There are a ton of fun things to see and do this weekend (and beyond), from Bay Area Dance Week to the Berkeley Bluegrass Festival and more.
Here’s a partial roundup.
Dance, dance, dance (all week)
One of the pillars of the Bay Area dance scene – an event so all-inclusive and preposterous it makes one ask in grateful wonderment, “how the (expletive) does this happen, anyway?”– is finally back after a three-year absence. We’re talking about Bay Area Dance Week, which runs Friday through April 30 up and down the Bay Area, from Santa Rosa to San Jose, and features scores of dance performances, classes, demonstrations and plain old gatherings where people are invited to just shake their tail feathers together. And all of it, every single plie and bit of Bhangra or Bollywood, is free. The event, which originated in 1999, is put on by the Dancers’ Group, a nonprofit geared to aiding Bay Area dancing troupes and schools. How Bay Area Dance Week works is organizers have created a conduit where schools and companies can post performances, classes and events and dance lovers can attend whatever they see listed. Although the post-pandemic landscape is such that there aren’t as many events as in past years, that doesn’t mean you can’t take a Bollywood dance lesson at 5:30 p.m. Friday in Salesforce Tower Park, view an ecologically-themed Indian classical dance work in San Rafael on Saturday evening, or groove to a bellydancing/stretching demonstration online. The official kick-off takes place at 11 a.m. at Yerba Buena Gardens Saturday with “One Dance,” in which everyone is invited to take part in a pre-choreographed dance routine (you can learn the moves on the event’s website).
Details: More information and full schedule is at www.bopsidy.com (look for the “hubs” link in the menu to jump to the Bay Area Dance Week events).
Celebration of bluegrass in Berkeley
The East Bay’s rich and longstanding history as a hotspot for bluegrass and Americana music is honored each year with the Berkeley Bluegrass Festival. The event returns this weekend, April 21-23, to the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, featuring three nights of concerts and an impressive array of workshops and presentations. A driving force behind the event is the legendary singer and musician Laurie Lewis, who programmed the concerts and workshops with Freight artistic director Peter Williams and education associate Leah Wollenberg. She also performs in the event’s first concert Friday night with her band the Right Hands, along with banjo hotshot Tray Wellington and Mr. Sun, an acclaimed outfit led by renowned fiddler Darol Anger. The second concert on Saturday features a pair of beloved singer-songwriters, Laura Love and Peter Rowan. Sunday’s concert finale offers the old-time music duo Larry and Joe, the Virginia bluegrass outfit Dry Branch Fire Squad and the dazzling musicianship and harmonies of Nashville-based band Sister Sadie. The workshops offer how-to’s on everything from bluegrass vocals, banjo playing, fiddle-playing and more, as well as a sing-along with Lewis, a Q&A with Rowan and a sure-to-be-interesting discussion titled “Repairing the White Racism in Bluegrass: the Black Cultural Roots of Bluegrass,” featuring the Black Banjo Reclamation Project (1:45 p.m. April 22).
Details: Concerts are $50-$55 each, three-night pass is $125; workshops cost $5-$35; tickets, more information and a full schedule are at thefreight.org.
The Rhythm of the river
As part of a university residency Stanford Live presents Hanoi-born Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ’s latest multimedia meditation, “Mekong: LIFE,” Sunday afternoon at Bing Concert Hall. Using the river’s course as its guide, the piece examines the toll taken by the extraction of natural resources and climate change on communities in Vietnam, Laos and Burma.
An Emmy Award-winning composer and master of several traditional Vietnamese instruments, Võ devised a striking original score for the travelogue, which features shimmering visions of life along the Mekong River. Rooted in traditional Vietnamese sounds and cadences, her music is wide open to a world of possibilities, drawing on an array of international influences. The impact is often seductively visceral, hinting at the resilience and fragility of culture in the face of titanic forces.
Details: 4 p.m. April 23; Bing Concert Hall, Stanford University; $15-$64; 650-724-2464, live.stanford.edu
— Andrew Gilbert, Correspondent
Classical picks: 2 adventuresome concerts
New works continue to highlight the classical scene — here are two events adventurous music lovers won’t want to miss.
Shaw and Sō in Berkeley: Caroline Shaw, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and vocalist extraordinaire, comes to Cal Performances with the new-music ensemble Sō Percussion in a special program tonight night. The featured work is the West Coast premiere of “Let the Soil Play its Simple Part,” a set of 10 songs composed by Shaw and members of the quartet; completing the program is Jason Treuting’s “Amid the Noise.”
Details: 7:30 p.m. today; Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley; $14-$56; 510-642-9988, calperformances.org.
Măcelaru at S.F. Symphony: In his work as music director of the annual Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, audiences have gotten to know the precise, dynamic podium style of conductor Cristian Măcelaru. This week, music lovers can see him in action at Davies Symphony Hall, leading the San Francisco Symphony in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1. Also featured: selections from Wynton Marsalis’s “Blues Symphony,” and the U.S. premiere of Outi Tarkiainen’s “Milky Ways.”
Details: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco; $20-$135; sfsymphony.org.
— Georgia Rowe, Correspondent
Case of mistaken nonidentity
Once upon a time, Bay Area actor Fred Pitts decided to tour each of California’s 21 California Mission churches. He discovered that his status of a African American visitor made him a celebrity — literally — at whichever church he visited.
In his new comedic solo show, “Aren’t You …?” Pitts recounts his various encounters with fellow travelers, church officials and docents, even historians, seemingly all of whom are convinced that he is an actor or musician or some kind of famous person — they’re just not sure which one.
Pitts, who’s been acting for more than 20 years with such stage troupes as Palo Alto Players, African-American Shakespeare Company, Contra Costa Civic Theatre and many more, presents “Aren’t You …?” as a mix of comedic anecdotes, lively descriptions of his travels and thoughtful observations about history and society.
You can catch his funny and insightful solo show at The Marsh Berkeley..
Details: 7 p.m. Fridays through May 5; 2120 Allston St., Berkeley; $20-$100; themarsh.org.
— Randy McMullen, Staff
Comedy at the opera
There aren’t very many operas that are chock full of laughs, but English composer Benjamin Britten’s 1947 work “Albert Herring” is one of the best and the brightest. The plot deals with the foibles of four small-town characters in the Victorian era who are trying to pick a May Queen for their upcoming celebration but wind up crowning an innocent local yokel a May King instead. Hilarity ensues. The Bay area’s feisty Pocket Opera company is mounting a production that kicks off at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, with repeats at 2 p.m. April 30 at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and 2:30 p.m. May 7 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Tenor Sam Faustine sings the title role, with Julio Ferrari and Courtney Miller playing Sid and Nancy, who conspire to help him lose his boyish innocence, with uproarious results.
Details: $30-$75; at www.pocketopera.org.
— Bay Area News Foundation
