A hand (always) to hold? the night…
Stephanie Silvia
Stephanie Silva directed her own modern dance company in New York City and is a student of American poet Diane di Prima. She teaches movement and writing.
Posted inArts + Scene
Dancing the Bard
“Seems like there’s a buzz about dance right now in Humboldt County,” says Heather Sorter, director of this weekend’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Ballet. With local talent abounding, Sorter, who danced in both Pacific Northwest Ballet’s staging of Balanchine’s opus and Nadine Coles’ version for New World Ballet, felt it was time to helm her […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Moving Together
A dance festival in Humboldt County? That’s the stuff dancer dreams are of made of. It’s happening in Arcata the last weekend in March when New World Ballet presents the first annual Humboldt International Dance Festival at the Old Creamery. Performances, prominent teachers and dance artists, back-to-back classes and lots of dancers to meet and […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Finding a Reason
It’s a family affair. Therese Keslin-FitzMaurice, the poet, a high school English teacher at Six Rivers Charter High School, is married to drummer Tommy FitzMaurice, who teaches kindergarten at Jacoby Creek Charter School. Leif Johnson, the bass player who teaches history at McKinleyville High, is the boyfriend of Vanessa Pike-Vrtiak — who has jammed at […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Crab and Bubbly Etc.
Our first December living in Trinidad my brand new husband, Scot, fished for Captain Zach, while back on land I worked at Zach’s Crab Shack. There I was introduced to the California tradition of feasting on crab over the Christmas holidays. From early morning on Christmas Eve Day, folks cued up outside the crab house […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Two for the Holidays
People in Humboldt County are dancing. Toddlers, school children, teenagers and adults have caught the bug. How potent the ritual of dance class and rehearsal! I spent decades following Terpsichore, the muse of dance. She is alive and thriving, entering dancers’ dreams right here, right now, where we live. The evidence: two fully staged holiday […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Winter Wonderland
Thanksgiving is upon us and with it comes the beginning of the holiday dance season. Living behind the Redwood Curtain does not preclude us from enjoying the classical arts with four seasonal ballets, three of them including renderings of that old chestnut, The Nutcracker. Thanksgiving weekend brings the first, a revival of the Nutcracker Ballet […]
Posted inMusic
Take Off Your Skin
Beginning in the dark, a voice out of the silence, “This strange ecstatic dream… .” Laura Muñoz, director of Take Off Your Skin, a modern dance piece integrating live music and spoken and sung words of poets Walt Whitman, Hafiz, Lalla and Rumi, fearlessly messes around with all these elements. The atmosphere created is alluring. […]
Posted inEat + Drink
The Humble Bread Slicer
Images of my mother taking care of me when I was toddler are fleeting but certain. We didn’t have each other for very long, but I remember Brooklyn and shopping with her and my aunt, her kid sister, on 86th Street in Bensonhurst, one of them pushing me in a stroller on sunny mornings as […]