Freebie of the week: There are totally different approaches one can take towards a vacation market. One is to embrace all of the enjoyable, music and merriment whereas purchasing and taking time to truly benefit from the act of shopping for presents for folks you care about. The opposite is to forego the frivolity and make a beeline for the loot. However many will need to make use of the primary technique by heading to the Fort Mason Vacation Evening Market on Friday. The purchasing will be off-the-charts good, with crafts and different gift-worthy gadgets from greater than 100 artists and crafts-makers, however there’s numerous enjoyable stuff to see and do as effectively: go to with Santa; purchase a Christmas tree (proceeds profit at-risk Bay Space youth); watch a screening of Tim Burton’s traditional “The Nightmare Before Christmas”; take a vacation ornament-making class; try the exhibitions on the close by Haines Artwork Gallery; or absorb a set by the terrific swing/blues band Lavay Smith and the Pink Scorching Skillet Lickers. There can even be 10 meals vehicles available and loads of tasty drinks on the market. The occasion runs from 4 to 9 p.m. Friday on the Fort Mason grounds, Marina Boulevard at Buchanan Road, San Francisco, and admission is free. Extra info is at fortmason.org.
Cal Performances presents Dorrance Dance’s “The Nutcracker Suite” on Dec. 14–15 at Zellerbach Corridor. (Courtesy Christopher Duggan)
A tapping good time: For many who thought tap-dancing was solely one thing folks did throughout Shirley Temple films, Michelle Dorrance will show them flawed. She is the MacArthur “Genius Grant”-winning dancer and choreographer who in 2011 based Dorrance Dance, a up to date firm recognized for bold faucet dance performances. The shape, outlined by the rhythmic clack-clacking sound created by footwear with metallic items hooked up to the heel and toe, was developed by African American dancers through the introduction of jazz music. However firms equivalent to Dorrance Dance proceed to refine and broaden the artwork. This weekend, Dorrance Dance arrives within the Bay Space to use faucet dancing to a beloved vacation favourite, presenting the Bay Space premiere of its adaptation of “The Nutcracker Suite.” The work, carried out to a reworked model of Tchaikovsky’s storied rating created in 1960 by jazz icons Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, fuses intelligent Twenty first-century alterations into the story line. As organizers put it, the work “transforms the Sugar Plum Fairy into a slinky Sugar Rum Cherry” and the “March of the Toy Soldiers becomes a swinging brass Peanut Brittle Brigade romp.” Introduced by Cal Performances, New York-based Dorrance Dance will carry out the 70-minute manufacturing at 8 p.m. Saturday and three p.m. Sunday at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Corridor. Tickets are $30-$125. Go to calperformances.org.
Mary (performed by Elissa Beth Stebbins) and Arthur (David Toshiro Crane) discover romance underneath the mistletoe within the TheatreWorks Silicon Valley manufacturing “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley,” enjoying by Dec. 29 in Palo Alto. (Courtesy Kevin Berne/TheatreWorks)
Austen for the vacations: Jane Austen is justifiably revered for her beautiful prose, savvy critique of the British higher class and emotionally satisfying romantic storylines. She’s hardly ever been thought of the go-to creator for the winter holidays. However TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, together with Bay Space playwrights Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon, are altering all that. The Palo Alto stage firm is presenting Gunderson and Melcon’s Austen-themed work, “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley” as its vacation stage present this 12 months. The rom-com is described as a sequel to Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” and, because the title makes clear, it’s set through the holidays. The play focuses on the center Bennet daughter, the “bookish” Mary, as organizers put it, who’s weary of at all times being in the course of her siblings’ romantic points till a dishy new customer arrives at Pemberley to gentle up her world. Having scored with audiences in a trio of Austen diversifications of “Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility” and “Emma,” it’s not shocking that TheatreWorks returns to the beloved creator, in addition to acclaimed playwrights Gunderson and Melcon, for vacation cheer. Directed by Jeffrey Lo, “Miss Bennet” performs on the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto by Dec. 29. Tickets are $34-$115; go to theatreworks.org.
Actor and singer Joshua Dela Cruz would be the visitor narrator for the San Francisco Youth Symphony’s efficiency of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” in Davies Corridor. (Courtesy James Jin)
Some perky Prokofiev: We at all times anticipate the San Francisco Youth Symphony to convey households a rousing efficiency of Sergei Prokofiev’s charming “Peter and the Wolf” each vacation season, however we don’t know till the date approaches what superstar might be picked to fill the narrator’s footwear. Previous performers have included Sharon Stone, Linda Ronstadt, Robin Williams, Bobby McFerrin and Rita Moreno. This 12 months, it’s the Filipino American Broadway star of “Aladdin” and present host of the youngsters TV collection “Blues, Clues and You” Josh Dela Cruz who might be telling the story of the plucky boy, his animal buddies and the unfortunate duck who will get swallowed entire. The live performance, performed by Radu Paponiu, takes place at 2 p.m. Sunday in San Francisco’s Davies Corridor. There are different enjoyable works on this system, together with the “Thunder and Lightning Polka” by Johann Strauss Jr., and it’ll wind up with a standard vacation carol singalong. Tickets, $37.50-$199, can be found at sfsymphony.org.
Jeffrey Thomas conducts the American Bach Soloists in two applications of vacation music by Bach and Handel in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. (Courtesy American Bach Soloists)
Going for Baroque: Jeffrey Thomas and the American Bach Soloists and Choir have two terrific vacation applications lined up within the sonorous inside of Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill in San Francisco this week. First up on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. is Half Considered one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s wonderful “Christmas Oratorio” plus the Christmas portion and the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s “Messiah.” Then on Friday, additionally at 7:30 p.m., it’s the total efficiency of the “Messiah.” The vocal soloists for each nights are soprano Mary Wilson, countertenor Eric Jurenas, tenor Jon Lee Keenan and baritone Jesse Blumberg. Tickets, $25-$135, will be bought at americanbach.org.
