Paul Taylor Dance Co. executive director John Tomlinson claims credit for The City’s gorgeous weather after a stormy March. “It’s always like this when we are in town,” Tomlinson says.As someone who has attended every Paul Taylor tour here through the years, I can verify the claim that the sun always shines when this company is in residence.
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It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Russian history that Rasputin is finally ready for his close-up. Indeed, the question that inevitably arises in “Beardo” — the funny, freewheeling musical presented by the Shotgun Players — is, “Why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?”
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The nationally acclaimed experimental playwright Young Jean Lee defies expectations in every way imaginable in her 2006 multidisciplinary satire “Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven,” a mashup of ultraweird sketch comedy scenes involving song, dance, dialogue and exaggerated faux violence.“Songs,” a belated West Coast premiere presented by the Crowded Fire Theater Co. and Asian American Theater Co., starts in the dark with the voice of a filmmaker directing an actor to slap an actress.
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The idea of artificially induced intelligence is not necessarily new. (The current movie “Limitless” is about a drug that allows us to access the unused 90 percent of our brainpower.)But “Wirehead,” a futuristic thriller by Matthew Benjamin and Logan Brown onstage at SF Playhouse, includes clever little details (like cochlear telephone implants; you stick your finger in your ear to talk and jiggle a tooth to adjust reception).
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Paul Taylor’s smile is audible. Every interview is ironic for the 80-year-old choreographer. “One of the reasons I decided to try and be a dancer was that I thought I wouldn’t have to talk,” Taylor laughs. “It hasn’t always proved true,” he adds in his smooth, dulcet tones.Despite his ambivalence toward language, many of Taylor’s key works in his vast oeuvre of 133 dances include songs, such as the Depression-era tunes of “Black Tuesday,” one of the eight works to be performed by his company starting Wednesday at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
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In “Intermission” — the one-act in the middle of Cutting Ball Theater’s evening of three short plays by New York experimental playwright Will Eno — two couples, one young and the other middle-aged, sit upstage facing the audience. It is intermission in the play they’re watching — about a man dying — and, although strangers, the two couples begin making polite conversation.
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"No one calls me granny!" announces Mae, stomping triumphantly back onstage in her sensible shoes after knocking out a taunting streetwalker who’s horning in on her territory. Mae is the elderly madam of a whorehouse for aging prostitutes, who cheer her on from a park bench where they gather regularly during their breaks.
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Coppélia is a mechanical doll, without a heart, but around her, San Francisco Ballet’s production of “Coppélia” sparkles with live and lively dancers, miles of heart — and muscles not to be believed.In Sunday’s Program 5 matinee, Vanessa Zahorian danced the lead role of Swanilda with charm, grace and what must be called superhuman strength.Each of the three acts of this spectacular piece is a different ballet, and Zahorian, partnered well by Taras Domitro, danced three roles, each the equivalent of a complete work.
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“Are you accusing me of vandalizing the school?” challenges 18-year-old Sheffield High School student Khadim, early on in nationally acclaimed playwright Rajiv Joseph’s “The North Pool” at TheatreWorks.The disingenuous Khadim (does he really not know what a prom is?) has been called into Vice Principal Danielson’s office (nicely detailed, realistic set by Erik Flatmo) just as the large public school closes for spring break.
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While an IQ test is required for some careers, “genius” profiling has yet to become a widespread phenomenon. But what if it was?
Brain implants that increase intelligence capabilities cause the dominant rift in society in “Wirehead,” a play by award-winning writers Matt Benjamin and Logan Brown, which has its Bay Area premiere in an SF Playhouse production directed by Susi Damilano.
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