John Heginbotham News

Single (non-subscription) tickets for San Francisco Opera's 2017 Fall Season at the War Memorial Opera House go on sale Monday, June 26, 2017, at 10 a.m. Tickets may be purchased online at sfopera.com; in-person at the San Francisco Opera Box Office, located at 301 Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco and open Mondays from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; and by phone at (415) 864-3330 during Box Office hours. Full and Half Series subscription packages are also available. Tickets for the three cycles of Wagner's Ring during the summer of 2018 are available as complete, four-opera cycles only.

Jacob's Pillow Director Pamela Tatge recently unveiled Vision '22, a strategic approach for the Pillow's development over the next five years, through 2022. Vision '22 is a blueprint for enabling the Pillow to become a year-round center for dance creation and to more robustly serve artists and audiences alike.

Celebrating the power of Jacob's Pillow's natural setting, internationally acclaimed dance company Pilobolus Dance Theater will premiere a new work commissioned specifically for the Pillow's iconic outdoor Inside/Out performance space, set against the Berkshire hills. The program featuring the world premiere and On the Nature of Things will kick off the Festival's 2017 free Inside/Out performance series with an extended three-day run, June 21-23.

“A prolific choreographer of skillfully constructed dances that respectfully mesh with music and striking visual design” (The New Yorker), Jessica Lang and her company return to Jacob's Pillow for the ensemble's first Ted Shawn Theatre engagement, July 5-9. In addition to a Pillow-commissioned world premiere work, the program includes Lang's Thousand Yard Stare, a dance embodying the incredible pride and honor as well as the searing loss experienced by military veterans. The program will also include the East Coast and company premiere of Lang's Lyric Pieces as well as Solo Bach, Sweet Silent Thought, and The Calling. This season, the Pillow has formed a partnership with the Tanglewood Music Center, whereby Tanglewood Fellows and alumni will be providing the music accompaniment for this engagement.

Known for its "cutting-edge contemporary work" (Jason Vondersmith, The Portland Tribune), NW Dance Project makes its Jacob's Pillow debut, June 28-July 2 in the Doris Duke Theatre. Based in Portland, Oregon and led by former Royal Winnipeg Ballet principal dancer Sarah Slipper, the company is composed of a cast of classically-trained, versatile contemporary dancers. The program includes works by a range of accomplished choreographers and rising talents: Post-Traumatic-Monster by Felix Landerer, choreographer in residence for Scapino Ballet in the Netherlands; At Some Hour You Return by former Nederlands Dans Theater dancer Ji?i Pokorný; Le Fil Rouge by 2011 Sadler's Wells Global Dance Contest winner and NW Dance Project resident choreographer Ihsan Rustem; and MemoryHouse by Artistic Director Sarah Slipper.

Joseph V. Melillo, executive producer of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), today announced programming for the 2017 Next Wave Festival. The festival runs from September 14 through December 16 and comprises 31 dance, music, opera, theater, physical theater, and performance art engagements in the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Harvey Theater, and BAM Fisher. Scroll down for the full lineup!

The Jacob's Pillow 85th Anniversary Season kicks off with the Season Opening Gala, the Pillow's signature fundraising event, Saturday, June 17. The event embodies the start of the summer season in the Berkshires, and features exclusive programming, unique and delicious food and drink, and plenty of dancing and live music.

Young dancers will take the stage at Irvine Barclay Theatre for four unique performances June 1-3, in The Wooden Floor's 34th Annual Concert, Connected spaces.

Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival has added two more opportunities for audiences to experience Trisha Brown Dance Company. Originally a five-performance run, August 16-19 in the Ted Shawn Theatre, the Pillow has added a Thursday matinee to the company's schedule. Members of Trisha Brown Dance Company will also perform the site-specific work Trisha Brown: In Plain Site at the Clark Art Institute on Sunday, August 13, a co-presentation of Jacob's Pillow Dance and the Clark. An icon of American dance with extensive Jacob's Pillow connections spanning more than 30 years, choreographer Trisha Brown died March 18, 2017. In a New York Times obituary, chief dance critic Alastair Macaulay wrote “Few dance inventors have so combined the cerebral and sensuous sides of dance as Ms. Brown did, and few have been as influential. Her choreography…helped shape generations of modern dance creators into the 21st century.”

