Ballet Tucson Pop-Ups. Last November,
Ballet Tucson dancers, who had not performed since March 2020, did a brief but magical nighttime concert at the Tucson Botanical Garden. They went on to dance in other unconventional venues, including the Reid Park Zoo, the St. Philip s Farmers Market, and a Tucson Museum of Art patio. The shows were a hit, and this month the dancers will once again perform a series of short outdoor concerts. This weekend, they ve got a gig at Brandi Fenton Memorial Park. Two company choreographers, associate director Chieko Imada and Balletmaster Daniel Precup, have created five new dances to be performed in all three concerts. Each show will feature nine dancers. Imada s Shall We Dance? is a comical duet about relationships, and her Trio is a contemporary jazz piece. Precup, formerly a full-time dancer in the troupe, will dance a romantic pas de deux with prima ballerina Jenna Johnson in his piece Rhapsody. (The two are married in real life.) He also choreogr
Courtesy Rialto Theater
Bit by bit, the arts are opening up in Tucson. And the arts organizations are dreaming up clever new ways to keep their artists and fans safe from COVID-19.
In the coming weeks, Ballet Tucson will send its dancers to perform in the great outdoors, and the Yume Japanese Gardens will host Funhouse Movement, performing Japanese Butoh dance among the plants.
Untitled Gallery opened last week after months in lockdown, and the Rialto, which doesn t plan to stage concerts until the end of summer or later, has temporarily turned its space into a gallery of rock-and-roll photos.