SpectorDance's 'Ocean': Science meets art

It's an apt topic for SpectorDance, whose studios are situated minutes from the beach in Marina, near Monterey. For 15 years, Fran Spector Atkins has worked with multimedia artist William Roden to create work that explores the connections between communities and the sea. The result is "Ocean," a blend of her choreography, a score by Colin Farish, underwater film, and interviews with oceanographers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

"It's so easy for very critical issues to fall out of the realm of what people think about because we're so involved in our lives and concerns. I wanted to bring the issue of human impact on world oceans into people's consciousness and make it accessible to general audiences," Spector says.

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Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt

Whether you're a budding Sam Spade or just interested in learning some of the unique history of San Francisco, this year's Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt is a great way to give your legs and brain a workout.

On Saturday, thousands of amateur sleuths will gather at Justin Herman Plaza to pick up clues for a historical scavenger hunt themed around the Year of the Snake. It will take them all over Chinatown, North Beach and Telegraph Hill in search of answers to clues laid down by the creators, San Francisco Treasure Hunts.

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Tanya Bello's Project. B: Dance as play

The serious side of playtime inspired choreographer Tanya Bello's "Games We Play(ed)," which her company Project. B. premieres this weekend on a program at ODC's Dance�Commons.

A familiar face on Bay Area stages - Bello has danced for ODC, as well as for Robert Moses, Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton - she has recruited for her own 3-year-old company a coterie of top-tier dancers, including Katherine Wells and Norma Fong from Robert Moses' Kin, and Kelly del Rosario of Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.

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'Don Quixote' at Ballet San Jose - SFGate

Wes Chapman's lively, colorful staging of the classic "Don Quixote" might not break any new ground for this 144-year-old ballet, but the frothy, lighthearted production that Ballet San Jose premiered at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts on Friday is nonetheless a solid showcase for a company.

The ballet's comic plot, drawn from Cervantes' epic novel, recounts the adventures of the mischievous Kitri, who longs to marry her poor but handsome suitor, Basilio. Over the history of "Don Quixote," so many versions and additions have been made, it's hard to say what the original really looked like, but Chapman, who leads Ballet San Jose as artistic adviser with Raymond Rodriguez, hews closely to what is generally accepted as the traditional Marius Petipa and Alexander Gorsky choreography.

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'Parades and Changes': Anna Halprin

There's a ritualistic resonance to the return of Anna Halprin's "Parades and Changes" to the Berkeley Art Museum this weekend. Forty-three years ago, the dance piece marked the opening of BAM, symbolic of then-director Peter Selz's desire to re-engineer how art and audiences came together. Now "Parades and Changes" will mark the museum's closure, as it moves to a new home in downtown Berkeley.

In developing "Parades and Changes," Halprin and composer Morton Subotnick, who also performs this weekend, invented their own method of "scoring" the work. Various activities, the tearing of sheets of paper, dressing and undressing, musical episodes, etc., were set down on a parade of colored index cards, which could then be shuffled or changed depending on which seemed to suit the context of the performance and the culture of the moment. Halprin notes that that flexibility made "Parades and Changes" malleable enough to fit any venue, and also kept it relevant through the years.

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Flamenco, Spanish poet intersect in opera

Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca wrote: "I know there is no straight road/ No straight road in this world/ Only a giant labyrinth/ Of intersecting crossroads."

Lives twine and intersect in richly imagined episodes of byzantine complexity in Osvaldo Golijov's opera "Ainadamar," which Opera Parallele, under Nicole Paiement's direction, performs this weekend at the Yerba Buena Center's Lam Research Theater.

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'Ivy & Bean, the Musical': Chaotic fun

Ivy and Bean didn't start out being the best of friends, author Annie Barrows says. But as with many friendships, the high-spirited Bean, who is always clashing with her sister, and the clever, bookish Ivy, who is practicing to be a witch, discover they have a lot in common on their way to becoming co-conspirators in mischief.

This weekend, the Berkeley writer's dynamic duo come to life onstage when the Bay Area Children's Theatre debuts a musical version of "Ivy & Bean" at Freight & Salvage, kicking off a season that takes the show from Berkeley to San Ramon to Mill Valley.

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Black Choreographers Festival: Tigner

It wasn't a dream - the drums playing a mysterious rhythm that Latanya d. Tigner heard every night in Congo. Still, no one else could hear them it seemed, and so she concluded they must be talking directly to her for a reason.

Those drums and the many experiences Tigner brought back with her from a 2010 visit to the Republic of the Congo inspired her latest choreographic venture, "Ndozi/BaNkaka: Those Who Sit With Us," a collaboration with drummer Kiazi Malonga that features on the second of three weekends of the ninth annual Black Choreographers Festival, which begins on Saturday.

It was on her first night in Brazzaville, Tigner recalls, as she turned into bed, that she heard the drumming.

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