Golden Gate Skate: Figure skating competition

The Olympics might be over, but swirling figures on ice are still dancing in the dreams of the young would-be Kim Yu-Nas and Evan Lysaceks of the world.

For those who can't get enough, the 10th annual Golden Gate Skate at the Yerba Buena Ice Skating Center is a good way to see competitive skating.

With competitors ranging from tots in the under-6-years-old category to adults in the over-60 bracket, it's a little less rigorous than the world championships, but a great demonstration of just how wide the appeal of figure skating can be.

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Preview: San Francisco Dance Film Festival

Movement as seen through the prism of the camera's unrelenting eye is the subject of the first San Francisco Dance Film Festival, which opens tonight at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center in SoMa. Produced by Greta Schoenberg's Motion Pictures and co-presented by Dancers' Group, the two programs offered on the weekendlong festival highlight a veritable smorgasbord of dance film.

The event features seven short dance films, as well as screenings of the work of Karina Epperlein and Mitchell Rose, plus professional workshops taught by local videographer Ben Estabrook, and an interactive multimedia installation that unlocks the complex choreographic patterns of William Forsythe's ballet 'One Flat Thing, Reproduced.'

'It's gone from a one-hour showing of shorts on a hard drive to a full festival,' laughs Schoenberg, whose soft-spoken demeanor belies the energetic vigor she's put into launching this festival. A classically trained dancer and choreographer who grew up in Santa Cruz and has performed locally and internationally, Schoenberg took note of the symbiosis of dance and film while working in Europe in the late '90s.

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Adia Tamar Whitaker returns to S.F. State

There's something thoughtfully impulsive about Adia Tamar Whitaker, the gifted young choreographer whose Afro-Haitian-inspired work has been making appearances all over the Bay Area this season. Fervid and muscular, Whitaker's works reveal the vitality and quirky humor that you see in the woman as soon as she sweeps into the room.

An alumna of San Francisco State University - where she rediscovered a love for dance, inspired by teachers like Albirda Rose and the late Alicia Pierce - Whitaker has since established her own company, Ase Dance Theater Collective in Brooklyn. Still, she is seemingly all over the Bay Area, at CounterPulse's Performing Diaspora Festival last fall and the Black Choreographers Festival in February. Now Whitaker returns to her alma mater to premiere 'Ezili Freda' with the University Dance Theater this weekend at the McKenna Theater.

Sitting down at the Dance Mission studios, only hours before the Black Choreographer's Festival performance, the slender, energetic Whitaker talks identity politics, tradition and love.

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Beethoven's Wig: Zany lyrics to classical music

You might know a lot about Beethoven, but do you happen to know about his wig?

If not, please allow Richard Perlmutter to explain in song during his performance Saturday with his vocal group Beethoven's Wig.

Though there won't be a symphony orchestra at the show, Perlmutter and four other singers will be dressed like any opera stars giving a formal concert, in tuxes and gowns, singing the greatest hits of classical music - but adding in plenty of interactive side notes.

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