The Play Company (PlayCo), led by Founding Producer Kate Loewald and Managing Director Robert Bradshaw announce the U.S. premiere of Amir Nizar Zuabi's Oh My Sweet Land (September/October), an intimate solo play that will be staged in private homes and community spaces throughout the five boroughs.

The 2017 Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival 2017, the first programmed exclusively by new Director Pamela Tatge, is full of exciting programming featuring world premieres, commissions, site-specific work, international artists, live music, and Pillow-exclusive engagements, all to celebrate a momentous 85th Anniversary Season. Running June 21-August 27, Festival 2017 includes more than 200 free events, performances, exhibits, and talks, as well as many new offerings and initiatives launched under Tatge's leadership. In keeping with the Jacob's Pillow mission to engage and educate the community through the depth and breadth of dance, the genres and styles presented as part of the 85th Anniversary Season are far-reaching and inclusive, encompassing modern, contemporary, ballet, hip-hop, improvisation, flex, tap dance, step, Brazilian social dance, dance theater, traditional Native American, Bharatanatyam, musical theater dance, classical Cambodian, Latin ballroom, capoeira, and traditional Korean movement styles.

McCarter Theatre Center closes the 2016-2017 Theater Series with a new production of Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel, a story of an African-American seamstress living in 1905 New York City pursuing her dreams of love and independence. Directed by Jade King Carroll, Intimate Apparel will run from May 5 to June 4.

The 2017 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award, a prestigious honor that carries a $25,000 cash prize, will be presented to choreographer, performer, writer, educator, and speaker Liz Lerman in acknowledgement of her vision and outstanding contributions to the dance field.  Long ago dubbed the “Democrat of Dance” by Alan M. Kriegsman of The Washington Post, Lerman's extraordinary career of the past four decades includes a wide range of groundbreaking work. Established in 2007, the Jacob's Pillow Dance Award's previous recipients include the legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham; MacArthur Fellows Michelle Dorrance and Kyle Abraham; and choreographer, performer, and artistic director Camille A. Brown, among others.

Dance for PD®, celebrating its 15th anniversary next year, offers specialized dance classes to people with Parkinson's, their families, friends and care partners in six locations around New York City and through our network of affiliates in more than 100 communities in 16 countries around the world. Dance for PD classes allow people with Parkinson's to experience the joys and benefits of dance while creatively addressing symptom-specific concerns related to balance, cognition, motor skill, depression and physical confidence.

ODC Theater is proud to present David Gordon and Pick Up Performance Co(s) in the world premiere of LIVE ARCHIVEOGRAPHY, a retrospective tracing five decades of the legendary theater and dance artist's work. Live Archiveography runs April 20 -22, Thursday to Saturday at 8 p.m.

Parisian culture, Polish politics, and the piano are the focus of this summer's annual Bard SummerScape festival, with seven weeks of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret keyed to the theme of the 28th Bard Music Festival, 'Chopin and His World.'

 Next month, ODC Theater is pleased to present the award-winning Epiphany Productions Sonic Dance Theater in a work-in-progress showing for Last Blue Couch in the Sky, scheduled to premiere at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in June. This edition of ODC's signature "Unplugged" format, a recurring platform offering a rare and candid look into the creative process, takes place for one night only, Sunday, March 26 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20, and may be purchased online at odc.dance/tickets or by phone at 415-863-9834.

ODC, the most active center for contemporary dance on the West Coast, has announced the program for its 2017 Theater Season. Highlights include world premieres by David Gordon, FACT/SF, Monique Jenkinson, tinypistol, Laura Elaine Ellis and Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts, and West Coast premieres by Kate Weare Company and The Foundry. Additional season highlights include remounts of seminal works by Joanna Haigood and RAWdance.

The National YoungArts Foundation (YoungArts) recently announced details for its 2017 regional programs, including a new long-term institutional partnership with the Center for the Art of Performance at University of California Los Angeles (CAP UCLA) that represents YoungArts' deepening roots in the area, and further expands the organization's resources and reach on the West Coast.