Rachel Howard May 9, 2021Updated: May 10, 2021, 9:53 pm
Tessa Barbour and Ricardo Dyer perform “The Man I Love” in the Bruns Amphitheater of California Shakespeare Theater in Orinda. Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle
Celia Fushille, artistic director of Smuin Contemporary Ballet, stepped on the sun-drenched stage of Orinda’s California Shakespeare Theater on Sunday, May 9, the breeze rippling her peach and blue scarf, and proclaimed, “An audience! Live theater! I’m going to get emotional.”
Befitting the wooded picnic setting, however, no tears were shed at “Smuin al Fresco.” This was a happy milestone as the mainstay Bay Area dance company became the first to return to live performance. The troupe did so with the same grace Fushille has shown leading the company throughout the pandemic, keeping Smuin’s 13 dancers employed and creatively engaged during the past year on screen, and now finally in the flesh.
Rachel Howard December 12, 2020Updated: December 14, 2020, 8:03 am
Cassidy Isaacson and Brandon Alexander perform in Smuin Contemporary Ballet’s first virtual presentation of “The Christmas Ballet.” Photo: Terez Dean Orr
Michael Smuin was a master at building dependable, durable, crowd-pleasing machines. Perhaps the ultimate proof of this can be seen now through Dec. 24 in the online stream of Smuin Contemporary Ballet’s “The Christmas Ballet.”
Created in 1995, a year after Smuin founded the San Francisco dance company, this spectacle was designed to sate all tastes (though you’re more likely to love it if you lean toward a Rockettes-style Broadway baby aesthetic). There’s a “Classical Christmas” opening half dressed in white and set to music including Bach’s “Magnificat,” and a “Cool Christmas” second half dressed in red and set to pop ditties such as “Santa Baby” and “Christmas in New Orleans.”