The Granada – Ted Mills

This American Dance – NPR’S IRA GLASS RETURNS TO SANTA BARBARA — WITH TWO DANCERS IN TOW

October 18, 2013September 25, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Ira Glass, the host of the popular NPR show "This American Life," returns to Santa Barbara accompanied by pair of dancers on stage as he tells his stories Evan Agostini photo — Ira Glass, the host of the popular NPR show “This American Life,” returns to Santa Barbara accompanied by pair of dancers on stage as he tells his stories
Evan Agostini photo

Fans of “This American Life” know, and some of us love, host Ira Glass’ voice, soft, quick, worldly and wordy, but it’s only recently that audiences have come to know what he looks like. After thirty-some years in radio, to see the voice made flesh was strange, at first. When his popular NPR/PRI radio hour went on tour as a live, HD simulcast show a few years back, or for those who have seen him in rare, live appearances, it was interesting, but not astounding.

The bespectacled man, curly hair like his cousin, composer Philip Glass, did what he usually does: sit at a desk and cue up story after story, and provide the framing structure to lead us through it. But his spirit of adventure and of rising to a challenge — the same one, he says, that led him to start broadcasting in the first place — has found him heading a very odd evening this coming Saturday: Ira Glass will appear with two dancers who will accompany his evening of stories. It’s a “This American Life” that moves, called “One Radio Host, Two Dancers.”

Fleeting Beauty – Opera Santa Barbara brings star power to Puccini’s classic ‘Madame Butterfly’

November 2, 2012January 15, 2016 tedmills Leave a comment

Kimonos have multiple layers of fabric, but even so, they are light and airy. Or at least they should be. Whoever made one of the kimonos for Opera Santa Barbara’s upcoming production of “Madame Butterfly” didn’t get the memo.

“It’s so heavy! It feels like wearing a futon,” laughs lead soprano Mihoko Kinoshita as we chat about the production. Heavier than any 19th-century outfit, heavier than any armor worn by a Wagnerian goddess — it’s a big costume, but thankfully she has the power to sing past it, a power noted by the London Daily Express and others reviewing her star turn in the lead role of “Madame Butterfly” at the Royal Albert Hall.

A FULL PLATE: 2010 in Theater: Santa Barbara Kept On Keepin’ On

December 24, 2010July 9, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Santa Barbara’s theater scene marked anniversaries, said goodbye to some well-loved people and maintained high-quality shows in difficult times in 2010.

For companies, it was a year of stasis. The city college’s theater group is still waiting for Garvin Theatre renovations to finish, but that has led to some interesting work in Interim Theatre, converted temporarily from a classroom. Alan Ayckbourn’s “Time of My Life” featured some of Santa Barbara’s best actors Ed Lee, Katie Thatcher, Brian Harwell, et al. for a twisted dagger of a comedy, while “Machinal” and the “The Suicide” featured nothing but SBCC’s drama students onstage, and both productions (revivals of 1920s plays) were brave and daring. The Ayckbourn play also marked the farewell production of Rick Mokler, who had been directing for 20 years. Katie Laris has big shoes to fill, and one can already see she’s ready to take the department in a new, vibrant direction.

Not a Tough Nut to Crack – State Street Ballet returns home after a successful tour for ‘The Nutcracker’

December 17, 2010July 10, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Santa Barbarans like to complain about the weather when it dips below, say, 65 degrees. Likewise, we also like to complain a bit about the number of “Nutcracker” productions in town. However, we should spare a thought for the many communities that rarely get a visit from the sugar plum fairy.

Durango, Colo., for example, loved the fact that our very own State Street Ballet is on tour with the Tchaikovsky holiday classic. Socorro, N.M., gave the company a standing ovation when it performed there. Now the ballet company returns for a series of hometown shows at The Granada.

The Dark Side of Happiness – Passion Pit’s disco-rock hides black clouds of lyrics, but the band wants to have fun

December 3, 2010July 11, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Michael Angelakos, lead singer of Boston’s Passion Pit, is a man of his word. When asked in 2009 what the next year looked like for the band, he said “touring, touring, and touring.” Here we are in December and these overnight success indie rockers step up to play The Granada as they wind their tour down.

“Certainly 2010 has been full of lots of touring and it’s been a positive change for the band,” says Angelakos, whose voice is deep and searching and slightly tired. “We started off in 2009 as a band that hadn’t rehearsed much and didn’t take things seriously. We’ve had a reawakening. We didn’t really have time to develop outside of the limelight. So 2010 is the year we came into our own.”

Brief Encounters, Long Engagements – Paul Taylor Dance Company returns with a career-spanning selection

November 12, 2010July 2, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

At 80, Paul Taylor is one of, if not the only, master choreographer from the birth of modern dance who is still alive and creating. He danced in the companies of Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham (who dubbed him the “naughty boy” of dance), and George Balanchine, absorbing styles and techniques as he went. By the time he set up his own company in 1954, Taylor had a style, a way of moving. But most writers agree that when Taylor retired from dancing in 1974, his choreography went from good to great, as his company, his family, became a group of mini-Taylors. A towering presence himself, his male dancers tend to be larger than average.

“You can do the steps, but there’s a way that he moves that you have to learn,” says Robert Kleinendorst, one of the current company’s senior dancers. “He likes everything to originate from the hips, the back and the center. There’s a lot of twisting. The arms are secondary.”

Sankai Juku bring the esoteric dance of butoh to The Granada

October 30, 2010June 25, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Butoh, the post-war Japanese dance style that celebrates slow, methodical movement, rarely comes to Santa Barbara, and so the crowds that turned out for Sankai Juku’s appearance at The Granada Thursday night seemed larger than usual for such an esoteric experience. For those who stuck with it, the all-male company’s work, “Tobari — As if in an Inexhaustible Flux” paid off in surprising ways.

A life cycle in a way, the seven acts of the work took us through nothingness, creation, life, death and back into nothingness. As the program explained, “Tobari” is a Japanese word meaning veil, physically and metaphorically, a veil between day and night, or life and death. But it also described the backdrop, a simple but absolutely mesmerizing wall of stars in an inky blackness. Stared at long enough — and butoh encourages and requires lots of staring — the stars did seem to twinkle and move.

The Shadow Knows – Dance Company Pilobolus returns to UCSB’s Arts & Lectures

October 1, 2010June 25, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Though the dance company Pilobolus counts over 100 works in its repertory, the majority of readers will know it from its shadow pieces. Featured in Hyundai ads and on the Oscars, the dancers assemble themselves into organic shapes, from animals to teapots, and the audience sees them only through a screen. But this intersection of “art and athletics,” as The New York Times once wrote, has many more levels, as their return to UCSB’s Arts & Lectures on Thursday demonstrates.

For Renée Jaworski, choreographer and former dancer with the company, Pilobolus is unlike any other organization, and this is from a former member of the equally wacky Momix.