museum's outdoor habitats, the star attraction has to be Leroy, the 20-year-old North American river otter and oldest living male river otter in captivity.

Like many folks of a certain age, Leroy has lost a few teeth, but that doesn't stop him from happily gumming down whole fish as he slithers in the water to the delight of onlookers at his daily feedings.

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

96 Hours: Elephant seals--Tour winter breeding grounds

This weekend and for the next few months, you can get more than a glimpse of one of the most unusual animals in California wildlife just off Highway 1, an hour and a half south of San Francisco. Each year, thousands of elephant seals come back to the beaches of Año Nuevo State Reserve, where hundreds of new pups will be born, and the adult males will duke it out with each other and find a female to mate with before returning to the ocean.

With its trunklike nose and ground-shaking, throaty roar, the northern elephant seal is one of the most impressive and strangest mammals in the ocean, making its home along the Pacific coast as far south as Mexico. On average, they spend more than three-fourths of their lives in water, but when the elephant seals come ashore, they like to vacation - like many humans - along the California coast.

Read more on the Chronicle website.

Dance review: Ballet San Jose's 'Nutcracker'

On the way to Ballet San Jose's performance at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday night, a young man bantered with his female companion about being dragged to the "Nutcracker" yet another time.

'Oh, you know you wanted to come,' the young woman said playfully. 'You said so.'

'Well, there are two reasons I wanted to come,' her companion admitted. 'The music - I love Tchaikovsky. Plus, I figure there have to be some cute girls in it somewhere.'

True, though after two hours of flash and dash, of tiny yet painfully adorable mice, gutsy leaps and high-flying partnering, even the most restless of boyfriends might have conceded that this 'Nutcracker' offers a lot more than that."

Read more on the SF Chronicle's website.

Cheryl Burke: 'Dancing With the Stars' tour

Two-time 'Dancing With the Stars' champion Cheryl Burke has all the right moves, but she also has her heart in the right place when it comes to dancing. For Burke, 24 - who's been nominated twice for Emmys for her choreography - that means giving back to the community she grew up in, as well as teaching at her new dance studio in San Francisco and using her celebrity charm to promote one of the causes she holds dear: physical fitness. We caught up with Burke before she embarked on a 38-city 'Dancing With the Stars' tour with partner Maurice Greene.

Read more on the SF Chronicle website.

96 Hours: 'Peter Pan': Children get into the act

For an early holiday treat, the high-flying musical 'Peter Pan' fits the bill. But it's more than just a chance to take in an entertaining musical: An afternoon with Children's Musical Theater could also sow the seeds for a budding actor or actress.

The company got its start as the Cabrini Community Theater in 1968, founded by John Healy, himself a young performer who wanted to create a theater accessible to everyone. Deemed the largest youth theater company in the country - and now under the artistic direction of Kevin Hauge - the theater follows an unusually inclusive policy of casting every child who auditions. Last year, according to marketing associate Heather Lerner, thousands of kids turned up at the auditions, and all of them went onstage in at least one of the company's multiple-cast productions."

Read more on the SF Chronicle website.